We welcome our facilitator and presenter for today, Lynn Williamson, who is the chief of the neighbohood library services division at the Free Library of Philadelphia. And she's been leading this project and we're so excited to be launching this series and working with you Lynn. I'm going to let you introduce our presenters and we'll move on into the presentation. Thank you JP  .Good afternoon, everyone.  Thank you for being with us today to talk about connecting with our communities. In a minute, I'm going to introduce Lisa-Jane Irwin and Tierre Graves, but I first want to go through some content that we have prepared for the session today. This webinar is meant to give a taste of the curriculum that the Free Library of Philadelphia has been developing for the past 3 years, with the support of an IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant, and together with 7 library partners across the US and Canada.
Previous community engagement training curricula were most often designed for administrators or expensive training sessions.  We put together this curriculum with the gracious support of IMLS with front line library staff in mind and it will be freely available to all libraries by mid to late July. This curriculum is designed to be accessible to all library workers and is adaptable for board members, volunteers or friends. We have tested and piloted it with 300 free library staff members as well as staff members from our partner libraries. It includes four workshops of four hours each and is adaptable to the online training environment. But our goal here is to give an overview and share the most well received parts of the first workshops called building connections. 
This is a SPAGS to reflect on your work toward the common goal of community engagement for your communities as defined by your communities we learned to value and hold up the skills and connections that our colleagues already have. If staff members and colleagues have expertise we encourage them as participants to share their expertise and experiences with the colleagues that are new to engagement. That way we all learn from each other. We use the workshop to examine the unique strengths that you possess that allow you to connect with your community. 
One thing I notice over and over again as the librarian and as a practitioner for the last 25 years is how often we morph the difference between community outreach and community engagement although I'm sure many of you have been involved in discussions or training about this before, it's really worth reinforcing as part of our practice together how these two concepts, although similar, are actually quite different. 
Community engagement is building awareness and sharing information about programs, resources and services with people in a community. It's a one way communication. You might consider it as public relations, even. Community engagement is building relationships between staff and surrounding communities to empower people to take ownership of their library and it's resources. It's an active partnership that serves the interest of local communities and the public good and it's a bit more revolutionary an outreach because if done well, engagement can level set power structures between the library and the community. What are some examples of engagement at your library? Please feel welcome to respond in the chat. I have been involved in 101 outreach assignments as I'm sure that many of you have to schools and daycares, senior centers, civic associations and community fairs all with the goal of telling people how fabulous my library is. What are some examples of participants with engagement from their libraries. 
>> I Seo gathering classes. 
Having a different table at events. Home delivery. Our lighthouse in the community engagement conversations. 
Student counsel where student counsels meet. A teen reading lounge with students. Staff serving on admissible committees in addition to partnering with organizations. And when we have a two-way discussion we're doing engagement and when we're having a conversation with a community representative that takes us out of our comfort zone to consider something we may have never done before, we might be doing engagement. I want to give you an overview. Participants work in groups and individually to consider their personal strengths and later to think about team rolls. Small groups discuss team dynamics using the model and explore different roles that each may have on a team and how their personal strengths and team rolls often intersect as well as when they do not. Participants restretch and which are the most uncomfortable. After that hard work, participants get a short break and then they come back together again to discuss what a community asset is. We moved to discovering assets in our communities and how to map them.
And finally, participants consider how to use team rolls and assets together to go out and network to our common goals.
Whether that's finding volunteers or contributors or something else, like a lot of the examples that we have just seen in the chat. The workshop ends with what we call a take and turn. To take what we talked about and then to turn it into action. And we will discuss it later in the workshop. After reflecting on personal strengths, purposes and roles, they craft and practice a networking introductions that highlights their work or the work of their library for the community that could be used to further connect. Ultimately participants gained a greater understanding of why it's important to step outside of the library and connect with the community at large and they also developed the tools and the motivation to take that action. 
So let's talk a little bit about the team goals. These preferences match with individuals with the strengths that go beyond their job tasks and responsibilities. And they are able to form stronger teams.
Team roles are the things that come easily to us and that we might feel most comfortable doing. They are ways that we can contribute to any group that we apart of. The model provides a framework to have a self-reflective discussion about this with participants. And sometimes they have the same comfort zone. 
What rolls apply to you? How do you demonstrate these roles? 
What about these roles appeal to you? You're welcome to mention it in the chat but you can also keep this just for self-reflection. What steps would you take and are there any mentors that would guide you toward strengthening this role? 
For myself I notice that I play different roles depending upon the group that I happen to be working with and it's helpful to take some time to consider these different roles and different environments and whether I fill them intentionally or unintentionally. In this section participants reflect on the idea that community assets are everywhere. They themselves are assets along with other individuals, institutions and physical resources. They are found in all places in differing ways and into varying degrees. 
They will consider ways to create an inventory for their library team. Community assets are individuals including their knowledge, skills, attitudes,al LENLTs, awareness, social connections, everything they embody and also community organizations on larger institutions that provide resources and services. 
Individuals can share their knowledge, their skills and their time. Community organizations are often local businesses, artistic organizations, advocacy groups, civic and faith based organizations and institutions have a larger reach, like local hospitals or hospital systems and police departments, fire departments, local school boards and school systems and private industry and of course parks and recreation departments. So what community assets come to mind for your library and as you think that over, which assets have been the most helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic. 
Please respond in the chat. 
>> Someone mentioned public health, looks like the school system and the parks and recreation department, food distribution sites and food pantries. More local hospital daycares, emergency management. 
>> Mutual assistance organizations including those that work in specific ethnic and immigrant populations, law DRO mats, I love it. Perfect. Bar association. Local law university. 
>> Lots of stuff. Here we're going to present a few examples of formats of asset maps created by librarians in Philadelphia after attending these workshops.
In the first example, a librarian created a city wide google map of resources for teens. The map is color coded by the type of resource. Education, housing, sports, arts, health and wellness and advocacy and civic engagement resources and on the next page there's an asset, the closest library, the region of the city and it's in other contact information. In contrast, the next example, the librarian or one of the librarians from walnut street west library created a google map of the assets closest to her neighborhood library which include parks, gardens, communities of faith, universities, hospitals, schools, nonprofit organizations and other organizations. So then in the second example we have one that's showing resources for the full community in a smaller geographic area. The librarian also detailed the asset and the neighborhood library. It hopes to show more about the relationships between the library and the organizations and assets. And we know that sometimes all of our community organizations don't always get along great and it's always helpful for us to know what those relationships are and it helps to capture organizations in the community and the relationships between and among them as a means for creating new contacts and connections. Assets are everywhere and they're not just physical and they're not only connected to money or fundfunding they're anything that helps you and your community. 
How might asset mapping be different in COVID or in post-COVID times? Please respond in the chat. At the free library up until recently, we had to rely on an organizations internet presence and personal phone calls during the pandemic.
But hopefully soon we'll be able to return to face to face meetings at some point this summer or early fall, even if they need to take place outside.
Well, somebody brought up a lot of assets simply disappeared. 
That's a really good point to note. Until some of those organizations are Mable up and and KWON NEKT as assets again, they may not be on the asset map but lots of virtual connections, somebody said they made an asset map for unemployment resources. 
That's a great way to focus on the need and then create the asset map. And it's important to know what our community landscape looks like now. And maybe there's been different kinds of organizations that have sprung up. 
>> Yeah. 
>> Okay. I would like to introduce my colleagues, Tierre Graves, digital resource specialist and Lisa-Jane Irwin from the homebound services of the central public services division here at the parkway central library. Both have had an interesting and unexpected journey in exploring and engaging assets in their own communities during COVID. So Tierre, tell us a little bit about the role of a digital resource specialist and tell us what how it came to be. 
>> Good afternoon. My job is to give resources and information about jobs and the community and getting some feedback from the community, like in person or tailored to what job they're looking for or go to my state council member or representatives office and get a contact from them and see if I can get some resources from them and also, basically, just the hot jobs came up about was they helped me with it. It was a vision of mine. Resource specialist, a Youtube page is there and you can check it out. 
I pull things from the web and Youtube and basically stuff from facebook or Instagram, social media networks also. That's where it came about and I'm so ecstatic about it. It's so great to see people comment about it and give me feedback also. 
Whatever context I had before, now I have more context through video and my e-mail address. So I'm hear for it. 
>> So Tierre, how are you or how did you make community connections during the pandemic?
What are other ways? 
>> I kept on going contact, e-mail through people that is kind of -- on my e-mail list and other ways I did and they were asking about manufacturing jobs and art and industry and technology and stuff like that. 
>> So you used the pandemic to increase your community of people that were exchanging information about the jobs that were available. 
>> For me, personally I love doing this. So when I see things, I'm like, okay. This is for this person. This is for this person, but in-turn, if I give the resources, they give me the effort. Let me talk to my friends and family members and see what is going on and they gave me a lot of information. So what is the most exciting thing and what advice would you give to someone at the outset? 
>> It's not just professional. 
Just helping people out and seeing the smiles on their faces. I help them with the basic skills. And that makes me proud inside. Not just professional but personally I love helping people out. That makes me engage with the community. 
>> So that's a great segway because you know, as a digital resource specialist you help our patrons learn digital skills and you were able to do that during the pandemic during the new call center and I'll pivot over to Lisa-Jane. Tell us about your role and about the free library call center. What needs was the call center meant to fill. 
>> So I am Lisa-Jane Irwin and I am head of the library's homebound and central senior services department and as the name implies, our senior services department targets patrons 55 and over and our tag line is we help you thrive at every age. We offer a variety of resources and programs on everything from maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle to book clubs and estate planning, large print materials, tech training, all of these things tailored to adults 55 and over and similarly to home bound services we also offer those to seniors and not exclusively. 
Homebound services make free delivery of library materials available to all who for whatever reason are unable to get to our libraries on a regular basis and I am honored to have been asked to head up the free library call center. 
And the homebound service was already a telephone based service so it made sense to target me and myself as people that are regularly accustomed to telephone intake and receiving calls to patrons via telephone which is considerably different than face to face service. So when the pandemic hit, the idea of the call center which had already been tossed always on the table at the library, it then got pushed to the forefront because the free library of Philadelphia, like I'm sure all the libraries participating today prides itself on being able to services that help to breech the digital divide and help combat digital exclusion. 
So we had tech labs and we have tutors and we have an extensive collection of digital material and when our buildings were open and people could come to the library readily, then we were doing what it is we set out to do which was to help people cross the divide, but when the pandemic hit and our buildings were forced closed, we were faced with what happens to the people that can't cross the divide. We have a very robust online presence so we weren't concerned about loss of services to people that were connected. 
We were concerned about loss of services to the unconnected. So the call center was the answer to that problem because by way of the call center, people can phone us and continue to place material orders. And people can phone us and find out how to connect by telephone to many of our programs that have a built in call-in feature. People can phone us and give us feedback about how they're are being impacted by the pandemic or we might be better able to serve them so the call center was specifically made available to people that couldn't cross the digital divide without our help, but it is also available to everyone. It's not limited to that population. That population was the driving force but it's available to all free library users so we get people that do have technology but they are particularly tech savvy. So they call the call center as well and connect with people like Tierre or those that work with him on our digital media platforms team or specifically get help with this iPad or this tablet that I never used before because I didn't need it when the world was functioning normally, but now that I'm stuck at home, now that my kids are at home and having to go to school online, we need help with managing this technology. So we have call lines dedicated to help with technology. 
>> Yeah, tell us a little bit about how the call center hosts two way communication or two-way engagement with patrons. So when they have limited opportunity to meet with us in person, the call center facilitates conversations between library users and library staff. And sometimes in very obvious ways like inviting or allowing callers to participate in surveys where they get to voice their concerns about services or make suggestions for improvement. We also engage callers around caller initiated feedback like when there's some confusion about a request or when a caller needs a special accommodation. 
All of those things are funneled through the call center staff and we are able then to pass that information along to the broader decision makers in the library to help them understand how what we think we are providing may or may not be what the patron is receiving. So it helps to clear things up. 
>> So that's some examples of caller feedback that have been incorporated into library services. I know, at one point, we were getting feedback from callers that our website wasn't as clear as it should be in terms of what kinds of library services we were offering at our 54 branches at any given time. 
>> Yes, we definitely did. We get feedback from simple things like broken links. A caller might call in to say I'm on your web page and this link is supposed to take me to overdrive services and that's not happening. And then we will also hit the link and would reach their online destination. We get information about -- we get feedback information and probably the most pressing feedback we got during the pandemic is information about materials posting as overdue when we had them quarantined. We were going to quarantine to keep materials and users safe and we would routinely say to callers, yes, we realize that, don't worry about it. We know it's a glitch kind of thing, but callers were persistent and us saying don't worry about it was not enough for them and we were able to relay that with the authorities within our system and so quarantine books no longer appear as overdue. I would say that's the biggest example of callers giving us feedback that they wanted something to change. Throughout the pandemic and it did change. 
>> Thank you. 
>> Thank thank you for sharing your experience and your insights. 
>> Something that we have been looking for is to hear a little bit more from you, the audience, and how you may have used COVID as a way to engage. Have used COVID as a way to engage with your community in new ways. And that may continue beyond the pandemic and while people are posting those, I wonder if you can just clarify there was a question about who the call -- 
who are the call center staff? 
Is that library staff? If so, how is that different than answering the phone at the service desk. Our library division. All different areas able to answer library calls from home while they were working from home. Did you want to say anything more about how that worked? We had different technologies and found the right match for that. 
>> Yes. So yeah, the call center actually became like the crux of the libraries work from home model and that's one way that it differs from regular. Our landlines are in our building and if you aren't in our buildings you cannot answer our landlines. So to voice over internet platform that allows for remote responding. And we work from various locations and also it differs because the call center kind of set up call gates to respond to the kinds of traffic we thought we would most get. Throughout the pandemic. 
And at the point you come in to receive assistance and now we set up a phone gate where people will talk you through how to use your digital media to connect with the library resources. So it's those kinds of things that's different than just answering. 
>> Thank you. JP, what do you see in the chat there. 
>> I want to encourage folks to know that the chat will be posted as a resource on the event page. There's lots of folks mentioning virtual programming and that that provides programming to folks that didn't normally physically come into the library. That's something that a lot of libraries are looking at keeping post pandemic. There's a lot of mention of going out into the community. The legal aid and the library go elsewhere. When that was necessary and other variations of providing reference and access points. A lot of pick up and and those folks again aren't coming into the library. Lots and lots of access to the technology, whether it's wifi outside of the building or circulating hotspots I know that we have seen lots of libraries doing things outside, whether it's story walks or gardens or partnering with the produce markets. 
>> We had put together on the next slide, a short list of things that we have seen, but I think that we have seen a lot of other ideas come through on the chat that are beyond some of the more common things and the things that we have seen a lot here in Philly. Thank you. This is such a fun environment. 
>> Your comments about gathering feedback in your phone conversations and I don't know that that's something that libraries have traditionally done after a reference interview so that was a really unique shift from -- impact from COVID that will help us gather more impact. Or gather more input, sorry. 
>> Yeah. It's so important to share these kinds of things and no matter how long we worked in the libraries or how new we are to continue to develop our skills and our ideas about how we can serve our patrons outright. So finally, we're going to move on to return to the idea, the take and turn that I mentioned previously. And getting to know your community for yourself. A lot of participants are already taking walks in their community and know their communities well. 
This is a curriculum that is designed to be used and library staff including friends and board members and so new staff or staff that haven't been included in these kinds of conversations before so that this will be there for you to share the ideas about engagement so that everybody can participate. And increase your ability to change and effect your communities. So so finally we'll go back to the take and turn and in the take and turn the participant creates a game plan for exploring the community around your library. While you're exploring, you're encouraged to introduce yourself to people and find out how they use your library and perhaps you visited a strip mall where people do their shopping or a local park that families use or go to frequently. Think of spaces in your community that will allow you to meet new people and a diverse array of people. Many times we assume that we know what our community wants based on our interactions inside our libraries, but we can increase and diversify our feedback by having these kinds of open ended conversations outside our libraries. There is no outcome that you're aiming for in your introductions other than to learn someone's name and make a personal connection with them about your library. This is linked from the web junction page from the webinar as well as several other helpful resources that we encourage you to check out. Also linked are the facilitator's guides for the team roles and the asset mapping portions of this workshop. The facilitators guide is just one portion of our curriculum. And we're just giving you a little snippet and reminding you that the full curriculum will be available later this summer. It may be comfortable for you or it may not be but what I do want to ask is -- next slide, in what ways do you challenge yourself? 
To meet new people and to make new connections for the benefit of your library. We're all at different skill levels and we all need to continue to challenge ourselves to do new things for engagement and I'd love to see some of the ways that you challenge yourself in the chat. 
>> So if you go to the event page, that's the spot where you can access the handouts. Webex makes it difficult to click through links. Let's see, talking to our patrons, reaching out to new community assets once a week. Becoming a part of a art group. That would create new connections. Talking people -- 
talking to people that come into the library, the farmer's market. 
>> Thinking about places where people gather that may not feel comfortable going into the library. You know, maybe in the immigrant communities, or in other communities of people that may not feel welcome. Chamber of commerce. 
>> And I think remembering too this learning really does focus on creating relationships and understanding the community and those first steps are really reaching out and learning about them and what they're doing. And this is what the library can do for you. So I love that. Wow, taking improv and public speaking classes. Definitely. 
>> That's what I want to do. 
>> And I love the roles. 
>> People were noting there was a blend of them and conversation to other staff and if you're alone in a library and you're bored or others in the community looking at those roles and together sort of identifying where maybe you overlapped and then finding those strengths, that is such a great place to start. 
>> Apartment complexes, getting to where people live. 
>> Apartment buildings. 
>> We are coming to the end. 
Thank you for joining us today. 
Before we go, I want to remind you that the skills for community centered libraries will be released later this summer like I just reminded you and if you'd like to be put on our mailing list about the curriculum release, please fill out the google form in the chat or it's also on the landing page for this webinar on the web junction website. We hope this webinar has encouraged you to learn more about skills for community centered libraries curriculum and to share these ideas with people that you work with around your library. And join us for our next webinar on implicit bias and communication.
That will be next month, Thursday July 8th from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. eastern and we are looking forward to seeing you on our next two webinars in the summer series. Thanks, everybody and thanks Tierre and Lisa-Jane for your help. 
>> Fantastic. We do have a little bit of time so if either Tierre or Lisa-Jane have additional thoughts that have come up that you'd like to share, feel free to share any additional thoughts. 
>> No, I just wanted to acknowledge that there's a lot of great ideas in the chat and it's good to see the ways that the libraries are engaging. One thing that stood out to me was the person that mentioned the group and I find myself thinking, wow. What department in our library could engage, you know tree tenders. 
>> We have some that are friends at Oak Lane Library that I happen to know. 
>> Okay. 
>> There's an asset map being created in real time. 
>> Yeah. Exactly. 
>> Yeah and there's a lot to the curriculum that you'll learn about later this summer and our goal is to give you some teasers and to hopefully give you a summer activity to sort of gradually move through the take and turn that we provided today, explore some of the other resources, and know that we'll be diving a little bit more deeply into these other two specific facets of the curriculum in July and August. 
So we're sort of unpacking some of the skills for community center libraries as we move through the summer. And then you'll learn more about how resources might be helpful to your organization in terms of additional training. There's a lot here but we're hopefully giving you some pieces to take you through the summer. 
>> Thank you. Absolutely. 
>> I don't see any other additional questions coming in. 
There's a lot to process and think through. So we will thank all of you who presented today and thank you especially to Tierre and Lisa-Jane. It was great to hear your experiences and perspectives and to Lynn for all of your great leadership and thank you to Kim for being here as well who has been working on the project. Thanks to our captioner and thanks to all of you who joined us today. We look forward to seeing you later on in the summer. I will send you all an e-mail later today when the session is posted. And I will also send you all a certificate for attending and that will come to your inbox later next week. And one more thing I will send you to a short survey as you leave here and again, Webex will take you to a dot. We'd love to get your feedback and it will help us guide the subsequent sessions and we'll provide that feedback to our presenters. So thank you for taking the time to do that as well. All right. We'll go ahead and send you off. Thank you again so much, everyone. And have a great rest of your week.