My name is Jennifer Peterson and I'm really excited to be here for today's session.
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We're thrilled to be able to collaborate with ARSL on this session.
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You receive the quarterly E! 
News letter, there's a new initiative, the ARSL Train series for you to connect with others in the field.
And we also want to point out I'm thrilled to be serving on the advisory committee for their new initiative outstanding in their field leadership Institute.
It's an opportunity for -- 
they're selecting folks to walk through a 18-month leadership institute and they've just opened up registration for that.
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And who knows where we'll be in October of this year.
But as it stands now, rrls  -- 
ARSL hopes to gather folks in Nevada.
Fingers crossed.
All right.
I'm going to go ahead and get our recording started for today's session.
I'm thrilled to welcome Lori Fisher to today's presentation.
She is the assistant state librarian and administrator of library operations at the New Hampshire State Library.
We're so thrilled to have you here.
Thank you so much for bringing your expertise to a WebJunction webinarwebinar.
>> Thank you.
I'm excited to be here.
I'd like to give a little background on why advocacy.
It's near and dear to my heart.
I've been here as the assistant state librarian here since May 2019.
Prior to that, I spent 11 years as the library director for the Baker Free Library in New Hampshire.
Prior to that I worked in the curatorial field in the museum world.
And also, that's one of the reasons that I got my MLS is I found a lot of museums had library and archival collections and their curators didn't have the expertise to deal with them in smaller institutions.
So I made my transition over to public libraries and quickly found it appealed to me being in a public library because I'm a life-long learner.
I am constantly learning.
And one of the major things that drove me towards advocacy is seeing the value of life-long learning in our communities come to life.
And that's one of the reasons I am doing this webinar today.
There are ways in which we can provide tools for library staff and library trustees to make their efforts more of a regular happening.
A lot of times we think of advocacy efforts when we have a funding crisis.
So these tools today are things you really need to use all the time.
And you can involve everybody.
That's the great thing about a lot of these tools.
So let's go into the agenda next.
If I remember how to move forward, there we go.
So our agenda, we're going to review what is library advocacy and then break that down into two different types of advocacy.
Proactive and reactive.
I want to say this right now and I will say this again later on when we get to this point.
This is not a good and bad sort of dichotomy here.
This is just two different types.
And there are reasons to define it that way and one is more efficient and effective than the other.
Doesn't mean the other one's bad.
But it does -- it's trying to get you to hone in on what actions you're taking and where they fit and is that really the most effective way for you to proceed?
Then we'll get into some of the tools.
We're going to cover outward facing tools and activities as well as inward-facing tools and activities.
I'll explain in a moment.
And lastly, we'll go over a list of actions that you could implement at your library.
And by list of actions, I wouldn't expect that you do all of them.
I'm expecting you would want to try at least one.
And we will have a Q&A and at the end if there's questions left over.
But we will be stopping and I'll ask along the way for Jen to check the chat and see if there are any questions that we can address right away.
So let's jump right into it.
What is library advocacy?
It is turning passive support into educated action.
It's turning the person who thinks, I like my library, I like to visit there.
Into someone who will say that at a board or committee meeting or will say that in a neighborhood gathering, pre-COVID, obviously, but hopefully we'll get back to that.
So you want to turn any thoughts about why they enjoy the library services, why they feel the library is necessary into action that influences other people to think differently or think in a more proactive way about the library.
So there are two ways to look at this.
We have reactive advocacy and that's responding to a crisis situation.
So I'd like to hear from you guys in the chat.
Can you give me examples of a reactive advocacy moment?
Have you had one in your library?
Let me give you two examples to sort of get your mind around this.
So one example is if your director calls the chair of the budget committee to discuss his or her comments about the library that were reflected in the latest budget committee meeting minutes.
Another example is a library trustee writing a letter to the editor of the local paper in response to a school board decision to remove a book from the school library.
So the commonality in those two examples is there was an action taken by someone outside of the library staff, the trustees, and then the library staff and trustees need to respond to it.
So Jen, do we have responses in the chat that you can share?
>> Yes.
So how about a 25% budget cut --
proposed budget cut?
>> If that came from someone outside, yeah.
I'd say you need reactive advocacy.
>> Someone said when they booked a presenter that they felt we needed to host, but who I knew was going to be extremely controversial in the community and among staff.
>> Okay, good.
>> Another, when a bond vote is lost by a small number.
Proposed policy changes, responding to something negative or misleading in the press.
>> That's a big one, yeah.
Excellent that someone put that in there.
>> Yeah.
How about when censorship legislation is being put through the state congress and librarians showed up with criticism of it.
>> Yes.
Reactive advocacy, yes.
>> Lots of budget cuts.
Ooh.
Council member objecting to weeding practices.
>> Yeah.
Reactive advocacy because you're looking into what they think weeding is.
These are great examples.
>> A couple more.
Anti-racism statements.
Natural disasters.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
Yes.
Library flooding.
Oh, this is interesting.
Smear campaign to force the failure of a referendum for a new library claiming the library lied to people about the cost.
>> That's a harsh one.
Well, you guys have a great grasp of what reactive advocacy is.
You're basically -- you're having to gear your staff and your trustees up to respond to a crisis situation.
So then let's contrast that with proactive advocacy.
So proactive advocacy, you're laying the groundwork and building the relationships for positive library support year round.
This is a non-crisis situation.
Go ahead and add in the chat, can you think of examples of proactive advocacy in your library?
So I'll give you examples for what I have here.
So for example, if a director asks a newly elected school board member to meet with them and one of the library trustees at the local high school cafe for an informal meeting to discuss the new members' priorities related to school issues, that's proactive advocacy.
They're reaching out to someone who is potentially new to community service to find out what their priorities are.
Another example is creating a rotating schedule for each library trustee to attend the monthly county supervisor's meeting via Zoom.
While that may not seem like you should class it as proactive, it's still proactive even if it's just an internal piece that you're doing to help widen the knowledge base of your trustees and make sure that they are ready to face a crisis situation.
So Jen, do we have some examples from the chat?
>> Yes, many, many examples coming through.
Lots related to engaging with legislators inviting them to a breakfast, taking them on a tour of the library.
Let's see.
Here we go.
Outreach events at the local bars.
Providing highlights of new strategic planning to the council.
Promoting library in community at events.
Inviting new council members to tour the library and learn about services.
So good council member orientation to the library.
Creating and promoting a new strategic plan.
>> These are some great examples.
>> Yeah.
Lots of -- it's a lot about conversations in here.
>> Yeah.
I think that's an extremely good point and I'm glad you noted that, Jen.
Because a lot of times our proactive advocacy is developing those relationships one on one or two on one.
You know, they're more personal.
Reactive advocacy tends -- it does have a one on one component sometimes.
But it often has a wider viewpoint because you're trying to convince a wider group of people because as we all know, when a crisis happens, ideas tend to snowball.
I refer back to the smear campaign thing somebody referenced.
That's an unfortunate thing that happens during crisis situations.
So proactive advocacy, you're laying that ground work with individuals or with smaller groups.
But it's also there are activities that you can do that are definitely part of proactive advocacy that are not necessarily reaching into the community.
Some of it is nuts and bolts of how you do things in your internal communications between trustees and staff.
So we will get into that.
So I do want to make sure that we all understand and are on the same page as far as focus.
Yes, we are talking about library advocacy.
But the term library advocacy does not mean that the focus is slowly on the library building, programs, staff, and resources.
Yeah, those are all what we as staff and trustees want to make sure we have to offer our community.
But really the community is the focus of library advocacy.
So at its most successful, library advocacy is at the heart of every effort.
That's key.
You'll see that as we go through the rest of this presentation.
So when I speak about inward-facing and outward-facing actions and activities, think about it as a circle.
So with no beginning and no end.
And there's flow and overlap between the library and the community.
And the inward-facing tools and outward-facing tools are both.
Many times they're both and you'll see that today.
Both time  -- types of tools are important.
A very narrow focused myopic view of libraries and their place in the community will only hinder and not help advocacy efforts.
Everything has to be put into the context of the community the library is in and the people it serves.
To learn more about inward-facing and outward-facing perspectives, I recommend you check out the Harwood Institute which I linked in the learner guide.
I'm sure many of you have heard of it.
They have a lot of great resources you can download and share with your trustees and staff.
There's exercises and things to hone in on people's understanding of what we mean when we say in-ward facing rather than outward-facing out towards the community.
Does anybody have any questions on that?
>> I haven't seen any questions yet.
>> All right.
I'll keep trucking along here.
So the first outward-facing idea we're going to talk about is can your library trustees or your staff easily name the top three to five issues facing your town, city, our county?
And can your library trustees or staff name any specific issues that other city, county, town departments are facing?
If the answer is no, you want to pay attention here because I'm going to give you some suggestions on how to move forward.
So again, going back, this is a real great topic to discuss reactive advocacy versus proactive advocacy.
So our example is how do you get your trustees or your staff to know what's going on in the community that the library is in?
And I say this knowing there are many communities where the trustees are all from that community.
But the library staff and the director are not from that community.
If that's the case where you're at, this is particularly important for you and your staff to know what's going on in the community the library is in.
One of the things you can do is look at a review of key governing body minutes for your community.
For New Hampshire given that we have a very strong town local form of government which means we have 234 public libraries.
One in each town.
And the majority of the libraries in New Hampshire, in those towns serve a population of less than 7500 people.
Where I was alibrary director for 11 years but Baker Free Library, we have a population of 8,000 people.
So we're talking small library.
So when you think about review of key governing body minutes in New Hampshire, you really are looking at in a town level probably your board of selectmen, your budget committee, and your school board.
So in other governing situations, it'll be slightly different.
City might be your city council.
The county might have different committees that reflect some of the areas that the library needs to interact with.
School board I think should always be in your review of any documents.
You need to know what's going on in your schools to know what's going on in your community.
So let's take a look at reactive.
So if you're being reactive, if you're responding to a crisis situation, one example might be that the trustees are reviewing the last six months of the minutes for the governing bodies in the community as the budget is being drafted.
Not a bad idea.
In fact, it's really not a bad idea.
Or your library trustees and I have a feeling this is more common than the other example telling the director to do this review and report back.
You know, not a bad thing.
At least the minutes are being reviewed and there's going to be some kind of summary and acknowledgment of what's going on in the community.
Why is this reactive?
Because oftentimes, reviewing this right before the budget, you're reacting to something outside.
Your budget draft is due and you're getting ready for a budget presentation and want to look like you know what's going on in the community.
If they do this review, oftentimes it's because there's some kind of presentation or meeting that's coming up.
And the trustees want to make sure they have the information needed so they look like they know what's going on in the community.
Now proactive, the library's key governing body minutes every month.
It's an assigned task rotated through all of the members.
And an individual member whose turn it is to review provides the summary to the board for discussion.
Why is this important?
So I did this at Baker Free Library and I'll tell you, it really transformed the discussions at the trustee meetings.
Because they really started to understand the library's place within the wider community concerns and more organic idea generation happened about how can the library help with this particular problem that's going on right now.
And it also put responsibilities on the library trustees to do their part.
You know, they were assigned.
It wasn't every month so with five trustees on the Baker Free Library board, it was every five months you'd get another turn and have to review the minutes and report back.
It was really good for them to get in the habit of relying on each other for that information.
And then when it came time for budget time, we really didn't have to do a lot of review or going back to say, hey.
I have no idea what's really going on in town.
They do know what's going on in town because they discuss it every month at a board meeting.
So again, I just want to make it clear I am not saying that having the library trustees ask the director to do this review and report back is bad.
It is not about it being bad.
What it is about is what is effective and efficient over time.
With proactive advocacy usually being the way to go because you are going to build the relationships, you're going to increase the dialogue, and you're going to increase the repetition of the type of knowledge and type of learning you want to see among the people who are the stakeholders of the library.
Let me pause for a minute.
Is there a question or any questions, Jen?
>> Yeah.
There's a really interesting question.
And I think this might help people think about the balance between the reactive and proactive and how actions can change into more proactive.
But the question is is all advocacy reactive in these coronavirus times?
>> That's a good question.
You could look at it in the wide scheme and say yes, but I say no.
To me, one big example of how the library profession did reactive advocacy was all of the transfer to online learning and online programming that we had to do.
And then all of the push for that to get that information out to try to get our communities to continue to interact with us.
You could see that as reactive.
But I've heard examples from other libraries of some proactive things.
One library director in a town in New Hampshire ended up becoming part of her emergency management team.
And it wasn't that she -- it was partially I guess you could say in reaction to COVID, but it was more that she recognized that the library needed to have a voice at the table when they were discussing how the overall town departments, all of them, were going to deal with certain situations.
So I think you can, yes.
I think you can initially have a reactive response and then move it to proactive because, you know, she's going to continue that relationship with the emergency management team.
She might even become, you know, more of an involved member as time goes on and more of a leader on that committee.
So those relationships she's building there, that's proactive.
So I hope that answers your question.
That was a really good one.
I appreciate it.
Okay.
Now let's go onto the next one.
Another outward-facing piece to think about is community governance.
Can your library trustees or staff list three main aspects of your community's governance structure or timeline?
You know, for example, during what time of year would the capital projects be decided?
Could your library trustees or staff answer that question?
And why the heck is that important?
Some of you may be thinking this is a detailed piece that really wouldn't be important.
I disagree.
And here's the reasons.
You generate more respect among your stakeholders by using common language.
Not having an idea of how your community governance structure works and the timeline in particular they work within is that common language.
And being able to say that and not have to say you don't know -- you know, you could say in general, like for example I know in the town of Beau, in general the budget committee will start meeting in August, around August/September.
Do I know the exact date?
No.
But I know the time of year and then we can look and say what do we need to do to prepare for that prior to August and September?
Another reason that this is important is it provides a mechanism for all of you -- 
directors, library trustees, community leaders, and staff -- 
to have commonality in your function.
And again, that strengthens your relationship.
You're all working to prepare budget items.
You're doing annual reports.
All of these are typical things you do within a year.
So understanding the timeline for that and how that works I think is critical to making sure that other people in the community who are outside of the library, maybe those even who don't understand or don't believe in the library's mission will at least have respect that you know how it works in town to try to get things done.
It's important to think about it that way.
So one other thing that I want to mention here.
Libraries and directors in particular, I'm talking to you.
Need an understanding of their library's community governance structure especially if they do not live in that community.
Do your own research, contribute to conversations from your perspective as a department head or however that works in your community during the trustee meeting so that your trustees can see that you are aware and understanding of how that particular community operates that the library is in.
So trustees and staff also need to make sure they know when important committee meetings are or important board meetings are so that the library doesn't schedule big events online or in person during those dates and times.
Everyone has to function within a community's budget schedule which is usually pretty rigid.
I know most of ours is set by the State Department Revenue Administration.
So think about that too.
That's a trickle-down effect.
So perhaps there's a way you could have a calendar and there is a calendar, a board calendar example we'll get to towards the end of the presentation.
Even for the staff, sharing with them a calendar that outlines the budget process for your community could have huge benefit for you in a lot of areas in the library.
Any questions on this?
>> No more questions, but I can attest to how many different various structures there are just in our work at WebJunction when we work with libraries around the country and world but certainly the country.
I wouldn't say there are many different governance structures as there are communities, but some days it feels that way.
>> I agree.
Some days it does feel that way.
As someone who was originally from New York State where county government was king.
And then moving to where town government is the strongest, it was a real big adjustment.
Because it's approached very differently in each place.
Neither is better than the other, it's just very different.
And so having that knowledge and, again, being able to generate that relationship and respect among any stakeholders.
It doesn't matter if they support the library or not.
But if you have that language and commonality, you will be able to build a relationship over time.
This isn't going to happen overnight, but it will happen if you make sure that those pieces are well known among your trustees and your staff.
So let's move onto the next one.
Outward-facing annual reports.
So is last year's annual report a monotonous black and white narrative with a table or three of stats thrown in?
I know some of you are laughing right now.
Is your PowerPoint presentation to your city council regarding the annual budget a bunch of slides with a lot of words?
I think a lot of us can answer yes to that.
So we're going to talk about things you should think about.
And this also, this annual report discussion also can refer to annual budget presentations where you use PowerPoint or you do a handout.
First of all, stats are important but you've got to be choosey.
If you need permission to not share all of your stats, you've got it.
There's the big red letters right there.
No one wants to see all of your stats.
So the thing you should think about when you're dealing with annual reports or you're dealing with annual budget presentations, think about what your top three to five service priorities are and how can you demonstrate those priorities?
Are there targeted stats?
Do you have visuals?
Do you have stories which we will get into in a little bit?
And how do these service priorities dove tail with town and community issues?
Those are the things to ask yourselves when you think about, how are we communicating our value outward through our annual report and our -- and/or our budget presentation?
So I have two slides as an example from a small library in New Hampshire.
It's Minot Sleeper Public Library.
Brittany Overton shared these with me in August.
She had a total of eight slides.
Eight.
That was it.
And these were the ones that had the most -- I guess the most impact, I felt, because it really showed timelinewise what happened.
Because this was the big question this year from a lot of governing boards and budget committees.
What did you do during the pandemic?
So you can see she used an illustration.
It told the timeline.
March through June 2020.
They only had remote services but that's what they were.
You see there are no numbers in here except for the dates.
But it does list out what kind of remote services they were offering. Now, if we go to the next one, they opened to the public with curbside service on June 10th.
So for her purposes, they did their budget presentation in the middle of August.
So she had stats through August 3rd.
You note she says remote services continued.
So that includes whatever was in the last slide, that's still happening.
And then with curbside service, this is what happened in that --
a little less than two-month time period.
Again, note.
There is not a lot of numbers in here, but it's a really good narrative that was easy to understand, had a visual.
I mean, this is pretty easy.
You think curbside service, they know they're talking about cars and picking up materials.
So this is the kind of thing I want you to start thinking about when you're thinking about your annual reports, your budget presentations.
Less text, targeted stats, visuals, and how are you relating this to your service priorities.
It's really clear and I'll go back one slide.
The service priorities during COVID when their library was shut down to the public was phone reference, tech help, online programming, and digital lending.
Those are the services their community needed.
I'm sure Brittany was very well ready if someone had a question about any specific stat.
She was ready but she didn't need to put it in there.
It kept it clean and it's easy to understand.
So any questions for me on this?
>> There's nothing specific so far.
>> Good.
Okay.
I do want to say this is not about -- let me back up.
Because some of you maybe like this guy in the slide going, oh, my God.
No, this is not about revamping your entire annual report.
Especially right now for those on a calendar year and you're putting your annual report together right now.
It means taking a look at a piece of it and figuring out how you could do it differently with less words, more visuals, and only maybe one stat.
That can be a challenge because as librarians our impulse is to share everything to convince people we know what we're doing.
That is not the way to people's hearts and minds.
It overwhelms them and they tune you out.
So start small.
This is a good exercise to do as a group.
Perhaps if one director or a trustee does a small section and shows it to the rest of the board, you could divide up the rest of the annual report sections among the trustees and have them come back with ideas.
Or if someone on your board has marketing skills, put them to use and have the board provide feedback.
Really the annual report is from the governing body as is the budget presentation most of the time.
So harness the skills and the people around you in the library staff, in the library trustees so you can have a collaborative effort that produces a product that not only gets the top priorities of the library across, but does so in a visual and appealing -- visually appealing, emotionally connected way that addresses the community as well.
So I would suggest that you try to think about it in small chunks.
You can't eat the whole elephant all at once.
All right.
Next one.
I just -- there we go.
Outward-facing annual reports continued.
This is the other piece that I love to share with people.
And I've been doing this ever since ALA did their advocacy boot camp at the New England Library Association Conference back in, oh, gosh.
I think it was 2017.
Stories are a super way to get across library value but in a way that has an emotional hook that helps people to remember it.
So one of the things that you can do is brainstorm with your staff for stories.
And we'll use a four-step outline that I will show you next.
And you'll incorporate that into either a written narrative or a verbal narrative.
Or you could do it as a visual in a report with a short caption.
So what is this stories thing for those who have not heard about it?
So it's a pretty simple story outline.
You use a real person.
You're changing their name.
You don't want to, you know, give people's names out.
Especially if you're using these locally for, say, a budget presentation.
You don't want to name names.
You're going to want to change names.
You present the person's problem.
This is not a library problem.
This is a person's problem.
And this is where the emotional hook for a story comes in.
Because the person who's hearing the story probably will be able to identify in some way with that person's problem.
So that gets them invested and interested in the story.
Then a library intervention is provided.
How did the library help this person?
Now, this does not mean the focus of this story shifts to focusing on the library and all they do.
No.
You're only focusing on how the library supported this person to help them solve their problem.
It's not the library solving the problem.
It is the library helping the person to solve the problem.
And then at the end, you provide one library-related fact or stat related to that problem or solution.
So there's a great video which is linked here on the slide but also is in the learner guide from ALA how to tell a library story.
For those of you who remember Jamie LaRue.
He is featured in that video.
It's a great way to get an outline of that -- of how the story works.
Also there's a good library journal from March 2020 about stats and stories and using them.
So let me give you an example that I used at a budget committee presentation that is a story from the Baker Free Library community.
I want to preface by saying this a pre-COVID story.
Okay?
So Dan and his wife Jen both work full-time and have three kids ages 8, 5, and 3.
They are looking forward to their first vacation as a family visiting Dan's brother and his family in Spain later this year.
To take this vacation, they have to get passports for the three kids.
Jen is dreading this.
She's spoken to a number of other parents who each ended up taking a day of vacation just to get the passports since both parents have to be there for children under 18.
The thought of sitting in a windowless, dreary post office in the city for hours with three young children was not appealing and also it was not appealing that she would have to -- she'd probably have to take time off from work to do so.
Jen's neighbor told her to check their local library since she heard they are now a passport acceptance agency.
She called and found out that the library took appointments on Saturdays so neither she nor her husband Dan would need to take vacation time from work.
They could alternate who was in the meeting room with the library staff passport agent while the other parent was in the children's area with the kids.
Dan and Jen were able to get all three kids' passport applications completed in just over an hour with the library staff person and their kids had a great time picking out materials to take home and playing with the puzzles and stuffed animals in the library's children area.
Dan said he had no idea that the library offered this type of service and he'd be telling all of their neighbors and friends.
In 2019 the Baker Free Library processed 297 new passports and brought in over $10,000 in passport fee revenues which underwrote the new digital service Hoopla for their community.
So you can see I used a -- I did the four steps.
I'll break it down here.
So use real people.
Dan and his wife Jen and their three kids.
Obviously names changed.
What is their problem?
They need to get passports for their kids but there's barriers.
They'd have to take off time from work.
They'd heard it takes an awful long time at the post office and all these kids are under the age of 9 which would mean entertaining them in a windowless room is not attractive to anybody.
The library intervention?
The library offers the passport service and not only do they offer it Monday through Friday but they offer it on Saturdays eliminating the need for them to take the vacation day.
They had a place where the kids could play and be amused and also learn while each parent sort of took turns signing papers with the particular child whose passport they were working on.
And they got it all done within an hour.
It didn't take much time.
So, you know, this is more of a verbal.
I want to point that out.
This is a verbal story I told.
It was not a story that I put into writing to pass out to the budget committee.
But this was the firs time the budget committee had really heard -- I used at time the budget committee had really heard -- I used a second story as well.
Heard about how community members were impacted by some of the services the library was providing.
And I still to this day have people who were on the budget committee or in that meeting saying, I remember when you told that passport story and about the three kids needing the passports.
So, you know, yes.
Do we want to if you're going to do this in a written form?
You're going to want to be briefer.
But in a narrative form, you know, you can definitely give some of the details.
But make sure they're really relevant.
You don't want to go too overboard and describe what Jen's wearing.
You don't want to describe the behavior of the children.
You want to keep it to the facts, but you're keeping that emotional hook there.
In this story in particular, we addressed what the questions were and the problems were for the participants and how that was affecting their quality of life, basically.
So Jen, are there any questions about stories for me before I move onto documenting stories?
>> Well, you answered the question that came up in terms of knowing that your goal is to keep text to a minimum.
So where do the stories come into a report if you're keeping it visual and brief.
But you just addressed that.
I don't know if there's -- I think it sounds like it depends on where the reports are being presented and if there are opportunities to elaborate or bring stories in that way.
>> Yes.
I would agree with you 100%.
You can also use some visuals with stories if you're putting them into a narrative form -- or into a written form instead of a narrative form.
I personally prefer the narrative form of story use because I feel like I like to have that one-on-one or one-on-a-couple situation and sharing a library story that way where you're in a small group is so effective.
It really engages with their audience.
You can use them in a written form.
You can also provide them in a written form for your staff or trustees just so they have the outline of it.
And then they put it into their own words.
So that's sort of the next piece I would suggest is that one story should be shared at every staff meeting and every trustee meeting at least verbally.
They don't need to go away with something that's written they can then review.
But starting the process of getting them to think about the library's value in terms of sharing stories from people's experiences in their community is huge.
And that is a skill that can only be built over time.
Also writing out one story for each meeting so each goes away with one is lovely.
But start small, guys.
You don't have to jump into this with both feet and hands and start drowning.
Start small and just start sharing at least every staff meeting and I would also suggest that you think about the practice points.
So one thing I want to point out is you might feel like you're shouting into the void a little bit when you start integrating some of this into your regular staff and trustee meetings.
You're not.
You're building a foundation for a different behavior and a different way of thinking.
Stories take practice.
They are very well worth it and usually can help you streamline your messaging.
And isn't that what we want to do?
We want to streamline our messaging when we're not in crisis.
So this is why stories are important to do as a regular activity in your meetings with trustees and with your staff.
Really the best stories come from your staff.
So be sure to include your pages.
Especially if you're a larger library.
I bet some of those staff have super stories and they would really help build a bridge not just between the staff and the trustees.
But then it's the staff and trustees and the community.
So once you get into the habit of sharing stories, your trustees will ask for them.
Mine started to.
In fact, I remember one meeting.
It was right before budget time when we had to present the budget and I had taken it off the agenda with the permission of the president of the board because the agenda was so overwhelming and two of the trustees said, wait.
We have to do our story.
So that's when you know you're having success is when they want to hear the stories.
Obviously they're seeing value in it in some way and they're remembering it.
So an emotionally appealing story has much more juice than impact about the statement about how you find a way to find a service that allows for digital music downloads by patrons.
That's what my story addressed.
We wanted to provide hoopla for the community because our physical CD music collection, it had dropped double digits two years in a row.
It wasn't being used.
We needed to faze it out.
But we didn't have extra money in the budget and there was no way to ask for it that particular year to start a new service.
So we started a new service, but in a different way that would fund a service that was needed by our community.
But see how emotionally appealing that story is compared to me just saying we funded our Hoopla service by putting in a passport acceptance program at our library.
Boring.
Nobody wants that.
All right.
Moving on from stories.
The next one inward-facing is board calendar.
Keeping your board and staff on the same page with what's coming up that's important for the library budget and governance, easy to do if you create a one-page calendar that's reviewed monthly.
So the link for this is in the learner's guide and I believe now in the chat.
Here's the top part of it.
It really is a table that I created out of a document sent to me by Diane Hathaway who was the director of Gostown Public Library.
I want to give credit where credit is due.
So it's a table where you'll have -- I used it where I have two months side-by-side so it's two columns with six months in each column.
And you're looking and listing what you have to deal with as a trustee group during that time period.
So for us, for example, if we look at January, there's a lot going on.
We always have our budget committee -- final budget committee meeting in January in the town of Beau.
We review our policy review dates for the year.
So we review policy.
We review the annual reports that have been drafted.
We talk about the filing period for any open town offices.
And we always put in there when the budget committee meeting is that we need to attend.
So also you'll see in this table under -- it says monitor SOU and BOS minutes.
Thap is what I talked about before which is the review of whatever the board and committeest is what I talked about before which is the review of whatever the board and committees that are important for your community.
SAU stands for school Administrative Unit.
BOS stands for board of Selectment.
And the trustee to do that that month was Christine and it also listed the monthly meeting.
So a calendar I find -- when we instituted this, it went a long way to getting staff and trustees on the same page on a regular basis.
The staff felt that they knew what was going on at the meeting in general and what would be discussed relative to things going on in town.
And the trustees had an easy thing to refer back to to know what was happening.
You could do this as a Google Doc.
It depends how you share it with your trustees.
I hope you take this idea and run with it because I found it to be a game changer for keeping everyone on the same page with timelines and what needs to happen when.
And really the why of it happening.
So I hope you all will use this.
I've had more libraries who I've shared this with just like, wow.
I wish we had done this years ago.
And the last piece that I'm going to share with you today that's an activity or a tool that you should think about using as far as proactive advocacy is elevator speeches.
So for example, if your library staff or trustees were asked to state the biggest challenge the library is facing right now, could they answer that question?
What I'm talking about here in an elevator speech is not necessarily your mission statement or your vision statement.
This is going to change.
The elevator speech that you use will change over time depending on what's going on and what your priorities are.
So an elevator speech can focus on any topic.
Whatever is the highest concern of the trustees at the moment.
It doesn't have to be about the vision or the mission of the library.
You need to keep it short.
One to two sentences with one statistic.
And just imagine if you start bringing this to them and working with them to develop -- 
you don't even have to call it an elevator speech.
You could call it a talking point.
The talking point piece will help keep everyone's messaging the same.
And if they get used to creating a talking point at their trustee meetings on a specific issue you know they're going to get questions on outside of the library, imagine how they will be during a crisis situation when they have to put into practice creating an elevator speech that addresses a really serious issue that has to be dealt with now.
So again, it's all about building up their skills and building up the idea that they need to work together as a team and be on messaging with each other at all times.
So let me give you an example.
So Baker Free Library's HVAC system used R-22 for coolant.
Which has been actively phased out of both production and distribution since 2010.
If proactive action is not taken to allocate capital moneys to upgrade for other coolant types, the cost for system repairs will likely double the annual budget for HVAC maintenance in 2020 due to the cost per gallon.
So this is rather short and it does have a lot of bigger words that probably I would revise it today to make the word choice a little simpler.
But it does give across the main ideas.
This was a big deal at the time and this was our top priority for trying to address how it would cost taxpayers more money if we didn't do something about it at that time.
So think about where you would want -- and I would be interested in suggestions in the chat box.
Can you brainstorm for a minute one or two issues that's facing your library that you can see developing an elevator speech would help you and your trustees to stay on messaging?
I'd love to hear some of your ideas in here.
Jen, do we have anybody contributing to chat at this point?
>> Someone said space issue.
>> Oh, yeah.
Space is a perennial one.
>> Staff forming a union.
>> Ooh, that's a really good one.
Because you want to be really deliberate with your word choice around that.
So that's a great example.
Keep going.
>> A leaky roof, needing a new roof.
>> Nice.
Yeah, we had that.
>> COVID policies.
>> Uh-huh.
Keep going.
>> Boiler on last legs.
>> Yep.
Been there were done that.
>> Bathroom repairs.
>> And they didn't teach any of this in library school, I want to point that out.
>> Fund raising for the library's anniversary, 60th anniversary.
>> Yes.
Yes.
>> New strategic plan.
>> Uh-huh.
>> Unsafe gazebo on property.
>> That's a really good one.
>> Shelving, room rental, and computer policies.
All policy related.
>> I would split those up.
If I was doing elevator speeches and they were separate sort of issues with those, you'd want one for each.
>> Let's see, new website.
New need for -- or a need for a new book drop.
Air conditioning issues.
Second on the AC issues especially with mold.
>> Yep.
Totally.
Those are all great.
So you can see doing a short -- 
like I said, you can call it an elevator speech.
You can call it a topic talk.
Whatever you want to do.
But keep it -- I'll go back to that slide just so you can short one to two sentences.
One statistic.
That's something you can write up once you develop it with your staff and trustees and all of you receive a written copy of it so you can then -- you're going to want to encourage people to put it in their own words, but you're going to want to encourage them to do it in that format where it's short one two to sentences with one statistic.
So that keeps everybody on message.
And that's -- you want all your people to be on message.
And so that's an easy thing that you could do if you're facing an issue that you want to make sure that whatever people are saying -- because you know how this works.
People get asked at the grocery store, hey, you're a library trustees.
What about that gazebo that's, like, falling down on your property?
Are you going to do something about that?
It's a liability issue.
Then your trustee is ready or staff person is ready.
Speaking from a small library perspective, it's vital.
I think this is very appropriate for larger libraries, too, because you're going to get these questions.
You're out in your community.
And it's a bigger city, so you just never know when you're going to get those questions.
So quickly to finish up, I want to just go over a quick list of potential actions you might want to consider to implement.
So you could implement a monthly library trustee review in reporting back to their colleagues on any governance minutes that are important to keep track of for community priorities.
You could incorporate a monthly library staff review on those governance minutes as well.
And I think that's highly useful particularly for staff who don't work in the community.
You can create an annual library trustee calendar that includes important dates for governance, updated annually, and is reviewed at each trustee meeting.
You could also share at least one library story verbally at each staff and trustee meeting a month.
Start off slow and maybe it's just you as director or you as a manager in the library sharing that story.
But if you show how easy it is to create it using that four-step technique, you can -- 
others will join in.
And then they'll have fun sharing things with each other like that.
Then they'll try to one up each other.
I got a better story than you this month.
So that's what you want.
Write down and share at least one library story at staff and trustee meetings.
And think about adjusting one piece -- not the whole thing -- 
one piece of the library's annual report or budget presentation to reflect a community impact focus with very select, choosey library statistics that dovetail with the priorities.
I've had a good time talking about this today and I appreciate all the participation.
You guys had great ideas.
Are there any further questions for me?
Because I think we're about out of time.
>> Yeah, we are.
A couple things.
I posted an additional sort of story generation or elevator speech exercise.
The 27-9-3 method.
So be sure to check that out.
And somebody early on when we were talking about -- when you were talking about the annual report from the library that somebody said talking about what you did during COVID is different than saying it met community needs really.
I feel like libraries should be talking more about how libraries are meeting needs around economic recovery, community wellness, et cetera.
So I think that brings up a great point that as things change in our experience, those are the stories we need to latch onto.
How are your communities getting support with economic issues or job seeking or health?
So make sure that those are part of your stories that you're collecting from staff and trustees as well.
>> Yeah.
I think we're in that overlap period right now.
We're still in the pandemic, but we are focusing on the next stage where we're going to try to get back to some of the activities and things that we did pre-pandemic.
So there's overlap there.
And I think it's important to remember that one of the languaging pieces that really struck me as we went into the pandemic was there was a lot of people saying, oh, the libraries are closed.
They're not doing anything or they're offering fewer services.
No.
It's not about fewer services.
Remove that verb from your -- or adverb from your sentence.
You're offering services in a different way.
And that is super important.
So think about your language as you're doing your advocacy, as you're writing stories down, as you're developing elevator speeches.
You know, think about your language and really couch it in the active voice and what you're doing to meet community needs, to meet the needs of the people who use your library.
Sometimes it's people outside the community you're funded from.
So I guess that would be the last thing I would say on that.
>> Fantastic.
And I know you have one more contact slide.
We encourage you if you would like to reach out to Lori with additional questions or stories, I know she would love to hear from you.
Thank you so much, Lori.
Really inspirational steps to take.
I encourage you all to download the learner guide that's on the event page.
You can see that Lori's put those steps and questions into a format that you can bring to a group and work through together.
Be sure to follow up and we'll add any of the additional resources.
Thanks to the folks who shared their annual reports.
We're excited to share those as well.
I will send you all an email later today once the recording is posted and you'll all get a certificate some time early next week indicating your attendance.
And thank you to our captioner and thank you, all, for being here today.
And Lori, thank you so much for all the great work you do for New Hampshire libraries and for libraries around the country.
>> You are very welcome.
I was so happy to be here.
And please, anyone, if you have questions, feel free to reach out.
I'm more than happy to help and troubleshoot and give advice if I can.
And I love to see examples of stuff you're doing.
If you want to send me stuff, please do.
Thank you. 
>> All right.
Everyone have a fantastic rest of your week.