Today's session is in collaboration with ARSL, the association for rural and small libraries.
A couple notes about ARSL, if you're not yet familiar with it, it's an excellent place to gather with others who work or volume is tier in small and rural libraries.
Some of the benefits for being a member, it's a very affordable Michael Porter, I should mention as well -- affordable memberrership.
Quarterly member E-newsletter, and a very active members-only list serve that we all love dearly, both of us that are members.
So I encourage you to explore ARSL as a community to join if you're not yet a part of it, and a shout out to all of you who are already are.
And a note that the next conference is being held in Burlington, Vermont, in September, and the conference sold out in four days this last week.
So obviously meeting a need and really very, very popular with all of us who attend the conference.
It's the best one out there.
We are not biased.
Next year's conference is getting planned for Kansas.
So definitely stay tuned.
And also we're excited that library journal is bringing us our mover and shaker Allie Stevens today to the session.
Another thing to mention is our -- each of our webinars has a learner guide that we provide for folks who explore the topic further and allie has worked with us to create this learner guide.
This is an excellent resource to bring to others at your library, perhaps your board, it's an excellent way to move through some of the action steps that she suggests, you can customize the guide if you'd like, and we encourage you to explore our learner guides that we have for all of our webinars.
I'm really excited to welcome today our presenter, Allie Stevens.
She's coming to us from a very weather-iffy area, so we're glad she's able to be on today's line.
And she is the director at the Calhoun County Library and museum in Hampton, Arkansas, and she has all sorts of other wonderful things that she's doing, and Alie, let me grab that back again.
Let me get back to your slide.
I'll have you unmute yourself and we'll go ahead and get started.
Welcome, Allie.
>> Hi.
Thanks for having me.
So the title of my talk is "the power of small" how rural libraries can help their communities thrive.
And as Jennifer said, I am Allie Stevens, director at the Calhoun County Library and Museum.
A little bit of background.
I grew up here in Hampton, and then I moved to brown, and I got my Bs in biological sciences in  2008, and then I worked a bunch of odd jobs before I found library school.
And it was just a perfect fit from the beginning.
Then I moved home in -- the end of 2014 and spring of 2015 I started volunteering here and within two weeks of starting to volunteer the previous librarian who was actually an account end who had taken over, she just quit one day and so the county judge called and said, hey, do you want a job?
So I am absolutely accidental library director.
Right around the time I started they also opened our county museum, which is the upstairs of my building.
And so I am the defactor director of the museum too.
They are all volunteer staffed.
So most of my work for the museum is outside of my library hours, also on a volunteer basis.
In 2018 I was lucky enough to be selected for the Arkansas library association sponsorship.
As an emerging Leer and I got to work on this great project for the association of school  librarians, but it's really applicable to Public Libraries too and I'm going to talk about that lay effort.
I'm also a YALSA volunteer, I did two years on the quick pic for reluctant readers and this year I'm serving on the great graphic novels for teens list.
I also founded the Tiny Library Think Tank, which is why you was awarded a mover and shaker award.
And that think tank is something that I'm going to talk a whole lot about in a minute.
Here is where my library is located in Arkansas.
We have technically a two-branch system, our main library here with the county museum upstairs and Hampton, and a tiny 400 square foot satellite branch about 20 miles to the north of Hampton.
And it's only open 12 hours a week.
We're only open 20 hours a week.
Our county is the least populated county in the state.
But it covers over 700 square miles.
We have one stop light and one K-12 school in our whole county.
And I know that many of you are in similar situations.
We have no grocery stores, we have three restaurants, but no recreational options for anyone.
Maybe there are a couple playgrounds in the county, but that's about it.
So when I took over, I figured you gotta start somewhere.
When I started there was no teen collection, there was no shelf list or even an Xcel list of the books in the library, much less a digital catalog.
The physical card catalog hadn't been updated in about 20 years.
There were also absolutely no written policies other than the legally mandated computer use policy, but it hadn't been updated since 2002.
So as you can imagine, it was incredibly out of date.
The library had never had a website.
It didn't have its hours listed online, you couldn't find it on -- if you did a Google search, you couldn't find our librarian.
And there was no summer reading program.
So those were some of my very first priorities.
We created a full set of written policies, and got them approved by my board, I started our website, which is just a word press website, it's very simple, and I don't update it nearly as often as I need to, but at least if you Google search for us you can find us now.
We're also about 65% done with our retroactive automation.
I've been working on that for four years.
Just sort of flip a card of books into the catalog in between other tasks, and it's been a huge undertaking, and I will be very glad when it's finally finished.
So this is some of our results since I took over in 2015.
You can see our youth, just use of the library in general has really increased.
It's almost doubled for both general visits and for computer use.
Adult materials went up and has stayed level, and then youth materials, you see it dropped off this year, but we are pretty sure that that is because we didn't do as good of a job as we should have of keeping a hand tally of books that checked out during summer reading.
Between the catalog and things that still check out by date stamp and card, we keep a tally record, so we're pretty sure that's what happened there.
We also did not have our usual school visits in the fall.
And so that may be contributing to that lower use circulation.
This is our summer reading records for the past few years.
And I'm going to talk a lot more about how I decided what to do for summer reading and why I think that has influenced this huge jump in participation, particularly at the activities.
So a few months ago when I was applying for direct state aid, which we were denied due to our very low county [indiscernible] I was told if the community doesn't support the librarian, then why should the state support the librarian?
But I think that's backwards.
I think if the librarian isn't and hasn't been for decades really supporting its community well, then how is the community supposed to know why they should support the librarian?
It's my job, it's the library's job to find ways to support the community first, and that community support, including the financial support, will absolutely follow.
When I talk to people about high library and my job, and some of the challenges that we face, so often the response that I get is, well just find a new job.
Why don't you move?
Why don't you work for a larger system?
Which would make financial sense, but that would also totally negate the fact that my community would still be left with inadequate library services.
And on top of that, as I'm sure many of you know, that's not always possible.
I am here because this is where my family is, and I'm here because this is where my family farm is, and I can't just leave those responsibilities.
So we all are where we are for a reason.
And you think even small communities, especially small communities like ours, deserve functional, thriving libraries.
I don't like the idea that you need to have money to be worthy of receiving more money.
Small and rural libraries account for 80 PCPL 5% of all public libraries in the U.S., and we serve over 46 million people.
And yet, so much of the professional development that I encounter everywhere is targeted at librarians in much larger systems than mine.
And I was excited when I discovered A rsm ssm L, and it's more focused on small and rural libraries than, say, ALA in general, but even the size of libraries that you see in ARSL are much larger than mine and many of yours, I'm sure.
So rural and small are relative terms.
I'm sure many of you serve populations that are way fewer than 25,000 people, but that's the cutoff for a small library.
Most small libraries are defined as having a service population around 10,000, but many of you serve even smaller populations than that too.
I am also willing to bet that many of you are much further than 25 miles from the nearest urban  area.
We're an hour and a half from the nearest thing that could even be remotely considered urban.
And so -- but that's the cut-offer rural, is 25 miles.
So a tiny library is something even different than a small and rural library to me.
When I started, I would ask a lot of questions on the big ALA, then it was the ALA think tank on Facebook, now I think it's library think tank.
I found myself repeating this explanation over and over.
I can't just ask Hr.
I am Hr.
I can't just ask my billing department, I am the billing department.
So I kept getting useful responses from the same few people on Facebook, and so that led me to found the Tiny Library Think Tank.
Which started off just as a place where those people who were interested in helping me learn how to navigate what I was doing here and how I was going to make any sort of impact could help me without us all having to reexplain it oaf and oaf and over to other people.
Since then, the think tank has grown -- I checked right before this webinar started and we're up to 639 members now.
Which is really exciting.
It's become a resource for everybody who works in tiny libraries.
And anyone who has any connection to tiny libraries can come there and get help, and just in the last couple weeks some of the topics that we have talked about have been staff evaluations, when you have just the director and maybe one other employee, volunteer policies, accessibility issues, budgeting for building emergencies, after-school programming for children, how to get snacks for the least amount of money and resources for people and organizations who may be willing to donate snacks.
And then collaboration opportunities with local schools.
I have Milo go here too, so when I started we didn't have a logo at all.
But I thought that was an important piece of branding for me when I started trying to market my library to the community, and I had an idea for what I wanted.
And someone in the think tank actually -- he's a librarian in South Carolina, and it took him about 15 minutes to take my idea and create this logo from it.
And we use it on everything now.
We love it.
So when you talk to anybody who works in a tiny library, we all have these challenges is how I used to think about them.
They're not different challenges than larger libraries have, but the difference is that we don't have multiple departments of home to can help us focus on these challenges.
They're not spread out amongst people.
They're all on pretty much one person, and it kind of made my head spin when I first started thinking about all of these different challenges that I'm facing that really I'm sort of alone in dealing with.
But if you can think about things from the right angle, then all these challenges become opportunities.
Because we get to engage on a really deep level with our communities, in a way that librarians in more urban settings don't have the opportunity to do.
We get to create really deep and lasting relationships with our patrons and our stakeholders, and we can leverage support and create stakeholder buy-in in a personal way that isn't always possible in a alarmer system.
I -- a larger system.
That's one of the way tiny libraries are in a really unique position to help their communities, because I don't have to go ask anyone to answer a question.
All of that information resides with me.
So -- and we're also doing all this with a minuscule staff, one or two people for most of us, I have one tech that works with me, and I don't have an office.
I have the front desk, the circulation desk and I have a table at the back of the library, but I am available to the public, if the building is open, I am available.
And that means I don't have a door that I can close to plan and work on things and really think.
I am libel to be interrupted at any minute.
Which is a challenge, but it's also an opportunity.
Because it means that my community sees me as always available to them.
So who are your stakeholders?
When you think about the stakeholders for your library, who comes to mind?
This to me is one of the very first steps in changing these challenges into opportunities.
I really am taking advantage of your ability to assess the community's needs from inside the community.
So other than your patrons, who are the stakeholders in your library?
Go ahead and answer in the chat.
Your staff, yep.
The local school.
Absolutely.
Everyone.
Everyone in your community, right?
Your board, 84 your volunteers, taxpayers.
Awesome.
Local government, that's a good one.
Right.
The children in the community.
Yep.
All of these people are your stakeholders.
I went to ripple, the research institute for Public Libraries in Atlanta in 2018, and one of the things I heard there that has stuck with me was that you're a stake hold -- a stakeholder is anyone in your community who can prop you up, like a stake through a tent, who can help you make a strong foundation, or anyone who can stab you through the heart with that stake.
And those people are not always your library users.
They don't always even know what you're doing.
But they can have an influential opinion about your library and its resources and its services.
So I really want to encourage you to think very broadly about who your stakeholders might be, and create a list, and not just a list like we've just created here, a generic list of types of people, but a specific list.
Like, my county judge is Floyd Knut.
My board members and here are their names, my staff, and here are their names.
Use actual names, not just titles.
And then try to map your personal connections to the personal connections of those people.
Like, my tech, Jamie, has connections to people who are stakeholders, especially who are small business owners or leaders of other organizations in the community that I don't have a personal connection to.
And so I can leverage her connection to get me in the door to talk to those people.
So after you've made this list and you know who your stakeholders are, you're going to start  methodically working through it.
You're going to set up appointments to talk to these people.
Create a document of notes, or get a notebook, I do everything written by hand because I work better that way.
And so what you're wanting to figure out is who are these people and what are their perceptions, not of the library, but of the community.
So make appointments and go talk to these people, listen to their concerns, and take good notes, and then later you go back and try and figure out where the library's services can dovetail in with what they see as community needs.
People don't always know what a library is capable of doing.
So if you go to them and say, what can the library do to help?
They don't know.
Because they don't know what you can do.
So this is the way I like to frame this question.
What do you think are the major issues facing our community?
And let them talk.
And take notes.
And don't foal like you can only use this approach with adult stakeholders.
A lot of times children and particularly the tweens and teens in your community have a really great perspective on what is going on, and they are going to be your future taxpayers.
In small communities like ours, people don't often leave.
So the children and the teenagers that you have now will be the adults in your community in another five years, 10 years at the most.
And so if you can make sure that you are tackling the things that they see as important, then you're setting yourself up to have a really good relationship.
So an example of how this works for us, I had some of these conversations when I first started with the lions club, and the Hampton business owners association, and the county government.
And I just said, so what do you think are the biggest problems that we have here in Calhoun county?
One answer I got over and over is that kids are bored in the summer.
Kids don't have anything to do in the summer.
They just sit around and get into trouble, and they back slide so far academically.
And they're bored.
Basically.
So we sort of changed our summer reading focus from the first year where we had 53 kids who signed up, to last year, when we had 350 something, 375 kids who participated.
And we still do, there's still a large reading component of what we do, but the vast majority of our efforts are focused on activities.
Two, usually three times a week we have something for them to do here at the library, whether it's a movie with snacks, or craft, or just a day where I pull out all of the board games and they play board games or we pull out the giant box of sidewalk chalk and they decorate my sidewalk and my parking lot out back.
It's the activities.
That were the key there.
Another common response that I got when I had that conversation with people was that nothing here is open on the weekends.
None of the shops are open on the weekends, and it's just kind of -- there's nothing to do.
So that is a much larger undertaking than just reworking our summer reading program.
We have started to work on it.
I started this survey not long ago, trying to get some feedback about when people would most use the library on the weekends.
I don't have any budget to expand our hours or to add anything at the moment, but we are in the  planning stages of getting a measure on the ballot to increase our library tax back to its original 1,, which would make us eligible for that direct state aid too, and then I would be able to be open on the weekend.
Having this data and being able to show how often people are -- that I'm sure people would use the library if we had particular weekend hours, is going to help me a lot when I start having those conversations with people about why they should vote for a tax increase.
There's a question, how do you solicit survey responses.
I'm going to talk more about surveys in a minute, because there are a lot of advantages and disvadges, but for this particular survey we have an iPad set up next to our circulation desk and while I'm checking people's books out I hand them the iPad and say, hey, would you answer this really quick two-question survey?
And they tap a couple buttons, and then I have my survey response and they're ready to go.
So in our tiny community in our very rural remote areas, community needs and interests are vastly different than they are in larger areas.
They're also really specific to each particular area.
And nobody knows your community like you do.
So a really good youth advisory group is a way to keep you up to date on what the up and coming trends and fandoms are, and these things are at least here in my community, very different from what's happening on a national scale.
So when I first took over in -- not when I first took over, probably in 2016 there was a huge surge in interest in "The Hunger Games" books and "Game of Thrones."
And in Baton Rouge those things were old news, but not here, because things take longer to trickle down.
One great way to assess community needs and interests is a youth and teen advisory group and I use my teen volunteers as my teen advisory group.
They serve a dual purpose for me.
You can also create focus groups, and if do this you want to make sure that you use patrons and nonpatrons in your focus groups.
You can also have community meetings, and then you survey.
Another question about the survey on weekend hours, yes, it only consults current library users.
That's one of the major disadvantages of a survey like this.
I have not found a way to survey nonusers yet.
I need to go out into the community and other areas to do that.
But that's just something that I haven't made happen yet.
But I'm planning to.
And that segues perfectly into my next statement which is, my list of things I would like to do around here is so much longer than the list of things I am currently doing.
Or the list of things that I would like to do.
And much longer than the list of things I've done.
And the trick here is to prioritize and focus on implementing one thing at a time.
For me, at least really easy to get bogged down in oh, I want to do this and I want to do this and I want to do this, and at the end of the day I have just looked a the a surface level at 300 different things, but I haven't actually made any progress on getting any one of them done.
If you have a strategic plan, that's going to be one of your most useful resources for figuring out how to allocate things.
If you don't have one, then I recently learned they're not nearly as difficult to create as you might think.
I went to a state library workshop on strategic plans, and mine is two pages.
The first page is just our mission, vision, and value statements.
And those things inform everything else that's on the second page.
And the second page is three main areas of focus, and under each area of focus I have specific goals for the next three years outlined.
If you'd like to see that strategic plan, my contact info is at the end of the presentation and you can shoot me an email and I will get it to you.
So what is your most valuable and limited resource?
What do you guys think is your most limited resource?
Answer in the chat.
Yes.
Time.
Time is your most limited resource.
Because even if you had all the money in the world, that doesn't put more hours in your day.
And even if you had all the money in the world, in rural communities, you don't -- you're not going to be able to find a whole lot of staff people who already have the skills, and it takes time to teach people the skills.
So everything comes back to limited time.
So these are some of my favorite tips for time management.
A little bit of time spent planning saves me a lot of time spinning around in circles trying to figure out what I need to do next.
I create a really detailed schedule and plan and to-do list for every day.
And I acknowledge when I'm making my list, I'm not going to get all of these things done today, and that's okay.
My goal is never to finish my to-do list for the day.
It's just to set a list of priorities and intentions for when I finish this task I'm going to move to this one, and I don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about, what do I need to do next?
I keep all of this in one place.
A weekly to-do list works too.
I have -- it's not a bullet journal that anyone else would recognize as a bullet journal, it's just a notebook and when when I finish something I cross it off, when I think of something else that needs to be done I write it down.
And I keep it on my desk all the time.
And sometimes it gets buried and I have to dig it out.
But it's there.
Working in sprints and intervals is also something that helps me.
I have ADHD, and so I can like I said, I can do a surface a little bit of surface work on 25 different things in an hour, and actually get nowhere.
But if I set a timer for myself and I say, okay, I'm going to work for 30 minutes on this one thing, and I know that at some point a timer is going to go off and it's going to release me from my focus on that thing, that really helps me dive deeper into something.
And then I take a break.
And I allow myself to go outside, to go stand outside and take a breath, or to go have a random conversation with a patron about nothing, and then go back to my desk, set another timer, and do another sprint.
Another -- there's a comment, another director with ADHD.
In some ways I think it's a benefit in this job, where you're trying to juggle being literally everyone to everyone all the time.
Another thing about time management is somebody has already done everything you might think of  doing.
And this is why I love the tiny library think tank so much.
You don't have to spend time recreating something that you could just borrow from somebody else.
And there are 639 people in that group who are willing to share everything they've ever worked on with you.
You can always use the work of other librarians with credit.
But we are generous as a profession in terms of sharing our work with each other.
And a bonus of that is that it gives you professional interaction, which is a great way to avoid burnout.
Another way that I like to strategically manage my resources is what I call indirect financial assistance.
So I use partnerships with local schools, businesses, and organizations based on what those organizations are already doing.
Because of course money is a limited resource for all of us.
So think about what organizations are already doing in your community and how what you're doing can dovetail with their needs, so that not only are they fulfilling your needs, you're fulfilling theirs too.
Once you've laid that stakeholder ground work that we talked about earlier, then they already know that you're willing to listen to what they think is important, and that gives you a really great foundation for a relationship to be able to help them in turn.
Our local newspaper is one of my favorite resources for this.
In small communities like ours, local newspapers are usually struggling to find enough news to fill their pay -- ours comes out once a week, and a few weeks ago we laughed because the above the fold front page story was that they put up new light poles through town.
So that, you know, is a slow news week.
So we helped them out by filling up space, and they help us out by printing a library article, a museum article, and our new books list every month.
I mean, every week.
And I would give a lot of credit for that big jump in visits and circulation to the fact that we are on people's minds.
So I write articles about Arkansas, and national book news, national library news, our library's projects, our upcoming events, I talk about our library's history, if I attend a conference I write things about that, any presentations I do, like I'll write up an article about this presentation for next week.
They're usually short, less than 500 words, but they keep the library on the forefront of everyone's mind.
There's a question, how do you generally introduce yourself to stakeholders?
I'm pretty lucky here in that I don't really have to introduce myself to anybody.
I grew up here and I'm related to like, probably a third of the people in this county.
So they all know who I am.
I tell people all the time I get away with a lot of stuff that someone who is not from here would never get away with, because I'm a weir doe, but I'm their weir doe.
But I think the best way to introduce yourself is just to say, hi, I'm Allie, I'm the county librarian and I want to talk to you about what you think are the issues facing our community.
It's as simple as that.
And most people who really are higher level county stakeholders or city stakeholders or whatever your breakdown is, they remore than willing to talk about those kind of things.
Another great way to allocate resources is to provide programs that benefit the whole community at once.
So in 2017 we partnered with the local school and we purchased 1500 pairs of solar eclipse glasses.
We gave one pair to each student in the whole school, K-12, and the teachers and the staff.
So every single person at the school got a pair of solar glasses.
That was about 600 pairs, our school is very small.
We gave the rest away to community members here and we took some to a neighboring county too.
So this program cost the library $300, but we benefited well over a thousand people just in our own community with that $300.
And that's 20% of our entire county population with one program.
And then my tech and I went and watched the eclipse at the school with all the kids, they brought all the high schoolers out at one time, they were all out the whole hour or two for the  eclipse, and the elementary students came out in smaller rotations.
And that gave Jamie and I a great face time with the whole school at once.
And it was also really, really fun to watch the kids.
They were all amazed by this.
Another similar program that we did, we partnered with the Calhoun animal rescue effort, which is called CAR em, and I asked for donations of old T-shirts and we got a couple hundred old T-shirts.
We cut them into strips and had about 30 kids show up and they made toys for all the dogs currently in that rescue facility.
And that was three years ago, and CARE is still giving those toys to the dogs they rescue and adopt out.
And they also brought some puppies to the library and so we benefited a community organization by creating -- making these dog toys, and promoting what they do and they benefited us by bringing dogs to the library, which is a whole lot of fun.
And we had this great turnout at this program.
So I said that I was going to talk about surveys.
Surveys, I think are really important because it doesn't do us a lot of good to implement new programs that take a lot of time to prepare if we don't have any way to measure whether or not those programs are effective.
And, yes, we can say people are coming or people are not coming, but how do people feel about the program?
And is it something that people are going to continue to want to attend if we keep offering it?
So before you implement anything new, I would encourage you to think about the metrics that you'd like to collect, and the data you'd like to see, and what kind of information you want to get back that tells you, yes, this is worth what we're spending on it in terms of time, and money, right, or know we need to find a different way to spend our time.
So there are lots and lots of advantages and disadvantages to surveys in particular, but especially the in-house surveys.
So the good news about in-house surveys is that the data is great to show your stakeholders when you're trying to convince them that what you're doing is working.
They're great -- you can get great quotes for marketing materials and promotions.
We got a quote off a survey about how friendly and helpful the librarians always were.
And I used that quote any time I am going to talk to the court about why I need them to help me do whatever it is I want them to do.
I like to use those quotes for that.
And you can use this data to support decisions as long as you're aware that you're making decisions based on what your current patrons think.
Not that it is what everyone in the community thinks.
The bad news there is that the data is not very reliable.
It only works, the survey only works if I remember to hand the patrons the iPad as they're  checking out.
Which I don't always do.
There's also a questionable level of honesty, because they are standing right in front of me.
So are they really going to type in something about how I feel like that librarian didn't help me find what I needed, when I am standing right in front of them.
Even though technically the survey is anonymous, I feel like people are less likely to be totally honest in that situation.
And then again, only surveys current users when you use them in-house.
So this were some great ideas -- there were some great ideas in the chat about how to get these surveys out to other parts of your community, like using meals for wheestles, going to the school and having surveys done.
And there were a bunch more really great ideas that I'm going to go back through and write down when we're done.
So if you inherited a collection that's anything like mine, it mostly focused on nonwhite -- titles for nonwhite, nonstraight people are pretty much not in existence in your collections.
If you are at this point not actively working on rectifying that problem, you aren't serving your entire community.
And that's hard to hear, but true.
We are still excluding the people who have probably always been excluded from our library services, and collections if we're not actively intentionally trying to rectify those problems.
I could talk for a whole hour just on ways to increase your service to more marginalized parts of your population, but I'm going to try and keep this brief.
So your community is more diverse than it appears.
Always.
Just because you don't know that you have LGBT q people coming into your library, doesn't mean that you don't have those people.
You 100% certainly do.
Just because it may seem like everybody in your community is Christian, they're not.
In larger areas it's a lot easier I think to assume that there are all sorts of people coming into your library because there's a higher concentration of different types of people in larger communities.
And so you see them.
You recognize that you have this diverse griewnt.
But in rural areas, it can also really be dangerous to be openly LGBT Q.
But it is still our ethical object obligation to serve the entire community, which includes those people, whether or not they've Cho 10 to reveal their identity to you.
All of our citizens also, not just our marginalized citizens, but all of our citizens deserve collections and services that reflect the world around them accurately.
One way to make sure you're being equitable in terms of service is when you do book displays, don't just do displays by authors of color during black history month, and then not pay attention to the content of your displays the rest of the year.
You want to display those authors alongside your James Pattersons and your Robin Carrs all year  long.
Not that you shouldn't still do black history month displays, because you absolutely should also do those displays.
The same goes for LGBTQ.
Don't do displays of just those authors, because that can require people to out themselves and second of all, you entrenched this idea that some people are other.
And other than what, other than white, other than straight.
And I think the vast majority of us in librarianship are white.
And so it takes conscious effort on our part to make sure that when we're creating orders, when we are creating displays, that we're making sure we're including things from all types of people.
So my emerging leaders project touched on this a lot, and while it does focus specifically on LGBTQ materials, there's a lot of stuff in here that really helps with increasing diversity in your libraries, services collections and programs, all types of diversity.
So in order to try to offset the poor collection development of years past, set yourself ordering guidelines.
Make sure a percentage of every order is by authors of color, by LGBTQ authors.
Sometimes that means looking far outside of your normal channels, like baker and Taylor does not always have enough of those kind es of books for me.
So I go to other sources to order them.
I've used amazon, publishing websites for small publishers, I use anything I can get my hands on and I make sure -- I shoot for 50%.
I try to make 50% of the things I order be from not white and/or not straight authors.
One thing, if you do one thing after this webinar, I hope that the thing you do is examine your collection development policy and make sure that it includes selection aids that are specifically focused on marginalized communities.
Make sure that you have the literary awards listed as an award that qualifies books to be purchased for your library, because if you end up facing a question or a challenge about a title, having those things listed in your collection development policy gives you a really strong foundation for making sure that they remain included in your collection.
This resource guide, there's a link to it -- they just posted it up thread in the chat a little  ways.
It is an almost 60-page resource guide, and it comes with an info graphic and you can see a picture of it here.
This info graphic is perfect for handing to stakeholders who may not understand why this is so important.
And it's full of little statistics and quotes and bits of information that can really help people understand why we're putting this focus on increasing the diversity of our collections.
So now we're going to switch topics, volunteers.
Are they a help or a hassle?
This is actually a trick question.
They're both.
They're test test test source of some of my greatest headaches and also I would not make it without with them.
Getting the most out of my volunteers has been a lot of trial and effort -- trial and error, and I've learned that here are some of the things that I've learned work really well for us.
We need paperwork.
I have a written volunteer policy of what I expect from them and I require them to sign and date that and we have a separate privacy policy for patron protection, all of my volunteers have to sign and basically this tells them that you're going to treat what happens in the library like a doctor's office or like they have attorney-client privilege.
If you see someone you know in here, I don't care what they are doing, if I hear that you left the library and you said one word to anyone about who you saw here or what they were doing, you're done.
There's no warning, there's no second chances.
Period.
It's like the most important thing to me from a volunteer to understand.
I also keep an information form that just has emergency information, allergies, favorite movies, favorite books, goofy stuff like that for when I try to do things for them.
I'm really selective in who I allow to be volunteers and I do not allow them to just show up when they have time, or show up when they feel like it.
Can everyone still hear me?
>> Yes, we can.
>> Okay.
My computer said connecting.
I wasn't sure what that meant.
I make them have a specific permanent schedule.
So my teen volunteers come every Wednesday at 3:00.
And that never changes.
If they can't be here that's fine, they just let me know, I have a doctor's appointment or too much homework.
That's okay.
But it takes a lot of time for me to have tasks prepared for them, and so if people just drop in and they're like, I'm here to volunteer and I'm in the middle of something else, it's a waste of both my time and their time, because I really could have used that volunteer help but I can't necessarily stop what I'm doing to figure out something for them to do.
I don't that the moment require a background check for my volunteers.
Because I'm in the kind of community where everybody knows everybody.
But that's why I said I'm very selective, so I have had some people who wanted to volunteer as a part of a work release for parole, and there are some people that I would allow to do that, and there are some people that I probably wouldn't.
At this point we don't do the background checks because I just can't afford them.
Court-ordered community service is on a case-by-case basis, it depends on what the charges were, and whether or not we feel safe with it.
Really.
If they just moved to the area and we don't know their history, then I am probably going to be less likely, and that is -- it sounds unfair, and in some ways it probably is, but we haven't really run into that yet, because I don't really have any adult volunteers right now.
We do teen volunteers, and so we haven't run into that yet.
Creating a form for volunteers with expectations is one of the best things I ever did.
And yes, absolutely.
Me too.
And I like -- I have had to let a couple volunteers go, teen volunteers and I like having that paperwork I can point to and say, see, you signed this.
That says this is what you promised to do.
And this is what you promised not to do.
And these things keep happening and I just don't have the time to deal with it.
My teen volunteers work for snacks, free books, recommendation letters for college, and jobs.
Volunteer hours for school organizations that they need me to sign off on anything like that.
I absolutely will.
And they also work for respect and trust.
I treat them like adults as long as they manage to accomplish the things I ask them to do and they kind of have leave to do that.
I keep a pantry full of snacks and they know that they are welcome to anything up there at any time.
And they come in and they have a few minutes to calm down after school, and get a snack, and relax for a minute, and then I usually have a list and I say, okay, here's your list.
Pick something to do.
And I don't care if you work in groups, or if each one of you wants to tackle something different, however you want to do it, here's what needs to be done.
This picture is our county festival parade float from last year.
That they helped me create and it is all -- we spent $10 on the bales of hay, and that's the only thing we had to spend.
Everything else was found, cardboard and craft supplies that we already had.
We do the parade mostly because they like to do the parade.
So I make them do a lot of the work to actually do the parade.
Some tips is requiring the set schedule, notice of absence, because if they're supposed to be here with me and they don't show up, I start to worry.
So I make them let me know if they're not going to be here, even if it's just a text message that says I have a test tomorrow, I can't come today.
That's fine.
Train and practice.
When they all -- when a new volunteer starts, I give them a cart, that is all different types of books, usually it's just a card of recent returns and I have them put it in order.
Separate out children's from teens, from adults stuff, separate out fiction from nonfiction, put it in the right order.
And then I look at it and I help them figure out what they did wrong and what they did right, well before I would give them a cart of books and say, here.
These need to be put up.
And then giving them autonomy, letting them choose tasks from a list, they like that too.
Here are the things my teen volunteers do and have done in the past.
In the summer they help me a lot with planning and executing summer reading programs.
If there's prep work to be done for programs, they do a lot of that.
You saw the floated, we do the county fair parade and the Christmas parade.
They cover and process books, they've gotten really good at covering books pretty quickly.
And they do a great job because they're all sort of very meticulous.
They alpha ba ties, they shovel, they shift, they occasionally provide minor technical assistance to patrons.
If somebody has a question and aim on the other side of the library and it's a simple question, I can't get this to print, usually my teens can take two second es and say, Oaks here, do this and this and there it is.
They know what things they are allowed to do what things they are not allowed to do in terms of technical assistance.
So if it is something that's beyond a certain level, then they know just to come get me.
And then they assist with my summer reading activities and they are -- we have a library full of children, even when they're adults here, teenagers come in really handy in terms of keeping everybody in order.
I'm going to have to speedy up if we're going to get through test test test rest.
Social media for tiny libraries can be a serious time suck.
It's a time suck for me sometimes.
Choose one or two platforms that are most common in your community and come up with a plan for how you're going to use them.
Don't feel like you need to do all four of the major social media, we do Facebook be mostly with a little bit of Instagram.
But that automatically posts to our Facebook.
For us, most effective use of social media is our Facebook events.
Pretty much everything else goes ignored.
But events tend to get a lot of response.
And they get shared a lot too, which is great.
The scheduled post feature is cool, you can do on Mondays you can schedule two or three posts for the week and you don't have to think about it again.
And these are two really great resources for finding things to share with your social media groups.
I really love the library market on dropbox, they have funny stuff there.
So a growth mind-set is a term that my husband is a teacher and this is something that he learned about and I borrowed from his education professional development stuff.
Fixed mind-set and growth mind-set refer to underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence.
When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger.
So then they put in extra time and effort, which leads to a higher Elizabeth Laukea of cheesm, which is to say if you believe you can you have a better shot of doing it.
It's good for us to keep trying to learn every day.
So a groasdz mind-set would say, you must have worked very hard on this.
Versus a fixed mind-set which says you must be very smart.
A growth mind-set sort of helps us understand that our intelligence and talents can be developed, that we're not born as smart as we're ever going to be.
We can continue to grow, we can continue to learn new things and get better at what we're doing.
And it's been shown to increase self-esteem and people's ability to be resilient after failure, which leads to better overall outcomes.
On this next page this link here will take you to a quiz that can help you identify where your mind-set currently is, and how to advance from where you are to a more stronger growth  mind-set.
I'm going to talk about burnout in just a minute, but I think for me, at least, trying to stay focused on this really helps me avoid burnout.
Because I don't feel like each failure is the end of the world as much.
I can see it as a learning experience in a way that I wasn't really capable of doing before I  started thinking about things in these terms.
These are some of my favorite free professional development resources.
S almost J teen live and library con live are online virtual conferences.
And they provide like -- they have exhibits, you can win print arts, you get digitaways, you get to hear book talks by famous authors, and panels with awesome authors.
And it's free.
And you can do it from your desk.
So I will tune in to these all-take-away conferences and tune in when I can and if I have to walk away it's not a big deal.
And I get lots and lots of really great resources from these things too.
Booklist webinars, they're tree and they're on a wide variety of topics.
I did one in September about reaching reluctant readers and of course WebJunction which was created with small libraries in mind, so their webinars tend to be really apply dabble to people in our specific situations.
You can do anything but you cannot do everything.
I find it's hard to avoid burnout when you have to wear all the hats all the time and you can't drop everything and run away to the beach.
Because when my family, my parents both work in schools and my husband is also a teacher, so when my family is slowing down for their summer break, I'm ramping up into summer reading program.
And that gets relentless.
But here we are.
And so we all have to find ways to mitigate our stress enough to keep being effective at our jobs and enjoying our work.
It's important to me that I like to come to work every day.
And so I have to find ways to keep enjoying my job.
And here are some of the ways I've found really help me.
So being a librarian particularly in tiny libraries can be isolating and lonely.
There is one other person in my community and she works with me, who really understands how heavy this work can be sometimes.
Most people think my job must be so fun and I play with books all day and I get to read a lot.
But it is very heavy to be on the social front lines of the people who have the least in our communities, and we all are and should be that person.
So make sure you're engaging with other people in our profession as often as you can.
Take breaks, go outside, when you most team lying you cannot take a break, you cannot go outside, is the most important moment to do just that.
I straighten my work space on Mondays instead of on Fridays so on Fridays I'm always trying to tie up looseneds but on Monday morning I come in and I straighten everything up so I start from a place of having accomplished something that I can see a visible difference in.
And then I have a fresh space to keep going.
I like to keep my old to-do lists and calendars too so when I start feeling like I'm not getting anywhere, I can look back and say, okay, but look just at November of 2018, look how many things I actually got done.
And that makes me feel like even when I don't feel like I'm making progress, I am making a lot of progress.
This sounds counterintuitive, but the more I can take an emotional step back from my work at the end of the day, the more refreshed I am coming in the next morning.
So for a long time I felt like I was taking home a lot of the problems a lot of my problems face with me, and sometimes, some days it's easier to not do that than others, but the more I can back up and not take it home with me, the better I'm able to serve those same patrons and my other patrons every day.
Somebody said they clean their desk off every night.
I wish I was that person who could do that, but I just -- I'm not.
And I keep trying, but at this point Monday morning cleaning is as good as I can do.
I think everybody has a different schedule for that.
And I also suggest developing a little two-minute mediation practice.
There's lots of great YouTube videos that you can sync your breathing one.
My favorite starts in a straight line and builds up and collapses back down.
And you're just supposed to breathe along with it.
So a couple times a day when I feel myself spinning out, and doing that thing where I'm spinning in circles and not sure what I'm going to work on next or how much time I have to get this thing done, I will turn that on and I'll sit and stare at it for just four or five breaths and I'll say, okay.
Pull out the to-do list, let's look at how long we have, and figure out what comes next.
All right.
That was everything.
Thank you for having me, and I think we're out of time, but if I can answer any questions I would love to.
Feel free to email me or call me, or catch me on twitter or Facebook, any time.
And I am happy to help with anything I can.
>> Fantastic.
Thank you so much, Allie.
There were a few questions, I know there was a request if you are willing to share the volunteer documents that you use, and I can follow up with you and I'll get those posted to the event page.
And otherwise, I encourage people to reach out to Allie, but also visit her on the thoig on  Facebook.
I'm sure -- Tiny Library Think Tank on Facebook.
I'm sure the Michael Porter got boosted a also bit today, so we look forward to connecting there as well.
Thank you for being here, thank you so much Allie, thank you to our captioner, and a reminder that I'll follow up with you all later today with an email once the recording is available, and I also wanted to ask as you leave to take a moment, I'm going to send you to a short survey, we'd love your feedback, this session we'll share that with Allie and it also helps us guide our ongoing programming.
So thank you again, thank you all for the great work you're doing in your tiny libraries.
Thanks, Allie.
>> Thank you.