I'm excited to welcome back to WebJunction, now Dr. Audrey Barbakoff, comes as the community engagement and economic development manager in library outreach programs and services at the king county library system in Washington.

I'm going to pass it on over to you, and have you get us started, Audrey.

Welcome, and thanks so much for coming back.

>> Wonderful, thank you so much for having me, Jennifer.

I really enjoy MEES.

And I'm excited to talk about topic that is really important to me that has been important to libraries for a long time.

But has now been getting a lot of renewed attention.

It is an important moment for us to start bringing people along with the importance of digital equity, we have known for a long time.

So I'm going to talk to you today specifically about growing digital equity through community partnerships.

We're going to kick off by talking a little bit about what I mean when I say digital equity and some of the other lingo, jargony type of things you may hear.

Then I'll give an overview, making main points, but several different initiatives that relate to digital equity.

It's an hour webinar and I want to give you a broad view into multiple types of things.

We won't go into a lot of detail.

But I'm happy to talk with people if they wanted to contact me privately afterwards.

Happy to give you more, there's a lot more detail underlying all of these.

But the purpose of sharing them today, what I really want you to be able to walk away with, is the recognition that there are a lot of ways that you can do this in your community.

My goal today is less to sort of give you everything that you might need to go indepth with a single program, and more about helping you think about what might be right for your community and what might be workable in your library.

Really want the up and down buttons to work for changing slides and in Webex they do not.

I want to start by talking about digital equity.

And the language around that.

This framework comes from NDAA, national digital collusion alliance.

Check out their web PAM, there are links to a few of their documents and things on the website for this page, for this talk.

But they were really pioneers in this area.

And they are largely responsible for the digital navigator model you may be hearing about.

Then I'll talk a bit about today.

This is their definition of digital equity and digital inclusion.

So, they see digital equity as the goal, that is the future we envision together, where everyone has the connectivity, the broadband, the digital literacy, everyone has all of the elements they need to be able to fully participate in the digital aspects of society.

That is the vision that we hold.

That's a big vision, right?

There's a lot in that, a lot of pieces that can be overwhelming.

Digital inclusion is how we get there.

These are the sort of concrete steps that we can take to make a difference in moving ourselves and our communities towards a more digitally equitable world.

So they see digital inclusion as having three key pieces.

Those are affordable broadband, affordable devices, and digital literacy.

You're going to see these coming back as themes that the services and programs that I will describe to you today, all touch on at least one of these.

Frankly, they usually touch on all three.

That was a big piece of the vision from NDIA, these are part of the three-legged stool.

That previous efforts around digital equity, I'm not talking about in libraries on are just in libraries, have focused on one of these.

But people often need two or three of them simultaneously.

You give someone a device, but if they don't know how to use it, it's just a hunk of plastic.

If someone has a device and they know what to do with it, but they can't afford a decent internet connection, you still are cut off.

It's looking at all of these things holistically and thinking about how they fit into people's lives and how they're impacted by systems of power and oppression in our society.

That's kind of -- I mean that's high falutin, but it's good to start with the basic grounding, what are we trying to achieve.

We are doing this work knowing that we can't complete it, we can't fix it, there are a lot of things that are outside the scope of what a library might be able to change in the near term in our communities.

But we have a role to play.

And we can make a difference.

We can help our communities move towards this vision of a more digitally equitable world, empowering the folks in our communities via digital inclusion.

All right, so if you're sweating right now, a lot of times when I talk to people about any of these projects, their first thought -- first reaction is like, oh, gosh.

But I don't know how to do that.

I don't know how to code.

I don't do math.

I was an English major.

We can sort of have this gut reaction of fear.

Or of intimidation is maybe a better word.

Because if we go out and position ourselves and say, hey, we're going to answer your technology questions, people ask us questions we don't know the answer to.

Of course they will.

And so I want to start by kind of grounding us, by saying if people ask you questions you don't know the answer to, they will all the time. 

That's the fun of being a librarian.

People come up, what is this rare coin worth that I found in the attic.

Or what kind of dog breed is best for my family.

I mean people ask us all kinds of fascinating things.

We learn alongside them.

And we don't give them the answer, we empower them with the resources to find the answer or judge the answer for themselves.

When we talk about technology and technology related questions, and reference and programs and services, I just want you to hold in your heart that this is the same.

That this is what you do already, and you're great at it.

That there is no need for you to be the help desk or to know how to answer, like how to do some obscure thing about W. A piece of technology you've never seen before.

It's about using your librarian skills.

When we talk about technology we're providing access to information.

How do you -- what is the book, what's the website, what's the community organization, who's the person that can get you the information you need.

We give people access to stuff that they wouldn't otherwise have.

We have computers in our spaces and now we have maker spaces that we're giving people access to technology.

And the space to use it.

We're creating referrals to community resources so people can navigate what is available to them.

We provide a one-stop shop.

People when it comes to technology a lot of times people are hesitant to ask questions, they feel stupid.

They feel like everyone gets it but them.

And I think we've probably all had that experience W technology or something else.

So as with everything, the library provides a safe and welcoming place where someone can come up and ask a vulnerable question.

And we don't have to know the answer off the top of our heads to be able to provide the support, the acknowledgement that your question is valid.

And that we can learn together.

These are just the things you already do best.

This is no different from a medical question, legal question, a tax question.

It's okay that you're not a subject matter expert.

Neither are the folks you are talking to.

Your value is in being their learning partner.

So I hope that that allays some of the concerns that might come up before I dive into talking about specific programs.

If you find yourself having a reaction of but I don't know how to do that, that's great, that means you're in the right place that, means there's room for all of us to learn.

Another key piece of advice I'm going to give you, are you going to see all of the initiatives I talk about, have a partner engaged.

I think especially in a situation with technology or anywhere we don't have subject matter expertise.

It is fantastic to bring in partners.

That can help us understand what our role is, see our role more clearly and provide it more effectively.

I'll talk about the nature of the partnerships.

But broadly, partnerships are awesome.

Because they help you understand the community context and the aspirations.

Though it's not even just that, well I don't know about how to do tech help and they know how to do tech help.

The people who are already coming to them in their community, communities they themselves are part of, they have a really deep and nuanced understanding with those communities we may not.

They can really come in and say, we don't actually need this particular computer class you thought we needed.

What people really need is access to resources so that they can learn this themselves.

They can get online.

They understand the community deeply.

They have trust in those groups.

So not only can they help you shape what you're creating and why you're creating it, they can engage with people to get them involved to come to your programs, use your services.

They can do that with communities where you don't currently have connections.

This is a great partnering way to expand your network.

And they can help you evaluate success.

This one comes up, I raised this because I think a big challenge we face as libraries, often, is that we're not case managers.

And so it's hard to track outcomes.

We can sort of track short-term outcomes and output.

But at the end of this session, together, how much more confident do you feel.

But it's hard for us, we don't often get the chance to see that six months down the line because we helped someone get that computer and internet connection at home, learn how to navigate a forum, now they've gotten a better job.

We often don't see that.

Working with a partner who might have more of that case management function, might have more of those regular touchpoints with clients rather than maybe someone comes in once and we don't see them again.

It can really help us see and mess are success and understand success in a different way.

I think the most important piece about partnering is that it helps to us take an asset-based perspective.

For anything, when libraries are coming in to help, and technology is one of those areas where we think we can help, we have some resources, we have knowledge, we've been in this space since we started offering computers in the '90s, that we have a solution.

But it's really important, really important that we don't see the communities we're working with as sinkholes of need.

And ourselves as saviors.

That is not what is happening.

When we do things that we think this is great but poorly attended, a lot of times that's because the stuff that we're doing or that we think people need is not what really matters to those people.

When we let the partner lead the way, not just bring something one in at the end of the day to kind of like, here's my flyer, promote this to your clients.

When we really engage partners and individuals from the beginning in building the service together, and let them shape it, the people who are most impacted by an issue, they know how to solve it.

They're the ones who really understand it the best.

Trusting in them and then giving -- finding out what resources they need to really have equitable opportunity, and to be successful, and then providing that to them.

I just want to frame things like that.

Of course there's pooling resources and expertise.

You have different resources, different staffing, different budgets, different knowledge.

When you come together you can do more.

All of this is to say partnerships are the best!

Eloquent -- I'll get off the soapbox and get into the specific programs.

So I'm going to kind of give them to you chronologically.

Often, we were doing these one fed the other.

Digital bridge was one of our initial programs.

Essentially these are hot spots in laptops that we circulated.

We did not put them in the catalog and circulate them to individuals, we circulated them to partners.

The partners were able to get those to their clients.

I'll talk in a little bit about the reason that we did it that way.

Well the partners that we engaged with, we were able to be selective.

When you put something in the catalog you don't have any -- 

know who's checking it out, you sort of, it's just out there for the world.

Often the people with the best resources are the ones who are most able to find and make use of the things that we off.

That we offer.

We thought how can we get these items to the people who really need them the most.

At this time, we launched this early in the pandemic.

All of our library buildings were closed.

There was a lot of concern about what is going to happen to the people who were in here using our computers every day.

They don't have one at home.

Or using our WI-FI every day, they don't have it at home.

Asking for our help every day, how do I print this, and how do I fill out this form.

What is this website asking me, what does this mean, is this safe.

How do I apply for public housing.

All of these things that we help people with all day long.

We were really concerned about people being cut off from these basic resources.

That was the community need that initially prompted this, was we needed to way to stay connected and help people stay connected when they couldn't do it in person throughout libraries.

We recognize that there are certain populations and communities that tend to be more impacted by this.

We also, at this point, a bunch of the federal grant funding was starting to pop up, specifically around technology.

So we had some funding that had some guidelines attached to it.

Particularly that we were supposed to serve specific populations.

Some examples of those are people experiencing homelessness, seniors, and entrepreneurs with limited English proficiency.

So when we said okay, these are the people that we've identified as, like, who are going to benefit the most from this, instead of just putting hot spots and laptops out there, for everyone first come first served, that's why we worked with partners.

When we work with public housing, that specifically is for seniors, right, we know that we're getting things into the hands of seniors.

We have lent laptops to Spanish entrepreneur group.

That is meaningful for us, we know that the things are going where we care about the most.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail.

But I will give you some basic nuts and bolts to give you a sense.

This is a service with some startup costs because we are circulating hot spots and laptops, we needed to get the things and have data plans.

That funding was, that was grant funded.

At this particular time in our society, it's fairly easy to get grant funds for technology.

It remains difficult to get grant funding for other things.

There's a fair amount floating around.

We have been able to do a couple of the buys to supplement the number that we have.

So we intentionally engage partners with existing trust in the communities we wanted to focus on.

Because the items are not in our catalog we have to manage inventory manually, essentially.

I'm in a large system that has an I.T. department, so that's a function that they're able to handle.

But it does mean, a little more work the backend to get started.

As I mentioned in the beginning, something that's been really helpful here is that our partners are able to provide impact metrics and powerful stories.

To say, hey, this hot spot and laptop was loaned to an entrepreneur who took our class.

Because they had this, this entrepreneur who is a recent arrival to the country, English is their third language, they were able to complete this course in a language that was come for for them, they're going to have access to a new tier of community-based lenders to get capital for their startup.

We can really see those stories in a way that's often not really possible, or certainly not very common in sort of direct circulating from libraries.

So before I go on, I want to pause here just for a moment, and see, are there specific questions about digital bridge in particular or about any of the intro pieces, digital equity, digital inclusion, that you would like me to address?

I'll pause at a couple of places, if we don't have a lot of questions, we'll also do Q&A at the end.

But I want to give you a chance now.

>> Looks like there's some questions coming through.

I'm curious, in terms of -- I know that you're a large system and there's lots of folks that you probably are partnering with.

Once you sort of established that, especially the hot -- 

circulating the hot spots and laptops, did word get out, were there other agencies that were like, we want to get in on that?

>> Yes.

Something that we made sure to do up front was to be really clear about why -- what our criteria was.

Working with partners.

What you don't want, oh, we did this scatter shot and now someone else wants something, why them and not me.

It was important from the get-go to say we have these specific populations that we're focusing on.

And we're going to start with people who are known quantity.

Start with existing marters in.

Existing partners.

Rather than take on new partners.

That helped us to scope so we justified our decisions.

Now we have been approached by some other organizations who have heard about the program, or who sort of saw the equipment out floating around.

And so now we are aable to onboard more folks.

I see a question in the chat, do we have M.O.U.s, yes, we made a single M.O.U. template that we tweak for each partners.

That allowed to us hammer out the details, how long do they circulate for?

When do they need to come back to be updated?

WLAPS if someone loses one?

What kind of information will the partner provide, just to like all of those logistics that were going to be similar across the board.

We hammered them out in a single M.O.U. and made minor tweaks for each partner.

>> Did that also include expectations around data collection that you might need for your reporting?

>> Yes N this case we were lucky that we didn't have any grants that were particularly restrictive on reporting requirements.

And I know that that certainly can happen.

So we didn't mandate too much.

You must give us this particular data.

We did say we're going to check in with you once a month, please have some stories for us, at least.

We are in -- we're with hot spots, we can see how much they're being used f a unit has been used, how many minutes it's been used.

We're able to pull our hard staff.

But we rely on the partners for those story. 

>> Great, and I see the question, also, was so the partners collected client data, the Medicaid participation for example.

The libraries don't normally collect.

Obviously there's some coordinating there.

>> Yeah.

And Medicaid eligibility isn't one specifically that we've used in this case.

Although can I think of some other instances where we have needed that information.

I'm going to talk more about some creative ways to handle data, in one of the later projects, called teleconnect, had a creative data solution in it. 

>> That's great.

There is a question, and I would love for this to be a crowd source sharing A question about the list, possible list of who's providing grants.

Feel free to share those in chat.

But I also encourage you, for sure, reach out to your state library agencies.

I know they're well aware of what funding is coming as a result of Covid for sure.

Definitely check there.

But if you have other funders, for sure, feel free to post those to chat.

Then let's see.

This is a good question.

How do you find out where to start, or focus your offsite efforts without giving in to that savior mindset, where do you find that balance?

>> I'll try to make you really not sorry you asked that question.

We're getting into now my favorite topic and there goes the rest of the hour.

I'll keep this as succinct as can I.

This really gets into community-led planning.

What I wrote my dissertation on.

It's really a huge point of passion for me.

It's by letting your partners lead the way.

I mean you certainly have some idea, just from seeing in your libraries, where the need is.

Where as praises are.

Like where people want something different than what they have.

But starting with those partners and saying, hey, we think we can get some money for laptops and hot spots, what do you think that should look like?

And one of the next projects I'm going to talk about is a good example where the partner came to us and said we want to do something that was completely off my radar.

I thought was totally bananas.

But it came from them.

Rather than going out to people and saying here's what we have and here's what we're going to give you, going to people and saying, what do you want to accomplish, what are the desires and the aspirations in your community.

So this positive focus, not just what do you need, where are all of your gaps.

You are smart and capable humans, like, we're going to have this resource, we would love to share it.

How do you want that to happen.

In terms of how you choose those partners to start with, you guys are killing me, let's schedule another webinar.

These are such good questions.

It is best if you aren't making that decision.

We have hot spots and we have to meet people.

It is important to cultivate, when these things come up, you have already partners who will come to you oh who you know will be interested.

We participated in community forums and events.

Particularly passionate about this issue and convenes community, discussion advocacy groups, but where she was -- 

sort of wanted to hear what was going on with digital equity, what people's needs were.

There were groups that wanted to come N we need to advocate for broader broadband on tribele lands for example.

We started to meet people, hear a tribe say here's what we care about, here's a problem we are having, here's how it should be fixed.

Then saying, hey, we already have this relationship now, we have trust.

E didn't know it was going to --

when we started talking months ago, it didn't lead to anything specific.

We have trust and relationship and we can build on it.

I'm going to answer one more question then move on. 

>> Feel free, we can come back to any of them as well.

Is there anything else that I missed, J.P. that, I should do first.

>> I think you caught most of them, yeah.

I have one in one of those recently where it's not working of the any more.

This could be a whole webinar, to prioritize the relationship.

The stuff is less important.

Than the relationship.

You're all trying, you want the same things.

Are you all want to support your communities for whatever you're working on.

You're different organizations, different timelines, different resource levels, the person who cared about it, you know, moved to Tennessee.

Now there's no one left to drive the bus.

There are all kinds of things happening.

As long as everyone takes thatthat -- it's not personal.

It's not a good movement moment for the partner.

You have certain ways you need to do something and it's no long area good fit for them, okay.

They are -- that they have had to choose to allow them to support participating again, welcome back.

These are great questions.

Its not like me blabbing for an hour.

Digital navigators, might be sounding familiar to you.

Stating a state program, California is starting a state program, we're hearing G this nationally.

Sorted of something we stumbled on.

What happened, we started the digital bridge program, loaning laptops and hot spots.

Loaning them to populations particularly vulnerable, fewer opportunities to develop digital literacy.

If we were in person, people give access to these things, then provide support.

This website tapped me for the Social Security number, should I put it in.

We're there to help and be a guide.

Giving people the thing is great, that is a good start.

If we're really going to support them, we need to give them librarians, no's there's no better tool.

How can we could that.

Through these coalitions that we're participating in, we met some folks who were part of the national digital inclusion alliance which formed this digital navigator model.

This is essentially appointments with someone who had a bit of training.

They answer questions, subsidized broadband, life line program, Comcast has low income subsidy program.

There's all kinds of things that can support affordable broadband.

Similarly affordable devices, get a subsidized or free computer.

Here's the website that you can sign up for this new emergency broadband event, that's now transitioned into a smaller but more permanent program.

Knowing that we needed to meld them together.

That to me three-legged stool of access to broadband, access to device, and access to digital literacy.

That is the brilliant piece.

This is something that we launched with grant funding but you don't need to, especially now, NDIA, with ILMS, and Salt Lake city, in particular -- 

apologize if that's spelled like county, someone in Salt Lake, there's a bunch of library systems, have created a lot of publicly freely available materials.

We contracted with the grant funding to co-develop training with us.

I have given another webinar for the library 2.0 conference recently.

You can learn more about that.

So the goal here, the community aspiration here, is not just that people have things, they have the support, the human support that need to be confident in accessing the internet to achieve their goals.

They can afford it and feel comfortable doing it.

I highlight our digital navigator is the staff, that's not the case everywhere.

They're existing staff.

They're not like new staff, they're existing staff.

Librarians, paraprofessionals, carving a couple of hours out of their day.

So we put our digital navigator staff through existing training.

Like I said to you in the beginning, questions about technology are reference questions.

I didn't feel like the staff needed extra training outside of some orientation to resources.

There's a website, everyone on, you can tap in to someone's general location information and it'll sort of spit back back a list 6 here are the affordable and subsidized broadbands available in your area.

Helping people, letting them know about, hey, here's five local agencies that offer classes.

Connecting them to answer the questions.

We wanted to make sure there was a complete phone option.

You never touch a computer or do the entire thing by computer or switch back and forth at anying STAJ.

Utilize Microsoft teams internally, the meetings happen through teams.

The phone interaction goes through teams.

Spring products, room reservation things, we use that to make appointments.

This is something we were able to do without paying extra staff.

Digital navigator appointment is half an hour, I've seen places that do an hour.

A little time to prep, 30 minutes for the appointment, a little time to follow up.

It's not a huge, huge lift out of their day.

We didn't buy any fancy software.

There's an intake form when people sign up, they tell the staff person verbally who enters it or fill out online themselves, a sense of the question, the three categories, what is this question about.

Usually it's several.

We ask them to tell us how confident they are, they're going to be able to accomplish the goal that they've asked for help with.

We give them a survey at the end.

We ask them that question again, what's your level of confidence no, that you can XLISH accomplish this thing you want to do.

That's where we get a lot of the evaluation data.

we have the staff fill out evaluative information after each appointment.

This serves two purposes.

One is working on the assume that is most people don't fill out the followup survey.

It gives us some data.

A staff person can say, look at the beginning of the appointment I feel like this person, their level of confidence was a 2 out of 5.

By the time we left they were feeling pretty good, 4 out of 5.

It's not quite as accurate as self-reporting but staff can have some idea.

This is a way to leave notes.

A lot of people book multiple appointments.

Someone can go back, here's that question again, what's already been done about that.

Allows staff to share information.

What was the most useful information you gave to the patron.

There's shared learning as well.

The thing was training.

There's so much freely available support.

I had a lovely experience but they've done a really great job of putting information out there so you can do this.

Look how you need it.

I can take a couple of questions about digital navigators before we move on.

>> I had a question about how you saw the shift, like you said, these are things that libraries have been doing.

They've been doing them, haven't called it this, or didn't have the structure around it.

Can you talk about how both the public responded to having this clearer means of them accessing digital navigator, and then how it impacted staff in terms of having that clear -- more clearly defined time and role they would be doing this.

>> The people serving as digital navigators enjoy it.

Anyone who's been a librarian is familiar with the complaint, we don't get real reference questions any more.

These are real reference questions.

They're meaty.

You spend half an hour talking about one question.

People really enjoy digging in, digging in to that.

We still have the initial batch of people that we trained.

They're enjoying it and want to stick around.

What was the other half of the question?

>> I'm curious, if it was -- 

this ties to the question that came through, how has digital navigator be analyzed with the public, what kind of success do you have with the public.

Did this structure create more clarity for the public in how they can get assistance?

>> Thank you.

Okay, so we started off, never advertised this heavily, we're full all the time.

We started off with the focus of the webinar is partnerships.

This grew out of it NISHL bridge program.

Our first audience of focus were the people WHOEF loaned items to, borrowing laptops and hot spots.

We advertised directly, we're soft launching the service, here's how you can access it.

Here's the support that goes along with your item.

We quietly made it available to the public.

The appointments filled up.

We have not done a lot of promotion.

If we could spare more people and time to do it, and we felt like we could meet the demand, then we would start promoting it heavily.

The standard thing, you can find it on the social media, gets a feature on the website, we aren't pushing it particularly hard.

You asked about clarity, we do not use the term digital navigators with the public, what the heck is that?

I think that's becoming an important term, there's a lot of shared understanding in the digital equity service provider space around what that means.

But if you're just like, look, I'm just trying to fill out this job application, what in the heck is a digital navigator.

I shared this with my marketing and web department.

They were like we're going to call this page computer help.

I do things like that, the way you frame it is important to clarity.

We also have had to be really clear with people about managing expectations on all sides.

There's certainly a perception that this is the help desk.

I'm going to call you and ask you why can't -- why isn't my floppy disk drive, why isn't it working now.

I can't help you directly.

I can help you find people who can help you and help you find information that might allow you to fix it.

Can I find you a YouTube video about it.

But I didn't give you the answer right here over the phone.

Some people initially were mad about that.

Making SHURG we are clear about what people are getting.

>> Are you able to answer the question about how many libraries you have and how many digital navigators you have, and do you offer appointments every day

 we offer appointments three days a week right now.

I only have three people doing this, the appointments.

We're offering it three days a week.

It is something that I think it will grow as much as we invest it in.

I do think it's important to have it start small.

Sometimes we're like, I can't invest in an entire full time staff person.

I can't do this big up-front investment.

So you don't start.

You start small, debt proof of concept, buy-in from our leadership and communities and partners that it's working.

Then we can grow. 

>> Excellent.

Then there was another question about bilingual digital navigators.

Do you provide it in other languages?

>> I wish that we did, based on capacity limitations we have, we don't offer native language speakers.

Other digital navigators.

We have other services where we're able to do that.

Often we'll contract outside to be able to make that possible for some things.

What we do is subscribe to a translation service called language line.

We can get a translator on the line for any language, they're pretty good.

Within a few minutes.

That's not as good as having a bilingual, bi-cultural person as the navigator but it's what we can do for now. 

>> Excellent, I think that's all for now.

Let's hear the rest of your examples.

>> All right, so this is the one where I was like, you want us to what?

This is a community wireless network.

Illuminating, how we work in partnership that things build on each other and snowball.

We met some of the NDIA folks in the initial community meetings, after we launched digital bridge with partners we meet there and D.I.A. helped with us the digital navigator program, we got together with more partners.

Not that long after an organization, couple of organizations, nonprofit called black brilliant research and u-dub research group said can we borrow your roof?

I said please explain what you mean.

They're supporting A community-owned wireless network.

They need to install an antenna on the roof, high-up place, in a -- physically high ground.

Then they're able to provide a WI-FI signal for free or at a very low cost to about 90 households per antenna.

While these particular organizations cover the startup and installation they train community members to do all of the administration and maintenance of the network.

I don't know who the individual is that you are seeing install one of them right there, but that's a volunteer.

That's a community member.

Almost certainly.

They train folks as digital stewards, and then often form a community kind of H.O.A. for your wireless network, basically.

Some kind of nonprofit or community collective.

That then owns the network.

Is able to decide how much it is going to charge itself if anything for maintenance.

Really, puts the power back in the hands of people who have had the least connectivity.

It is a super cool idea.

Please do not ask how the technology works, I have no idea.

Which gets back to the importance of partnerships, I'll talk about that.

What it is N a nutshell, is a community owned and operated high speed wireless connection that is mediated by an antenna, on the skyway roof.

In the aspiration area in communities, it's affordable WI-FI.

Increased community self sufficiency and autonomy.

Not a reliance on a big external scary company or needing to deal with government programs that are often not sensitive to your culture and not in your language and the other barriers people experience.

People having what they need, and being in control of it.

That is really cool.

They came to us, and said, like, hey you have a library that's in the community we want to serve that, is on the top of a hill.

Can we borrow your roof.

This is not something I would ever have initiated on my own.

There's no universe in which I can have managed I would be like, you know what is a great idea, drill a hole in the roof, I'm going to find partners who want to do that.

Never would have happened.

Never occurred to me.

I'm not the subject matter expert, I'm not the person who knows the needs and desires.

Because we had an existing relationship with these partners and they understood who we were and what we did, enmeshed, shown to be a trustworthy partner in the community they came to us.

And I've talked about digital stewards a bit.

Our role is a pass thru.

They're maintaining -- they installed the equipment, maintaining it.

We ran an electrical and data line up to the roof for them.

We as the library don't need to have any knowledge of the technology here, really.

We don't need to be administering the network, we don't need to troubleshoot when it goes down, there's a problem, because we work in partnership, we're able to provide the resource that we have which in this case is a physical building.

To support this really brilliant thing that other community partners are doing.

Really a way we can be an authentic contributor to the bigger vision.

If you want a better explanation of how this works than I can give, you can read this medium article by Esther JANG, the Ph.D. student who was our initial contact.

They have formed a new nonprofit, called local connectivity lab.

The antenna on the library is only one of hopefully soon to be very many.

Questions about that?

>> I don't see any.

But we can -- I'll keep an eye out.

Here's a good question.

>> Yeah, how long did it take on get approval.

Way less than I thought.

I have to say, again I'm in a large system, we have a lot of specialists for each thing, we're lucky to have expertise.

I reached out, I got the okay from my direct supervisor, and then -- who's the director of public services.

Then I reached out to the director of facilities and said, hey, I have this crazy idea.

Hugely to his credit, he was like, okay, that's all you want to do?

Sure, fine.

In reality there wasn't a big cost to us.

The risk to us was quite low.

We weren't doing anything expensive or dangerous or that couldn't be reversed.

We were just giving a partner access to our roof.

We needed to see their insurance certificate, that was about it.

So, it was surprisingly easy.

The takeaway there, is just ask.

You know, you might be surprised.

People want to say yes.

We want to help our communities.

Especially when a partner comes to you and says we want to do this, that is pretty compelling for your leadership.

Not like you cooking up some nefarious plan to make everyone's lives difficult in admin.

It's a community partner saying we care about our community, this is what we see and we want your help.

Your admin wants to say yes to that.

LCL is just Seattle as far as I'm aware.

But this is all based on a modEl that was developed in Detroit actually.

We're not the only place that is doing that.

I'm not going to get into, I'm seeing a bunch of questions about how the network works, and just looking at the time and what we want to get through, how deep down the lab it hole we can go on this particular one, I'm going to put a pin in those for now.

Feel free to e-mail me and I can follow up with limited amount of technical understanding that I have.

Okay, the last project I want to talk about, is teleconnect.

This is really fun.

In comparison to the previous one, on a technological level, this is really simple.

The community aspiration that we're trying to meet here is we saw all of us have seen a great explosion of telehealth.

Either you can't get where you're going, they don't want you to coming in suddenly doctors and insurance companies are making -- encouraging the shift to telehealth.

Becoming much more available, becoming a preferred way of interacting with folks in some situations.

Telehealth is not equitably available to all people.

You live in A difficult area, your population doesn't have access to tech NOJ NOLG, equity barriers that we have in life, impact telehealth as well.

We had a libraryion, two libraryions, they're the ones pictured testing the equipment out.

Saying we think we have a way to address this.

They had seen a similar model done for social services.

They pitched us.

Essentially what it is, is an ipad on what looks like an I.V. 

stand with an articulating arm in a study room.

That is all.

Essentially, we are the portal to the telehealth visit.

Our first partners were the University of Washington, U.W. 

medicine, and work with other health and social service providers.

From the patron side, they make an appointment with their provider, not with us, with their provider, the provider is a partner with us, the provider books our space, the patron just comes to the library at the time of their appointment, we put them in a meeting room, we let them in to their appointment, and I'll explain about how we do that.

Let them in to their appointment.

Then we leave.

The patron can just walk in the room, sit down, there's your doctor on the ipad.

When they're done they leave.

They don't need to touch the technology.

They don't need to have any tech savvy, don't need an e-mail address, they don't need to understand how telehealth works.

They don't need to have a private space in their home.

They don't need to have a good enough internet connection to handle high resolution video.

They walk into the library and have their appointment and they leave.

Staff are able to mediate all of the technology piece.

Do we sanitize after each use, absolutely.

A lot of the discussion that we had initially with harborview in partnership, they shaped a lot of this service.

They worked with us to determine what we would buy, what kinds of technology, would we be peripherals and all of these things.

So we developed a sanitation procedure together.

Essentially it's what we were all doing for Covid anyway.

Wiping everything down, high touch surfaces.

So to get into the nuts and bolts of that, again, like that technology piece was initially grant funded.

It's often fairly easy to get grant funding for things.

Especially like pilot and startup.

It's much harder to get grant funding for what we need, ongoing people.

But this is a case where stuff isis, is what you need.

So often you can get grants for that.

So the way the work flow happens, we're use ing ourcal software here.

We do not touch or see any patient information.

We have nothing to do with the patient and doctor relationship.

We are a room with an ipad it in, and staff who helps you if you accidentally turn the ipad off.

Or your connection drops.

So the way that works is the provider and the patient make their appointment together, like they would, patient making a followup appointment in person.

The provider books the room with us.

They have a link basically where they can book a room, just sort of like old standard room booking software, you may use with the public.

What they give us is the patient's first name, a code name for the clinic so we don't know what clinic they're coming from, but I have a phone number associated with each of those clinics in case there's an emergency.

So we just know that John is here for his appointment, we don't know exactly who it's with.

And when they schedule that with us, they give us the Zoom link.

We are able to put the link in and start the meeting.

So that's probably how that works.

We are basically at times, rather than taking questions here, I want to highlight a couple of points.

These are all things I've said throughout but I want to tease out as important.

How do you start with any of these things, it's not Micking a topic, it's understanding your community aspirations.

Call up community organizations that you think are doing this work or might be interested in this stuff and just ask them to tell you about what they're doing and what their goals are.

Keep an eye on your local government.

Broadband especially is an issue in the public eye right now, federal infrastructure bill around it, states have bills around it, funding has opened up around it, politicians are interested in this topic.

And they're suddenly remembering that we exist as libraries.

This is a really impactful moment to talk to your local legislators and let them see you.

But also, they've got projects, and connections and things that they want to accomplish.

When I say do your research, king county put out a whole study last year about barriers to digital access.

That was incredibly informative to us.

Here are the communities that aren't as well served by broadband.

Here are the specific geographic areas that have broadband but people can't afford to access it.

People say they don't have the digital literacy.

Super valuable.

The county has been a really great partner for us.

And we have our own expertise, we know what kind of questions people ask us.

We get plenty.

Also drawing on our community knowledge there as well.

And then build things together.

Give power back to communities.

Avoid that saviorism, to highlight that again, being in a profession that is largely white, female, middle class, able-bodied, blah, blah, blah.

We're often not the people that we're serving.

We often have different lived experiences.

It is really important to have huge respect for the experiences and the knowledge and the strengths of the people you're working with.

Come in with humility.

Embrace uncertainty, when you build things together you don't have total control over how it will look.

That's where really cool things you never imagined can happen.

You get to know what you are making is really useful, someone in the community really wants it.

Before you make it, and just hold your breath and pray someone will come to your program, you're building it with the users.

So you know they want it.

Are you know they're going to use it.

And off as you could that, as you do that in partnership with someone, with an organization or with a person, that process is the product.

Whatever service you make is time limited, at some point it will cease to be useful and you will stop doing it.

The work that you put in together to understand each other and build trust and relationships is going to be -- 

is going on lead to the next great thing.

So we are out of time, that's all I have for you today.

I know there is a lot more that I wish we could dig in to.

Reach out and contact me with questions and shameless self promotion, keep an eye out for my book, "12 steps to a community led library" coming out in the fall. 

>> Thank you so much, Audrey.

As you can see, this work touches on so many facets of library work.

I'm really excited about your community-led book coming out.

Thank you so much.

Be sure to reach out to Audrey with your additional questions.

As I said, I will be sending you all an e-mail once the recording is posted and also invite to you provide your feedback in a short survey.

I'll send to you the survey as we leave.

If you need to head back to the public service desk know that that will be in the e-mail I send you.

Excellent, thank you again.

Thanks to our captioner and W.J.

support and everyone, of a great rest of your week.



	
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