And I wanted to mention there's a learner guide for today's session. It's an excellent way for you to extend your learning on the topic. We've pulled in questions for you to consider with others on your team. Perhaps with trustees or your board as well. You can customize the guide. Make it your own. With the questions you would like to explore. This is as a tool for you to extend your learning. We're thrilled to be collaborating with ARS L today. If you are new, the association for rural and small libraries serves folks who works in small and rural libraries around the world. It's an excellent group to connect to if you do work in a small or rural library. There's an active member's only listserve. There's training opportunities and conference discount. If you are interested in coming and joining with ARS L members at a conference, it's the best conference around, I believe. So I'm going to post a link here in chat. And we're thrilled to have our current ARS L president here with us. Jennie Garner comes to us as the library director of the north inspect inspect Liberty Library in Iowa. She is our current ARS L president. We're thrilled to have you here today. >> JENNIE GARNER: Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you to WebJunction for hosting me. And for inviting me to be here with all of you. It's a little bit weird to be a talking head for an hour. I'm looking at myself. Jennifer suggest I put a picture of someone up so I cannot look at myself but we'll wing this. I'll tell you a little about myself and we'll learn more as we go along on this journey. I am the library director in Iowa. Our town is 22,000 people and growing. When I moved to north liberty, there was 4500 people in 1990. We're bursting at the seams in every department. I've been the library director for nine years. And prior to that, for my other years in the library, I've served in a variety of roles from team librarian, library assistant, assistant director and I became library director in 2014. I have a staff of 19. When I started as director, I believe there were 11 of us. We've added quite a few staff over the last few years. I think my state administrators put the kabosh on me to get more staff. We have a team of 10 full time and 9 part time staff. So one of my goals was to create a service model to allow every single person that comes in reach whatever experience they were looking for. And I believe that each time someone comes in looking for different experience, even if they are looking for a different book every single day. Whether they are simply looking for next read or attending program, filing for unemployment, looking for a job, any of those things, they are finding that experience. Customer service starts with good policy. So that brings us to this topic. I am sort of a nut about policy. A little bit of a geek on that. And we build on policy through creating a positive work culture. I find that when our staff is happy and when they feel safe and nurtured and empowered to do their jobs, that tends to flow into customer service and library's atmosphere. Having strong policy and consistent training in a place has allowed the latitude to serve our community in a bigger way. As we all know, a lot of things have come up in the last few years around the world. We've had a pandemic. Social injustices like the killing of George Floyd. And in Iowa, in 2020, we had sweep through your communities destroying hundreds of homes and trees in eastern Iowa and across our whole state. Took our utilities out for several days in many of our communities. And having strong policies provided us with a framework our staff was well cared for during a time of great term oil and care for our community. So not only one of my goals but my passion to be sure we are continually developing policy that's useful to our staff and serves our community at the same time of the -- I tell our team all the team we don't know what someone carries. We might the only positive interaction they see in a day. If we can have that experience be that for them, then all the power to us. The passion extends to libraries nationwide. The current president of ARS L, I believe libraries large and small are doing the same great work all over the United States. And my goal at that level is to find a way for us to bridge between all of our libraries and create messaging across the U.S. about what we do not only for literacy but well beyond in our libraries every single day. I have to get used to moving my slides on the screen. I'll try to do better. This is a journey with started simply with a very informal discussion between myself and a couple could work hes. We have an open floor plan because our team works really well together and collaborate continually. None of them wanted offices. We started flushing out on our team what it might look like if we approached our work toward neutral and inclusive policies. And it wasn't just something that we've been doing consciously. We like to think we're doing it all the time but if it's not intentional, it may not be so. It quickly became clear to us that we had some work to do. That we needed to intentionally frame our library as a space where people are allowed to organically feel they belong. So we are asking ourselves questions like how can we find middle ground to create policy that helps us work with the very diverse populations that we serve in our public libraries and how do we focus our work on inclusion and equity. It's vital we review and update our policies through the equity and inclusion lenses so we strike a balance that keeps our staff's welfare in mind and provides the best possible service to our public. So let's start with a simple definition. I just wanted to put this up. I'm not going to read it to you. I do want to emphasize that piece in red. Guide and determine present with future decisions. Our policies serve us when they are regularly refreshed when they are proactive rather than reactive. And even the titles of our policies matter. What did they say about library and services? Are they relatable to your patrons? Good policy is crafted by allowing fluidity and flexibility and not boxing us in. And living on a continuum as we talk about how we got to yes. So why do we have policies? There are several reasons. I would love it if some of you put in the chat what you think policy -- why you make policy. And then maybe Jennifer can read some of those out loud if some folks wanted to chime in. We protect our staff and our public at the same time. It gives our staff a way to do their jobs effectively and gives them something to fall back on. Offers the public a set of expectations when it ensures they are going to be treated with equity. And I'm seeing things pop up in chat. I'm trying hard not to look at the chat. It's going to distract me. I'll finish going through this list quickly. Customer service, educating our public, covering ourselves legally and ethically. Lending some credibility to an organization and always our state library standards. They are a mechanism for us as administration and staff to translate priorities. And the support for the staff and the board in the event there is legal action. Is there anything else, Jennifer that you are seeing? >> Jennifer: A couple mentions of framework. Framework of behavior. Emphasis on your comment that you said being proactive instead of reactive. Continuity Continuity. Treating everyone the same. And legal protection. >> JENNIE GARNER: Yes. Great. All right. So inclusion begins internally. How many of you -- you don't have to raise your hand. You can chime in if you want, include your front line staff in your policy's development in your libraries. Do you allow them to reflect their opinions or put in their opinions about policy daily? Suggesting improvements, understanding processes, asking questions and seeking verification. Explaining and implementing policy. They need to be able to do all the things daily. They need to understand policy. One of the first things happens in our library is staff sits down and reads our entire policy manual. Our policy manual is 33 pages. It is not long. We did a really good job of hacking away at policy a while ago. And keep it consistent but not competitive. Really important for us staff is included in every piece of policy writing. Our front line staff carries out policies. We're missing a key component of service. I think it's super important. Staff knows your policies and part of the development. There's things in the chat you guys can monitor. If those reasons weren't enough for you, I'm going to give you a few more reasons why policy is important. In our communities, especially if they are small and rural, we often assume we know our patrons and we do. We know them. But we often maybe don't know what's happening behind the closed doors of their home or the struggles people face on a daily basis. In our libraries and even in their own heads. I'd like to introduce you to a few people and delve into the stories. I'd love to have you add into the chat as we're doing this what you believe the stories of the people are. I'd like to start with that young smiling person in the upper corner in the pink shirt. What do you think their story is? Anybody want to chime in and think who that is? A college student. A student. Yes. This is Ellie. Ellie goes by they/them or her. Extremely supportive family and used to volunteer at our library. When Ellie was questioning identity and deciding what programs they identified with, they talked to their parents and their parents were supportive and reached out to us which I absolutely love. They wanted us to know that Ellie felt welcome in our walls and wanted us to know that our established relationship was extremely important. So we wanted to be able to acknowledge in the same way. We have continued that relationship. I actually got permission from everyone on this slide to use their picture and talk about them. I called to ask Ellie's mom if it was okay and Ellie said that would be cool. They felt they can trust us to be part of that transition and part of Ellie's identity. So let's move down below. The gentleman in the dark shirt, the blue T-shirt. What do you think his story is? Somebody was going to guess nonbinary. Down in the corn he, young professional, college student. In the T-shirt with the sun glasses on. So this is James. James is a police officer in Iowa city next to us. James was a kiddo who grew up in our home. A good friend of my son's. And he identifies as gay. That's new. You have a young person of color who is also gay and a police officer. Sometimes that's a hard row to toe. He's done a great job. Had wonderful posts in the last couple years about that work during this time of term oil. But James grew up at our house staying every weekend. His mom would leave and go to Chicago and he would be left home alone as early as age 10 or 11 was the first time he stayed. He stayed with us for four days. I thought his mom was at home. He told me he was locked out of the house. Which wasn't true. I reached out to him and asked him could I use his picture? He was like absolutely. I would love to be part of this. It's just to show you you can't know just by seeing someone anything about that person. You guys are making good guesses. And any of these people can have these stories. So let's go to the bottom other side. The two young women in that corner. It's not about stereotyping. I hope that's not the thought. The thought is I'm showing we can't know. They are not sisters. This is Jaylin and Jesse. They are both hairdressers. They work together and yes, a small business owners, correct. The woman in the blue owns a salon. They both went to cosmotology school. They are good friends. That's getting harder for them as they are working together. Jesse, in the red, her story, she was burned over half of her body when she was 4 years old. She's wearing a dress that doesn't show that. She is very much owns that. She wears tank tops a lot in the summer. And what I love about her is she's always smiling and telling kids her story so they know about fire safety. She let's them touch her scars. She also works in a restaurant. So she has that extra connection. And even though she smiles, there's a lot of pain there, physically and emotionally for her. That's something we can't see. We see her beautiful smile and see the scars but we can't know the other things that are going on with her. And Jaylin who is a dear sweet almost daughter to me and someone who lost her dad and struggles with mental issues now and also smiles all the time. If you met her, all you'd think is she's happy. She dresses like she's from the 60s. She has her very own style. She struggles with depression and anxiety pretty regularly. They were both happy to have me include them on the slides. But I'd like to move on to the upper corner. Have you tell me what you think about this young man in the suit. In a hurry. I love it. That is his wedding photo. That is on the day of the wedding of my son. That is my kid. His name is Nick. Nick is an electrician. He is now a newly journeyman. He lives everyday with being a felon. He was arrested at age 19 and spent some time in prison. It was a really hard time for us. And you would never know that if you met Nick today. He is very well spoken, he is very intelligent. He doesn't show any signs of that. But everywhere he walks, that comes with him. That is something he carries with him but we would never guess. We know we serve these folks and people just like this in our library all the time of the so creating space for people like this to feel they are belong and welcomed is vital. Not only vital for their well being, it's vital for our communities and our community's success. Their success is the success of our community. And that's what I wanted to get out of playing that game. Thank you for playing along with me. So this is me. But I have a confession. My confession is that as a library professional, I operated for many years under the belief that libraries are just naturally inclusive spaces. And in many ways we are. But what we do is often skimming the surface of that. So I'll talk a little bit about myself more thoroughly. I grew up in Iowa smack dab in the middle of the United States where they can claim that. But I grew up with parents who were foster parents. We had folks from all walks of life in our house. A lot of the time my mom was what they called back then a minority counsel today. Maybe a diversity counselorcounselor. Had no formal training. She was a loving kind woman who had a natural knack making people feel they belonged. I grew up with that and I knew that. I also know I carry my own biases and I know I have to work to make sure I recognize my own biases 234506789 and then finally, I'll mention that I am -- I have a little bit of two sides to this policy making. I love making policy and writing policy. But I'm also a rule bender. I think that comes from being the youngest of five. I blame that on being the youngest or left handed. When I talk about policy, I'll talk about flexibility a lot as well. So our community is just over 22,000. We have families retirees and local professionals living there. As you saw in the picture and others, there are people from all across the board in our city. When I started, we had 4500 people. We've grown really fast. And fortunately, our staff has kept up with the growth. We have two school districts. Iowa city school district which is a larger district. And we have another school district as well. We have two sets of schools. Our kids just got their first high school close to us a couple years ago. It was one of the first high schools built in Iowa since the 1960s because we're growing so fast in our district. And one of our school districts is more rural. The other one is more professional. And we have a private K-8 school in town. We serve a variety of folks. And then looking at the history and evolution -- that picture you see is hosting an author visit. We had 400 people sitting in our gym. Our library is really busy because it's part of a community center. We have an rec center, library and two swimming pools. It's a pretty crazy building. It's always popping and lots of fun. And there's some clashing feelings in that building between the rec and the library which can create its own challenges. Our child safety policy does not have an age. It's based on behavior and the ability to follow basically follow our conduct policy on a daily basis on a regular basis versus in the age where on the rec side, the age is 6th grade or above. Sometimes some tough conversations that go on between all of us. And that can be difficult. And we don't coordinate policies that have had to work with city administrate and talk about how we are very different. And we, in some cases, have to have different pollices. The library staff works hard with that restorative justice idea and ensuring that people can be allowed in our building and not kicked out whenever possible. The rec can be more punitive. And some of it is about safety as well. A much bigger facility that needs a lot of extra monitoring and kids tend to be more rambunctious. We have those things to deal with. We worked hard to make sure it's inclusive and proactive as I mentioned before. If you looked at our policies years ago, our policies had inconsistencies. One policy would say one thing and the opposite. There was rigidity. There was a lot of nos. No doing this and that. We began to shift to make them consistent and logical. And we removed procedure. Which is part of our staff training. Our policies have become much more flexible and much more proactive. And the words and structure, our procedures are the actions. That go under the foundation of our policy. In thinking about your own libraries, are your policies equitable and consistent with the services? And your programs and other library policies and practices? So now, what we're doing today is this work is never going to be over. We're looking at creating a warm welcoming environment in all areas of our operations as a path that belong. While we haven't had an auto opportunity to recruit a diverse staff in our small community, we've worked really hard to have a staff that reflects community. Most of our staff would appear. We have staff who have various ages. Staff that cover gamete of LGBTQ and other things. So those things aren't visible. We have staff who can serve a variety of people with empathy. And build staff organization around policies. Because our community is filled with 0 to 5 years old. If people aren't pregnant, they just had a baby or are pregnant. The vast majority who come in, some were born in 1980s. 50% can say they were born in 1980 GS. That decade. It's crazy. We have youth and teen services. We know that's our broad and butter in our marketing team and making sure we're reaching all the people we want to reach. To that end, we created this commitment to inclusion that came about as part of this whole process. This is actually still a draft because it's never been fully approved by our staff. But it's just the words we're trying to live by. So we can commit to treating every individual with dignity and respect. We strive to create a safe, inviting environment wherein collusion and belonging are part of the culture. These values are reflected in our policies and our services. I love that. I'm the only staff person at our library. The impact our policies has on our communities or respective corners of the world, positions our libraries perfectly to be allies to our under served and disenfranchised in our communities. People can walk through our doors and receive service free of charge without paperwork except maybe some of you might require that for your library cards. We don't. That's a new thing. We do what we call radical trust in almost every aspect of library service. People can walk through the doors and do anything they need to without interference. They are not asked why they are there or where they come from. Which I absolutely love about libraries. It's the they think that I love the most. It levels everyone's playing field. And we build a foundation for libraries to take the roles of working with our communities. Our staff is empowered to make decisions that allow them to provide the most positive outcome for all of our patrons and they are trained to deliver that service with compassion and empathetic conversations. This started with organizing our idea committee. To set the stage for sustaining the work and making sure we are continually reviewing our processes. So we called them JEDI. The J stood for justice. Believe me when I tell you I really wanted to be on this committee when I asked them to form it. I knew I needed to step back and allow our staff to do this good work so they can take ownership of it. We have 7 staff members. It's a range of people. We have additionally a brand new person in our community which excites me who is the program and equity coordinator for the city. She works under the communication's department not in the library. And yeah, a lot of acronyms out there. The A stands for access for us. We think that's really important. Those are the bench marks we strive for. I'm going to tell you what they mean to us. It does mean something different for everyone. For diversity, we define that as the range of human differences. Gender, race, ethnicity. The way that people are treated and served. Inclusion we define as creating a welcoming environment. And accessibility for us is defined as a decisions about operations and services that improve patron experience to make it available to all. Diversity skims the surface inclusion and belonging take a deeper dive. Jennifer told me not to look at the chat. I will repeat them for you and try to get them into the thing. Inclusion is the chance to include what's on your plate. Belonging is getting to help create the menu. And we can put it in the resources as well. To us diversity means the range of human differences. Race, gender, ethnicity. Fairness and justice the way we treat people. Inclusion is defined as creating a welcoming environment and belonging. And accessibility is the decisions about our operations and services that improve our patron's experience. That make it available to everyone. We want also to be sure we recognize there are barriers to those service. Even as much as we want to erase all the barriers, we can never do that. We work with people that are our bridge partners. Help us understand where the gaps are: And seek to bridge those folks to help us reach people we may not otherwise reach. And never going to have the magical formula. We do our best to meet them where they are. We are ignorant sometimes about it. And we need to make sure we're including all the people at the table. That's how we try to bridge it. So we solidified these things this last year with our plan. This is a screen shot and Jennifer mentioned the link is at the bottom and also the event page. We took our strategic plan with our full staff. Everyone on our staff. Three years is all we do. And we had a board member come in and work with our consultant to do this work last year. We used a process we made up on our own of combining ALAs, planning for results with the library's transform to develop this plan. For the -- from the defining principles you see there, access, diversity and service to our values that we identified with our civic commons, safe and welcoming space. Literacy to free and equal access. This was what the staff chose. These were the things the staff chose. And inclusion is at the center of our entire plan. And you are welcome to take a look at that plan whenever you like. Jennifer put the link in chat. So just wanted to show you the titles of the policies. We changed it to child safety and vulnerable adults. We tried to create in a way that's super positive. All the policies are linked on our web site. I will show you that flow chart on the next page and talk a little bit about that too. Our board has chosen to review policies every year. And the most annoying part about that is no matter how many times we review it, we always catch some sort of editing error. Drives me crazy. We work hard to make sure every single year our policies are looked at. The other thing it does is it allows our staff -- it makes sure they are completely familiar with our policies from our staff who works 5-6 hours a week and full-time staff. Our board is familiar with them. They know what policy is about. They understand it. And then finally, it goes to our idea committee I talked about earlier. So they can look at it through those other lenses for inclusive language. And allowing staff to be flexible when they deliver policy. I would rather see them bend a rule than not serve the patron in a way that's meaningful for them. Certain things they know they can't bend that are scary. For the most part, we try hard. We don't want to do something illegal. We know where they are. I can't express strongly enough the big piece of this is also your staff training. We want our staff to be trained to deliver the policy and back them in their decision making. Behind the scenes we provide on-going training. We provide scripting and role playing. Aren't required to provide scripts. We have regular staff meetings and each month the staff has training along with their meeting to ensure they are keeping up with these. Because they are not there as often. This is the behavior flow chart. Helps us to ensure we're treating people equally. We really use it for everyone. This is just ensuring -- the person who did this was a social work intern that we had. We've hosted social work interns every semester for the last -- the first one was 2020 unfortunately. She was amazing and when closed, she had to step back. She created this to help us train our staff and how to address situations that were of conflict. It aides them in our understanding of consistency in our policies. You've got staff who are on one side of the spectrum and really just can ignore some loud behaviors or behaviors disruptive. Maybe too intense. We want to find that balance. So we're treating people with equity. Offering equal services is important. It means every individual or person comes through our doors is given the same resources or opportunities. But we treat people with equity which acknowledges each person has different circumstances. And we provide their circumstance -- provide resources to meet those circumstances. All right. So moving on, inclusion and belonging. I talked about strategic planning. The first thing I want to mention is library policy is affected by strategic planning and how priorities change. We mentioned that at the beginning. You want to make sure you are shifting policies if you need to as things in your community shift as the traffics of the library shift. So both residents and the values. And I want to emphasize that local decision making is super important. What works for me in my community may not work for you in your community. I'm just giving you some things to think about as you are looking through policy. And I've worked really hard the whole time I've been at the library to develop really good trusting relationships with our city leaders and our library board. I know they have my back every step of the way when I'm creating policy and working this way. Our board president came to me when he started this last year and said let's talk about intellectual freedom of the I want to make sure we're well protected. We've done training since then. We've added a couple of things to their board work and statement that's on our web site from the board's perspective. And a form so people know what to expect if they were to come to a board meeting. So that's given my a lot of leeway to make the decisions we've made. I should mention that our board is an advisory board. So while you may have a governing board, might be a little unexpected. My board is not my direct supervisor. They are advisory to me and they help me support me. But our city administrator is my boss. And somebody had a question. Jennifer, I'm happy to stop and say that. >> Sure. Yeah. Your clarification of the advisory versus governing boards are different. Do you want to speak to figure out who is in charge of policies? >> JENNIE GARNER: Your board is your structure for development. My hope in these cases if you built that relationship is they trust you as the person administrator and the person running operations on a daily basis to do that work of creating the policies and support you in those. In Iowa, there is 500 plus libraries and two that are advisory. Mine and one other. It's pretty hazy for me too sometimes. I don't have the state knowledge in our library. They are very helpful. It is kind of hard. The board's sometimes take on a little bit bigger role than maybe they need to. And I think if you have consultants at your state, hopefully they can help you with some of that. I also look always to my colleagues when I need assistance. This week, I traveled twice this month already to the capital to be involved in discussions over book banning. And I had the full support of my city administrator to do that work. Please remember you are representing the city when you talk. He knows that I told him I would behave. We want our policies to reflect best practices and want them to reflect the library users. The people that are potential users of our services. This can be really difficult to do. We know with the social climate and shifts happening impact policy development as well. A lot going on there. Creating inclusive environment takes a lot of courage. And we know people get uncomfortable with that. And sometimes it challenges our beliefs. Our own way of thinking and requires fundamental change in what we do and say. And continually assessing that. I keep saying I know but it's super important. That is the key to this. Always refreshing partnerships and policy. We all have a lot of partnerships. This isn't about creating partnerships in the community. This is the next steps in what we've done with policy partnerships. We are in the draft stages of creating a program. And we're feeling more that's really important as we consider how we want to deliver programs and think outside the box. So that's a step we're working on. And our programming team wrote the policy. United action for youth is a group in our area that the only thing I can say is they are magical. They do amazing work. As we've run into some struggles with kids in the library and created some no posters and no things, we invited them into our space and look at whether we are being inclusive into our teams and how we can work with them in the best way. They've come in twice and done training with us. And I had a request from staff to bring them back for some refreshers. They've taught us how to build relationships with our kids and taught us about the loudness of our -- how we can accommodate everyone. We get complaints from parents that we allow people to be too loud. We know our space is a family space. We're a noisy library. Our most recent project is inclusive mural we receive a grant to develop. And put out an invitation of a muralalist to come in and work with local teens to design and create a piece that reflects them in our community. That's going to be a moveable mural on the library. They've done a lot of projects researching youth counsel working with our staff to create the behavior flow chart. Researching how we can address food insecurity. And what our role is in that. And helping plan program. Our staff took advantage to do diversity audits. Something we never would have been able to accomplish but all of our kids material went through audit and looked at through the rubric. And that's ongoing with every piece of material. Our staff -- and to take it further, we give space to our citizens to develop habits of lifelong learning and create educated community youth that makes our library sustainable. As one of the last free public spaces. We wanted to include a statement in our meeting room policy that I'll show you next. This is what we have. We wanted a statement that just said we weren't going to let anyone use our meeting rooms if they are going to discriminate. And our city attorney told us we weren't allowed to do that. So instead, he helped us come up with the VSH adjective you see. I'm not going to read it. I just wanted to show it to you. This is at the bottom of our calls. We don't discriminate ofp anybody in our space. And all this is available to you on the web site. So we are at the end almost. I did pretty well. I do want to circle back really briefly to the title slide that you saw. I want to talk about our work and why I chose that slide. We've done a presentation similar to this called policies of yes. With the idea librarians do have a role in social responsibility. Our work of library shifting towards the inclues I have policies just through that informal discussion is captured in that. Which comes from that book the year of yes. That is what centers it for us. And that is the very act of saying yes is not just life changing, it is lifesaving. Our staff is trained to find ways to say yes. That doesn't always mean that they are going to deliver the service. It means they are going to try to find ways to help people get to where they want to be. It might be yes we can do this for you and might be we can connect you with someone else who can do it for you. How can we be flexible and meet our patron's needs and give them the space to give them what they want every time they walk through our doors. And I'm ready for questions. I have plenty more I can say if you'd like. Or fire some questions at me. >> Fantastic. There was a great question and you just, again, emphasizing the flexibility. Really aligns with the challenge here. We find ourselves coming to the defense of autistic person. Genedle reminders is in violation of our patron behavior policy. He is there everyday waiting between buses and he has driven patrons away nearly mowing down small children to catch his bus. When we try tone force the policy, they say well you don't enforce it for him. This is a perfect example of those -- you talked about that 99% of the people don't need policies or they are not for them. How do you address a lot of what you've talked about in terms of flexibility and inclusion in situations like this? >> JENNIE GARNER: That's really hard. You can't say you know he's autistic? You are not saying those things to that patron. It's not a similar situation. But we had a patron there all day. And someone came up to me and said is he homeless? I said I didn't ask him. They said he was here this morning and now he's here. I wanted to say are you homeless? You saw him this morning and saw him now, why are you asking that question in the first place? I think the best thing I can think of to say is we provide equitable service to everyone. We're not here to provide equal service. If you can get to the point of helping people understand the equitable and equal aren't the same. We're delivering services in the best way we can to every person that comes through our doors for their circumstances. And his circumstances are very different from yours. So we have a little bit of flexibility in working with him. That said, if it's behavior that's super disruptive, is there a way that you can provide in a separate space? We have laptops we can move someone to another space with a laptop. It's really hard. That's a hard question to answer. We have someone that brings a dog in. No one complains about the dog but someone's been complaining about the dog. I'm not addressing that with her. The dog is harming no one. The dog sits on the chair while she's on the computer and leave promptly and quickly. We do not have a policy that says the dog can't be in the library. And so I talked to the individual who brought the complaint about and I said if that dog is disruptive, we'll work with that. So far, that hasn't happened because the dog is not breaking our conduct in our library. In our library, everybody has to do what's best. If someone is purposely -- the difference with autistic person, they are not purposely break rules. Then that person is in violation of your conduct policy, in my opinion. >> Yeah. There's a great suggestion here too around similar situations where there needs to be some sort of coordination with a care giver, for example. Or definitely bringing up opportunities to partner with agencies that maybe work with populations to get their input, your staff training comment. Maybe there's some staff training that could happen. >> JENNIE GARNER: The next thing I would say is if you take a look at our child safety and vulnerable adult policy, if someone is continually breaking our conduct, they would require someone with them. That would become a requirement. We would find another way to serve them. They are getting service but not at the same level. Not sitting at a computer being disruptive. If we can accommodate them in another way or work with their care giver. I do think it's important they aren't disruptiving the whole library. So it's really hard to come to that gray area. It's a great suggestion. I would take a look at our policy for that. We have an autistic staff person as well. And I address behaviors with him if there's a behavior to be addressed. We talk through it. Sometimes the care giver comes in as well. He's on our staff and he's come a long way and we work with him and breakdown things in a way that is understandable to him. And there's a great comment in there. >> Definitely. Yeah. Your staff -- this is why it's so important to work with your staff on policy review. You have perhaps staff in your team that can share their experience. I know we're just about at the top of the hour. Had I a question. When you were talking about a time line for reviewing policies, do you review them part of your strategic planning? You are constantly reviewing them. I'd hate to see someone take on policy reviewing only. How do you frame that? >> JENNIE GARNER: We have a review calendar I'm happy to share. We review one to two policies a month. That's my timer telling me that I'm done. I didn't want to go over. >> The schedule would be helpful. We can add that. And there was a question about how do you get buy in from staff who don't believe everyone belongs in the library? >> JENNIE GARNER: This is going to be probably controversial but there are some things that are nonnegotiable. This is policy and if it's in your policy that you welcome everyone to your library, then the buy in is required as part of the job. >> Good point. Excellent. We are definitely at the top of the hour. I so appreciate all the contributions and discussion that you all brought to chat. Chat will be available as a resource so you can revisit that. I will send you all an email later today once the recording and all your gems are posted. I'll also send you a certificate automatically. And I'm going to send you to a short survey. We collect that feedback to share with our presenters and helps us plan our on-going programming. If you don't have time now, the email will include a link to that survey. >> JENNIE GARNER: I love talking about this stuff. I didn't get to this slide. But this is me and my family and my reason. My reason is personally and professionally for doing this work. I appreciate all of you being here and the great feedback. Please reach out to me on my email here or anywhere else. I would love to talk more. I'll get in a zoom with you or whatever. >> Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jennie. It's been great to hear your continuing journey. Thank you to your team for sharing their great work. And everyone have a great rest of your week and we'll see you at our next WebJunction webinar. And don't forget to check out ARSL. Lots of small and rural library folks ready to be part of your community. Thank you, all. >> JENNIE GARNER: Thanks, everybody.