All right. I am going to go ahead and get us started. My name is Jennifer Peterson. I am so glad to have you here today. My colleague, Kendra Morgan, is logged in as WJ support to assist you with any tech related questions you might have. We created a learner guide for today's session. This is a resource for you, to extend the learning on your topic. There are a number of questions for discussion or steps for you to take if something you can work through on your own. We encourage you to use it as a tool to work through with your team. You can customize the guide. You can make it your own, change questions to align with your efforts, but this is a resource for you to take next steps to leave the session with some action so that you can apply your learning. I am so excited to welcome today's presenter, Melissa Munn, is the owner of Melissa Munn consulting. She has a deep, deep wealth of experience in this area, so I am going to, actually, pass it on over to you. Welcome, Melissa. Thank you so much for being here. >> Melissa: Thank you so much. I was listening to all of the intros, and I was making sure my computer was set up appropriately. So, thank you for that. I am so excited to be here, and I am thankful for the opportunity to kind of talk about something that is really meaningful to me, personally. I've been doing this work for a while, and so I just want to talk a little bit about myself first to give you a little bit of background of kind of where I am coming from. I am not a librarian by trade. I, amend, have a degree in criminology, which is kind of a strange way that I landed in libraries, but it is something that has really benefited me because the criminology degree is a theory-base so we focused a lot on why people do the things that they do, which has come into play a lot in the library. So, I was really thankful that I was able to utilize my degree in this work. And then previous to coming to the libraries, I spent ten or so years specifically working with marginalized communications populations, sorry, in our social service industry. So, I did a lot of direct service, both with young people in our criminal Justice system, and our Foster care system, working with individuals that were unhoused, so I have got a lot of really specific one-on-one direct work with a lot of groups of people that I think we see in our library. One thing I always say is when I was doing case management, I knew I could always find my client when they didn't show up at the library, so when the opportunity to work with libraries came about, it was a perfect combination of my education and experience working in this kind of public service field, so it was really magical that it all came together. I spent about 11 years now in library leadership specifically, and specifically focused most of my 11 years on patron behavior and library safety and security. My role with the King County library outside of Seattle was very much about training, supporting, coaching staff about how to manage our spaces, how to create spaces that are safe and welcoming for all of our patrons how to know when you are not the right person, and know how to tap into your resources. So, it is something that I've been doing for a long time, and I am really excited to share it with a lot of people. I will say a lot of things today, so I hope I capture all of my highlights, but bear with me as we kind of walk through this. I wanted to kind of get our brains thinking about when you think about library safety and security, what are the things that you and your staff are uncertain about how to handle? We will talk specifically about how I approach managing library spaces, but I want to know from you, what are the things that you just are like, I struggle with this one. This is something that I am not sure about. Put it in the chat. I want to be able to come back to those. I am going to keep going as you are all kind of putting in all your great thoughts. I also want to bring attention to the fact that, you know, we have, it looks like, 400 some odd people here that are a wealth of knowledge, too. I, by no means, are an expert in this. I have a lot of experience. I have a lot of different perspectives to look through, but you all have so much experience working in libraries, and I think that he was really important that you access that wealth in this room -- wealth of knowledge in this room, so I hope that we all learn from each other today. So I see them flooding in. I am excited to kind of get through those a little bit later. So, one of the things that I can say about how I kind of look at managing and thinking about our library spaces, specifically, the safety and security, and specifically, to behavior, is kind of on this continuum. There are illegal things that happen in our libraries where we know how to navigate that, right. We know that we are likely going to call 9-1-1, we are likely going to prioritize our safety and security and our patrons' safety and security, kind of navigate the environment until first responders can respond. That is illegal stuff. It is not okay in our library. Then, there is this other stuff that's kind of low-level behavior, low-level in the sense that it is the kids that are running constantly or the teens that are too loud or that kind of ongoing stuff that is annoying. We just have to address all the time to manage the space, but we are not real worried about it. We might be just more annoyed about it than anything. And then there is this middle ground of kind of this behavior that causes us to feel uncomfortable, uncertain, not confident, not really sure how to navigate it, not sure if it falls within our code of conduct, if it doesn't, specifically, call it out. How do I respond? And am I worrying sometimes about how patrons might respond to me, if I am addressing it. So, I think that there is kind of there spectrum, and I want to focus a lot today on kind of that uncomfortable, how do we address the uncomfortable? How do we address staff that might not be real clear cut, so I am hoping that I will be able to, you know, get us thinking a little bit differently, a little bit more holistically, come up with some strategies, maybe some things that you might be able to take back and work with your teams on. And, of course, you know, I just kind of jump right into the good stuff right off the get-go because I want us to be -- I mean, I don't want to sugar-coat what we are talking about today, and I think that there is a lot of stuff that we can kind of just push aside or not really talk specifically about. So, I wanted to just kind of put out there some real obvious things that are tension points for us right now as we manage our spaces, as we try and address the behavior, and more importantly, how do we support our staff, right, when they are navigating some of this stuff. Something that's really top of mind for me right now in my work, and what I didn't say before in my introduction is that I am currently working with the Pierce county library system as a customer experience Director for public operations, so my current role outside of my kind of consulting stuff, my current role is being responsible for all of our public space, and how patrons use our libraries, safety and security and security, and all our behavior management policy, all those types of things are under my purview, previous to my time with Pierce county, I was with King County for years focusing on the patron behavior stuffer for the ten years before that, so I forgot to tell you that that's what it is. But right now top of mind for me in my work specifically is this balance that I am trying to navigate between the First Amendment and the fact that our library industry is fundamentally based on the First Amendment, right, and everybody's right to have their opinions, whether we agree with them or not, and how that conflicts with our workplace violence policies, or even our anti-harassment policies. So, what we are seeing in our libraries are people coming in with opinions or thoughts that are, you know, contradictory or might be harmful to some of the people in our buildings that might violate our workplace violence or anti-harassment policy, but it is the right to have their opinion. So, really, trying to balance that. So thinking about really being clear about the difference between hate speech, that is what protected, and the conduct that comes with that, that is not protected really digging into figuring out what our responsibilities are as library administrators, as library leadership to be able to create policies and structure for our staff when navigating that. The other thing is, you know, we -- people can come in and say things that might be harmful. We don't agree with, are questionable, but might not be against our code of conduct, so how do we balance that and how do we respond to our staff or patrons that are impacted when we are having to kind of provide space for our patrons to come in who have a legal right to be there and have opinions that differ from some of us. So, I don't think that there is really any easy answer. It's definitely a tension point. I think it's something that we have to continue to keep talking about and really look at it from all angles to figure out if I can't limit something that is protected, then how do I support the staff that are having to navigate that every day, and that can be impacted by that. So, that's one tension point. There are many others. Some of them are, how do we address photography or filming in the library? We know that there is a movement right now to audit all of our public spaces to determine the nature that we are falling in line, and ad hering to the rights of people's First Amendment right, which I totally think is great and agree with, and then how do we create our guidance and our policies or our structures for our staff to know what is an appropriate thing that we can address, what is something that we can't address, and how does that -- how does that work in our public spaces. Service animals, also, is kind of a hot topic. I tend to -- you will learn from me kind of throughout the day that I tend to have a little bit more of a -- I don't want to say lenience, but I want to say kind of a more open way to look at a lot of these things. When I think about service animals, I prefer to think about the behavior of the animal, rather than getting into a power struggle about whether or not they technically qualify as a service animal or not. Our library staff are not qualified to make that determination. There is no legal requirement that they have to show proof, so I am like, let's not even get into that power struggle. Let's focus on the behavior. It doesn't always land well, that opinion or that strategy, but it is something that I think that we can get behind, and it is a way for our staff to be able to manage the space, manage it, make sure it is safe for everybody, and address the behavior that is observable by these animals. So, another tension point that we all have different viewpoints and different strategies on. People experiencing homelessness. I know, you know, this comes up a lot. People ask me a lot of questions. Melissa, how do I deal with them? I always say back, like you would any other patron because they are just like any other patron. They have the right and the access and the ability to be in our spaces like anybody else. So, I have said it once. I will probably say it a thousand more times, we need to move away from thinking about the condition of somebody, whether they are housed or unhoused, and we really need to focus on what is it that they are doing in our buildings. How can I respond to what they are doing in our buildings because that will, inevitably, help me to be able to remove any bias that I might have, right, if I am focusing solely on the behavior. And then mental illness and substance abuse disorder. I don't know about you, but I think libraries across the country, we are seeing such an increase of this, and there is a -- I think that there is an inherent, instant fear around this, or a fear that I see from staff in the uncertainty of how to navigate it. I think that it's really important for us to not assume things about people, not assume that they are under the influence, not assume that they are having a mental health crisis and really look at what's happening and responding to what's happening, making sure that we are getting care for people that are acting in a way that is unhealthy or they are unable to care for themselves. Lots of ways to approach these topics. A lot of different ideas and strategies. There is no one perfect answer. We really have to look at our library spaces specifically, our systems as a whole, our organizational policies to figure out how we can address these kind of in a holistic way. >> Melissa, I thought I would jump in, if you would like a little summary of some of the other things that folks mentioned in terms of tension points. >> Melissa: Absolutely. I am glad that someone is navigating the chat. >> Well, they definitely touched on many. of the ones you touched upon. A couple other once I thought I would mention, folks bringing large amounts of personal belongings with them to the library. Social media stalkers, that was one that jumped out. Active shooter events, questionable computer use. A couple folks chimed in, they are in open-carry states, so when folks come in with open carry, how that works both for the safety and security of -- or how patrons are feeling as well as staff. Graffiti. Vandalism. De-escalation. I thought this was interesting, I am most concerned about psychological safety and security, especially for staff, the after-math of handling instances are cumulative trauma when you are constantly facing the public. >> Melissa: Yes. >> Angry co-workers. Neuro-divergent patrons. Folks who pay not understand the guidelines, for example, a person who has a tick that causes them to make sound continuously and how that impacts other patrons. Lots of folks mentioned micro-aggressions, so that's a summary for you,. >> Melissa: Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Melissa: Thank you so much. There is so much, and every time you mention something I am like, oh, I have an idea, or I have a thought. I have lots of thoughts around a lot of those things, and I think that -- yeah, I mean, you learn a bit more as we go through because I want to talk a bit about our code of conduct, and our exclusion policies and kind of support for staff. So, I want to make sure that we go through that, and I hope that I am able to touch on at least some tools and tips that might be helpful for you. So, let's keep going and see kind of where we land, and hopefully I will answer some stuff, but there will be some spots in there that we can answer some very specific questions. So, when I think about -- one of the things that I learned very quickly when I started in libraries is that I had a very different perspective from any of the library leaders that I was working with. I attribute that to my experience working in social services, and coming from the perspective of the customer, the patron, the client, you know, and how they access our libraries and what are the things that they are coming in for? And then the other piece, the more I started working and training and coaching staff, I really kind of got this kind of staff perspective and how do we create spaces so that everybody is welcome. So, these are just kind of some things that come to my mind when I think about the philosophy that I work under, and then I talk with all the staff I support, is that I really want to think about it in a holistic way, which is, you know, what this Webinar is about today, thinking about these different levels of how can we address the things that are happening in our buildings so that our staff are feeling safe and that they have the tools necessary to be able to do their job well. My overall goal, and I think all of our libraries' over-all goal should be to keep our patrons in the libraries. I know that there are staff that I talk to that just want to get people out as quickly as possible, and I will always challenge them and ask them, what can we do different that can help them stay in the library? How do we create ways to help them learn how to be successful in the library? I see that very much as a role of staff to help teach our patrons how to be successful in the library so they can remain. The other thing that is really dear to me is understanding that the more we can build relationships, not only with our patrons, but with our colleague, with our community, the more likely it is that we are all going to be able to get our needs met and our goals met, and so relationships are one huge, huge asset that we have in our tool belt to really kind of tackle some of the things that are really, really challenging. We know that we cannot predict things that come through our front door. We are a public space. Everybody is welcome. This is the last space in our communities where you don't have to pay a membership fee or fill out an application. You can just come to be, and that brings lots of different people and different challenges and personalities, and the thing that we can do as library leadership and library organizations and institutions is help our staff to be prepared, give them the tools, provide them the structure, provide them the Avenues to get support and prepare them as well as we possibly can. I will refer to my tool belt, I hear this in a lot of different trainings, our tool belts should be full of all different kinds of things, sometimes we will try one tool it, doesn't work. We try a different one and see if that might work. The more tools we can have on our tool belt, the better we will be prepared and confident and have the ability to recognize how sometimes this one is better for certain situations. So, I am all about adding tools to the tool belt. And then I will always look through a trauma-informed lens. I think it has -- I have internalized it so much over my years of working with marginalized populations that I don't even realize it is a trauma-informed approach, but it is so it is a lot of the work I do comes through that lens, and I think that it's extremely valuable in our public libraries today because we are seeing so much people coming in that are experiencing and have experienced trauma. So, when I think about holistic, this is a definition that just came from Webster. So, I was like, well, that fits it pretty, you know, pretty clearly, is relating to or concerned with the whole or with complete systems rather than the one individual part. So, when I think about being holistic and thinking about libraries as a holistic way to address behavior, safety and security, security, I think about it in these different levels. I think about it from an organizational standpoint, I think about it from our spaces such as our actual, physical library spaces, but I also think about it as like our on-line spaces, as well. And then definitely our humans, or our staff. They are one of our biggest assets when it comes to creating safe and welcoming spaces, and so how do we create the foundation for them to do their jobs well? So, when we look at the organization, it is important to think about, you know, leadership, kind of strategic planning, of course, comes into play, and the one thing that I have learned over time in a couple of different organization, and even in social service, is that our culture starts at the top, and our change starts at the top, and it's really important to have leaders in an organization that recognize that we oftentimes create more barriers for our patrons, and that we have to be the ones that are willing to change, and we have to be willing to take those barriers away. So, I think about when we think about our organizational direction for creating spaces that are safe and welcoming, this is where we have to stop. We have to start at the organizational level. So, let's talk about barriers. I have learned working in libraries that not only are our library staff the loudest people in the library, and I joke about library staff all the time about, I am in libraries kind of randomly as a customer, but also, when I am working, and we are always the loudest people in that building, and it makes a lot of sense because we are just kind of coming to work, but it is important for us to recognize that that is something that we ask people to be quiet, and then we don't think about it for ourselves. So, just kind of a disconnect there. But, we also are really good at creating barriers for our pay fronts to obtaining access. So, when I think about the requirements to get a library card, you know, oftentimes we require I.D. or an address. If you are thinking about somebody who is unhoused who may be has lost their I.D. or maybe their stuff has gotten stolen, it is nearly impossible. If you have tried to work any of our systems, to get an I.D., the hoops you have to jump through, the people you have to call, the places you have to go -- you need a social security card to get an ID but to get an I.D., you need the social security to get the ID and the I.D. to get the social security card. So, it becomes this kind of loop that is nearly impossible to get out of. And so, when I think about other ways that we can reduce those barriers, you know, do we have to have a library card to reserve a room or a meeting space? Do we have to have library cards that have limits on who can check out how many based on whether or not they have an address or not? There are a lot of things that we put into place that I think are barriers to people accessing our services and being able to access the things that they probably need more than a lot of others. Fines and fees, I know across the country people are starting to eliminate fines and fees, which I think is great. Thinking about people -- I talked with customers that are just like, I am so excited to come back to the library now that I don't have fines on my account. And I was like, well, why didn't you come back and use us in any other way, and they were like, I was embarrassed or ashamed or afraid that they would know as soon as I walked in that I had all these fines that I couldn't afford, so they just don't come back so I love this idea of getting rid of fines and fees. Our policies, our policies are barriers in a lot of ways, and we will talk about our code of conduct and exclusion policies in just a bit, but, we have to think about how do our policies, when we are doing an actual review of them, how do we remove the barriers that we inherently put in them. And then transportation. I think about transportation because we offer a lot of programs and services in our buildings, and a lot of our patrons just flat out don't have access to transportation to get them there, so how do we take services to where they are at? How do we meet our patrons who are most vulnerable who need us the most? How do we take us to them so this we can remove that barrier for them? There is a whole host of other things that we can do, just some of the things that come to mind for me about how we, as an organization, can do the work to create spaces where more and more people are welcomed and able and have access to our spaces. When we look at our policies and our practices, one of the things that I also learned was really important is that it is imperative that our library understands the laws in your city, in your state. Our Federal laws that are influencing our policies. We get a lot of people that ask why. We get a lot of people that wonder why we have got this policy, and if there is a law that is driving or influencing why we are creating a policy, I think it's really important for us to understand and be able to articulate that. And then that, also, influences and can help us to create practices for our staff with those laws and policies in place. One of the things that, when I was at King County, I got a lot of questions around certain things. And so I created this series called "time to talk about it." It covered a lot of our hot topics. Our first one was about people experiencing homelessness. We did a "time to talk about" filming and photography in the library. We did a time to talk about drugs and alcohol in the library. We did a time to talk about service animals and I think that what that did for staff is it really gave them -- the f format was the same, we talked about rules that influence our policies and what our stance was, and we provided some best practices. We also provided some talking points because we knew that a lot of things that the staff were hearing and the struggles they were having was they were not sure how to talk with the public about it. So, we wanted to provide them some talking points. I founded these to be very helpful to talk through some of these nuance, the Gray areas, what do we do about, you know, people who bring in lots of stuff, like can we limit the amount of stuff people are bringing in? We can, and that is another barrier to be able to -- we are targeting a population because we know the people that bring in lots of stuff, right, so how do we, instead, create policies to say, you can bring in your stuff but here are the ways in which it needs to be in our space. How do we have your stuff in the building, and then it doesn't block access? That you can have eyes on it? That you are responsible for it? And you can still be in our space and utilize our space, so there is lots of ways that we can, kind of, navigate around that stuff, but I think that it's really important for us to understand our laws. On some other policies that I think come into play is our meeting room use policy. If you are a library system that has opened up your meeting rooms to be reserved by the public, you have become a limited public forum, which then, in turn, limits the things that we can limit. So we have to be really aware of those decisions and how that impacts us. Our confidentiality, how do we hold confidential -- confidentiality at a level for our patrons when police come in looking for them, when parents are worried about their children who have run away or are wanting to know if they showed up at the library after school. How do we hold our patrons' confidentiality with that high standard and create structure for our staff so that they understand why that's a value and why that's important. Our exclusion policies are really important on the chain around a team library that does not have exclusion policies. They only have restorative practices, and I was like, oh, my gosh, that makes my heart just grow a couple of sizes. I think that that's amazing. So, how do we get from kicking everybody out to working to try and keep them in? How do we create structures for staff to utilize and exclude people with confidence, and have a system that will back them up based on, you know, how we are empowering them. And then our library use and behavior policies, I think are the one area that we can do a lot of work to really create spaces that people can access and that are safe and give a lot of guidance for our staff. Okay. So, let's talk about our behavior policies. Something that is near and dear to my heart, I review behavior policies all the time. I am in the process of reviewing my current system's behavior policy in this moment. We tend to contradict ourselves sometimes in our behavior policies, and we make a lot of assumptions. We also think that if we list out every "no" that that's going to help our staff, and what I have learned is that it is the very opposite. When we create policies that are very specific, it, actually, ends up limiting the power that our staff have to manage the space. So, I would encourage you to think about it more broadly. I would encourage you to think about how do we create more opportunities for our staff to be empowered to manage the space, and one way to do that is to broaden our code of conduct. At King County, when we revised our code of conducted, we landed on four rules. One of them was anything unsafe or disruptive was not okay. I shorten it to, don't break our stuff, but it is inappropriate use of our property or equipment. And then no illegal behavior, and then complying with staff's request, reasonable requests. Pretty much any behavior that somebody would ask me about, I would A, ask all of those questions, and we could generally fit it into an umbrella. The other thing I think you have to think about behavior policies is that recognizing that we have a lot of opportunity in the library with our staff managing the space to empower them to know what is a reasonable response. So, just because somebody is using their cell phone, maybe you have got it in your rule that says, no cell phone use. But, Tuesday mornings when story-time comes out and all the kids are running and screaming to pick their favorite books, it's so loud in the library, somebody could probably use their cell phone and nobody would even know, right. So, are you enforcing that rule just to enforce the rule? Or are you creating it, a more broad rule that says, you know, any use of electronic devices that are disruptive to the environment, right, because then it could be different on a different day based on the circumstances of the environment at that moment. So, I think that's really important. The other thing that we have to take a hard look at is are our rules targeting populations of people. There are certain behaviors that our public do not like to see in our libraries that are very specific to one or two populations of humans. I think that we have to think about what are we doing that is contradictory? What are we doing that is limiting their access? And the one that comes to my mind is we -- most of us, most library systems have some type of point in their code of conduct around hygiene, and then they also have something in there about using your -- our restrooms for bathing, like bathing and shaving, all. Those things. I am thinking about how contradictory they are. We are asking somebody to leave the library because of their hygiene but we are not providing them a rest room to ask them what they can do so they can come back into the library, so I go back to focusing on the behavior. Can they use the restroom to clean up, to be able to fall back into our expectations of hygiene without making a mess? Probably. Are we going to give them the opportunity to do that? I hope so. I see staff in my building, brushing their teeth in our bathroom after lunch all the time. I see staff in our bathrooms at the building I work in changing their clothes to go to the gym after work all the time, but these are things that we might limit for our public to not use our restrooms for, and I would just ask, have you think about -- thinking about it more broadly about what is the behavior we are trying to avoid? We don't want people to make a mess in the bathroom. We don't want people to spread their stuff all over the counter, make it so nobody else can use it, but I think brushing their teeth, taking a bird bath, making it sure they can come back into the library is a pretty reasonable expectation. It doesn't mean you all have to do that. I am just offering a different perspective and a different way to think about it. So, when we have to exclude or when we think about excluding patrons, based on our code of conduct, I would encourage us to empower our staff to think about the whole picture, think about what's happening in our libraries right now that is leading me to address this behavior. Is it because the library is super quiet because it's, you know, Thursday morning and it's normally a pretty quiet day, and there is some loud phone conversation happening? Maybe we need to address that. So, what is happening right now in the library? What are the circumstances? And what do I need to address? There is always room for exceptions, there is always room for opportunity to say hey, could you just step outside for a second and come back when you are ready? Teens, I think about teens who are my favorite population of people. And I think gosh, they come in with so much energy and they are loud and they love being at the library and they love being with their friends, and maybe you just, instead of kicking them out for the day because they won't listen, maybe you are like, go burn off some energy outside, run around the building a couple times. Come back in, we would love to have you back. Think about ways we can keep our patrons in the library, and not have to exclude them, which ultimately is something that can hit harder for them that, I think, we think about. The other thing, too, around when we exclude patrons, we created this process, and I think it works really well. I think that there is good ways to implement it and bad ways to implement it. But I would encourage you to assume that your patrons don't know the rules. Assume that they don't know that they have never been in a library. Give them an opportunity to change. Give them an opportunity to make a different decision to stop whatever it is that they are doing, and inform them of the behavior, inform them of what's not okay. And then when they don't stop, then give them the opportunity to make the right choice. This is oftentimes when you need to set a limit, give them choices, like, you can do this or you can do this, and I need you to be quiet, and if not, I am going to need you to step outside until you can be quiet, and then you can come back in. And then be able to follow through. Those are all really things that are very important to be able to have people figure out how to be back in a library successfully. Incident response. Somebody mentioned incident response in the thing. It is something that I work really hard to try and create some structure around and some guidance for staff and support because I think incident response is one of the areas that we fall down a lot as leaders and managers, and so I think that it's really important that when we are having to document something, it's important for us to have really clear guidance for staff, what is something to report and what is something to not report? There are different levels of incidents. We all have different tolerances, right. What might be an incident for you, might not be an incident for me, and vice versa, so we have to create some structure around identifying what is it that we, actually, want you to report. And then who has access? This is really important when we think about a systems who provide access to all of the reports for all of the people, thinking about people that are reading all the incident reports, there will be impact on that, and it can impact not only them, but their colleagues in negative ways. If I am reading incidents constantly, I am hyper vigilant about what I am worried about might be coming down the pike. So, thinking about whether or not that is a way to help staff manage their emotions, and hyper-vigilance around that. Following up with staff is really important for managers. We need to make sure that we are on the regular, checking in with our staff who have been involved in an incident, to make sure that they are getting the support that's necessary, whether that's EAP support or debrief support or maybe checking in with them, but we need to make sure that we are checking in with them on a regular basis, and then creating a communication plan, how we communicate out about an incident, whether it's to the local staff group, whether it's to a regional staff group, whether it's to the whole system, it has to be coordinated. It has to be thoughtful. And we also have to think about, if this incident was surge, that it might not end up in the media, how can we communicate with the media about it. Okay. Spaces. Spaces is another place that I think is really important when we are looking at the -- from the balcony and the organization, we want to home in on the spaces and what we can do in our spaces that can help to create that welcoming, safe space and provide some foundations for our staff. When I think about physical spaces, I think about all of the things that we can do in a library that we can change physically that might influence the behavior that we are seeing. Oftentimes we might see a behavior, and we might wonder, gosh, if I could just do this differently, you know, that might stop that behavior. We have to balance that with creating welcoming spaces, as well, right, and comfortable and warm and inviting and places for kids to play and places for people to sit and be comfortable. But, there are also things that we can do around safety and security. Think about your sidelines. I was just at the Columbus, Ohio main branch, and all of their stacks and all of their floors are like 48 or 50 inches, and I was like, this is magical because I can see all the way to the back the building, anybody who is back there. That's something that, for me, is really important that we are not creating barriers in our buildings, we create pockets of places where stuff can happen. Thinking about our restrooms, how do we create them to be safe? We locked open a lot of doors in our restrooms so there is this sense of, not the sense of like, privacy almost in there, that anybody can kind of come in. We can also hear things when they are happening. And then, making any exterior modifications, you know. Landscaping, I hear a discussion a lot about, and then making any changes -- sometimes you have to remove benches or maybe you have to cap some outlets. A lot of places have Wi-Fi after hours, which I think is an excellent service. It can cause problems, so what's the behavior that's happening that we might need to address that's based on that. And then thinking about accessibility and universal design. I just took a Webinar from Webjunction a couple of weeks ago around universal design strategies that I thought was really great, so if you have an opportunity, go and watch that Webinar. It made me think about all the things, all the changes that I want to make in a lot of our buildings up here in Pierce County. Managing public spaces is one of the things that I talk about a lot in my day-to-day. And my biggest thing is to focus on the behavior. I have said it probably ten times already. Instead of policing the spaces, if we are focusing on what we are observing and not constantly watching out for bad behavior, it will shift the way in which we feel about being in the library space. So, we really want to focus on what the behavior is that we are seeing and can respond to. Being present on the floor is our biggest asset to deterring negative behavior. If our patrons, if we are greeting them out the door, whether you have a specific greeter or it's just your desk by the door and you wave to everybody, whatever that looks like in your branch, if we are acknowledging and recognizing every single person in our building and being present on the floor, it's a huge d, deterrent. We have to be in our public bathrooms. When we are not in all spaces in our building, we hand them over to other people to do whatever they want. So, I always use the public restroom any time that I am in a library. Sometimes I just wash my hands and wipe down the countered because it always seems to be a river or a lake on the counter. I am always present in there. I am present with my name tag on. I am not anything other than washing my hands, but they know I am in the space and I think that's one of the biggest things we can do. The other thing is to identify what are staff empowered to do? Can they ban somebody? Can they trespass somebody? Can they close the building if something really significant happens? Do they have to get permission, or can they, in their informed decision-making, be able to decide that this is what we need to do for our staff to be cared for is to close the building. I will always advocate, it doesn't mean you close the building for the day or two days, sometimes we just need some time to like gather ourselves when something significant happened. And then I talk a little bit, and I will go into another slide around trauma-informed approaches, which I think are really important, some easy, simple things that we can do. We want to look through that lens of being trauma-informed because that, ultimately, creates spaces where everybody feels as if they belong and are included, so being trauma-informed doesn't, it doesn't ex clue people, it includes people, and I think that's important. The shift from trauma-informed to what is healing-centered engagement, we can call it whatever we want, but it is a concept that was created or identified by Shawn Genright dealing with at risk populations. When I think about healing-centered, it's more than the trauma people experienced, but as a whole, and understanding what that healing looks like from that trauma, and how does that apply in the libraries. Could you imagine if we became spaces that encouraged the healing of the people in our communities and the staff in our building that have experienced trauma by the programming or the spaces that we create? I can't wait to dive into this a little bit more, so this is something I am really doing a lot of reading about. Some simple things that you could do as a trauma-informed person, having staff wear their name badges so they are easily identifiable to our patrons. If you have access and an ability to create gender-neutral bathrooms, I would highly encourage that. Making sure our code of conduct or our behavior expectations are posted clearly for everybody and that we can show people where they are. We might offer some sensory-friendly tools. There is a great organization out there, and right now, I can't think about the name of it, but they will work with you to become a sensory-friendly organization and provide you with tool kits to offer to your people, which is awesome. Trauma-informed programs, offering stress reduction, mindfulness tools, coping skills. I added a resource to the resource list about a library I want to say in the U.K. that is doing a month-long of reducing stress and anxiety as their programming focus, and I thought that was really awesome. And then focusing on the care of staff because our staff are also experiencing trauma, have experienced trauma, and how do we train our managers in managing not only spaces and the result of incidence, but how do we train them to debrief and really check in thoughtfully about the incident and impact for our staff. So, I would be interested to hear something to think about how you can look at maybe creating opportunities to kind of shift to this healing-center engagement idea. I can't wait to do more about that. So, this is an opportunity where we have some time to do some questions before we jump into the human part of this. And I have seen the chat over here blowing up, which is super exciting for me to go back and read it later. >> Yes. Thank you so much to everyone for your wonderful conversation in chat. Lots of great ideas being shared. Don't stop doing that. A few questions that I think folks would like to hear from you on, and a reminder, that we are going to continue on past the top of the hour, all the way to the bottom of the next hour, so remember that we will be pausing for questions again, so keep your questions coming. A couple areas that I think we should probably touch on, a couple folks mentioned offensive odor policies, and the issue where it's not being enforced across the odor spectrum, both for those folks that have strong perfumes or body sprays that affect people, so in terms of offensive odor, that was something that folks wanted to note, but also, recommendations for -- lots around -- let's see, there was a question around how do you deal with folks with odor issues? Can you talk a bit about how you maybe have addressed those with policies along that continuum. >> Yeah. I think it is important for us to not the necessarily focus on the hygiene part. I think including all overall, all overred, strong perfumes, and another thing that comes into place, people bring in hot food, that is just like spicy or really smelly, so when we think about the broadness of it, you know, things that are smelly or disruptive to the environment in that way is a good way to address it. When you are struggling to address an individual that has a high, that has a hygiene issue, I would always make it not about themselves, but about their clothing or belongings. And I will give you a bit of a funny story. I have a younger sister. She's 18 years younger than me. She traveled around south side America for a very long time hiking and backpacking and all of that. I picked her up from the airport one day. She got in my car after she had been gone for eight months, and I was like oh, my gosh, you smell so terribly. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I was like, okay, you need to roll the window down, and I feel sorry for anybody that was on the airplane next to you because this is -- she's like, I don't have any idea what you are talking about. And she had no awareness of her body odor because it was her jacket, right, so her jacket that she had worn for eight months, slept in it, hiked in it, done all of the things, has absorbed this odor over time, and she has become accustomed to it. So I think if we go into situations like that, these are individuals that don't have access to laundry and shower, and they have, likely, become accustomed to it. So don't make it about them. I think you really focusing on, you know, you might not be aware that there is an odor on your jacket or on your belongings that's really disruptive. I can smell it over there, and I really need you to take care of that, and before you come in today. Do I have some resources? Can I find you some resources? How do we connect you with something that can help you with that, and then kind of go down that path of trying to help solve. I wouldn't exclude somebody for body odor, like as far as banning them or causing them to like lose access to some services. But, I would definitely recognize, and I saw somewhere in there in the chat a little bit is like sometimes our patrons that are complaining about it are complaining about things that aren't really disruptive, so I am always encouraging staff to be the one to determine whether it's disruptive or not. So, if we are going to respond to a patron that's complaining, we need to be the determiner of what the determiner -- I don't even know if that's a word. We need to be the one that determines whether or not it is disruptive to the environment, and if it is, let's address it. If it's not, let's go back to the person who was complaining and address their concern and say, you know, it's really not something that rises to the level that we are going to address. Maybe we can find you a different place to sit in the library if it's disruptive for you. So, making sure that we are the ones that decide instead of just every patron that comes in and complains, we do something automatically about. >> Excellent. And there are some great suggestions being shared in chat. I just want to mention that Melissa is going to be talking about other kinds of training that you all can explore, and these are great resources, so keep those coming, as well. I just wanted to touch -- there was some discussion in reviewing the contributions to chat related to serving neuro-divergent patrons, and I want to acknowledge the concerns that came up noting how often neuro-divergent deals with this, and I know language is so important and the biases we hold are, indeed, to be recognized. Can you speak about how we can be more careful in our language around serving the neuro-divergent patrons? >> Yes, I will do my best. I think oftentimes we might not even know somebody is neuro-divergent, so you could easily go into it assuming that everybody is, right. I think that it's really important to ask people what they mean, ask them how we can make their experience better, making sure that we are not labeling people or making assumptions about people. Not all neuro-divergent humans do this thing or this thing and really understanding what it is, specifically, that we can help with. So, identifying how -- there is some phrases like, how do we get to "yes." What can we do to create a space so that they can remain in the library is the question that I would ask. And often times, they will be able to tell you. So, it's important to just be curious about it without judgment or without bias, be curious to learn, to be curious to hear what their needs are, and then you know, really -- I don't have any idea what it means to be neuro-divergent. That is not something that I live with or experience, and so I want to hear what it is like so that I can help figure out a way to help keep them in the library, and just go in with curiosity is probably the biggest tip that I could give somebody. >> Thank you. That's super helpful. >> Melissa: Sure. Sure. >> And -- oh, just one more question, how about, before we continue on. Lots of talk about bathrooms, both what people do in the bathrooms. There was a question about, if you have suggestions when you have a gender-public restrooms, when only one -- when the only staff person can't enter, maybe one of those gendered restrooms, so can you just talk -- restrooms, I know, could be a whole other Webinar in and of itself. >> Melissa: That's true, restrooms could be another -- >> Could you talk about bathing in the bathroom, so that is included in that. >> Melissa: Yeah. I think that -- so, going about that restrooms, I think that all staff are empowered to go into restrooms. I think that they all should go into restrooms. I think that it is -- we know that libraries are predominantly women, so at some point, there is going to be a woman that is going to need to navigate a situation in a men's restroom. My biggest thing is, if you have access to another person in the library, preferably, a staff person. I know that there are likely small libraries that don't have two staff, take somebody with you. Have them stand at the door, knock on the door, and staff is entering, and give them a minute. If you announce yourself, let them know that you are staff. Let them know. I would never recommend that you just walk full on into the bathroom, A, without introducing yourself, and B, without having somebody to watch your back. Somebody always needs to stands at the door to make sure that they have eyes on you and have eyes on either a cell phone to call 9-1-1 if you need to, but the minute we don't go in those spaces is when stuff happens that we, actually, need to be in those e spaces, so, I know it's uncomfortable. I know it's just one of those things that nobody feels good about doing. And we need to do it. We need to make sure that our staff are doing it and having the support around doing that. >> I lied, I have one more question for you, because I think that this is a good one to hear your thoughts on. >> Melissa: Okay. >> When you mentioned name tags, folks mentioned that there have been stalking concerns. How do you balance name tags with stalking concerns? >> Melissa: Well, we are at our public library, so our information is available to everybody. They can get it through a public records request. They can get it in lots of different ways. So, it's -- I am not saying you have to put your first and last name on your name tag. Your first name is fine. If you go by, you know, a nickname, that's fine, too. The problem with nicknames is that if you forget that you have a nickname on your name tag and somebody calls you by your real name, and you respond, like there is a disconnect, so you just have to be really thoughtful about it. And we have to remember we are public employees, and there is a conflict in that oftentimes. And so there is a reality of, I am choosing to work in a public library. There is a level of risk that I am -- that I am choosing every single day, and part of that is people have access to my information to know who I am. So, there is kind of that balance of like, does that happen? Absolutely. Do we want to support staff when that does happen? Absolutely. Are there strategies outside of them not having to wear a name tag that we can support them when that happens? Absolutely. So, it's just one of those balance things. So, I think that we have to kind of look at that case-by-case. >> Great. Thank you. And folks, keep sharing your questions. We will circle back around after the next segment. Thank you. >> Melissa: I am going to keep going. I am going to talk about the human part of our libraries, which I think are the most important part. I am recognizing time, and I hope that I don't blow through this content so fast because I think this is really, really important content. They are, you know, our greatest assets in the library, and I think it's important for us to develop structures and framework so that we support them so that they have the things that they need so that they can provide the best customer service and public service to our patrons who are, ultimately, our priority, right. Our focus is our patrons so we need to support our staff so they can do that and provide that service. All right. So, when we invest in our staff, they are better able to focus on the work of public service and providing access and providing service and spaces, and all of the things that our patrons need from us. These are some of the things that I think are the priorities in how we do that. We have to trust our staff. I know sometimes that feels uncomfortable in people that are in positions of leadership because there is a disconnect, because there is levels of disconnect that we put our faith in our staff, but if we have done our jobs well, and if we have created the structures and the policies and the foundation for our staff, then we should be able to trust our staff. Training. Thoughtful training about topics that are relevant and useful to our staff in our library spaces is really, really important. Some training that is skill development, is really important to repeat. You want to develop a muscle memory, especially, around de-escalation. You want to have that be an internalized language, not only with our individual staff, but within our teams, so we all want to talk the same language. Supporting our staff, we have to recognize that working in public libraries is hard work. People are hard. People working with people makes it even harder, and so we have to have a structure, a foundation of how we are going to support our staff and tools for them so that they can care for themselves and bring their best selves to work every single day. And the relationships, I said it earlier, and I will say it again, it is one of the best things that we can do not only building relationships internally, but externally that can help us do our best work. So, how do we build trust with our staff? We have to listen. We have to listen to them. We have to listen to them when they say that they need something to do their jobs. I also want to acknowledge that staff ask for a whole host of things. They ask for all kinds of things that may or may not be necessary to do their work, but when they tell you that to be able to provide better service, this is the thing that they need, we need to at least listen and acknowledge it, and then determine whether or not that's something that we can do to support them in that. So listening is number one. We have to empower them. We have to empower them to do the work that we hired them to do. I have talked with staff that are just like, every time I submit a band, somebody reverses it, and that is undermining them, makes them feel less confident in the work they are doing. They are unable to manage their spaces when we do that, so we have to be able to empower our library staff to do the work that they need to do to manage the space, to create the space so that everybody is safe and welcome. And then trust is a two-way street. And I have talked to lots of staff that don't trust leadership, and I have talked to lots of leadership that don't trust staff, and I get it. I understand it. But, did has to start somewhere. It goes both ways, so we have to be able to create -- the more we can create the structure and be consistent in that structure, the more over time that we will be accountable to that. We set the expectations. We hold ourselves accountable. We keep doing the thing that we say that we are going to do. The trust will build over time. I think that the hardest part around building trust with our staff is that every single one of us, staff, managers, leadership, all of it, we have to decide that we want to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, so we have to invest our time and our energy into that. Sometimes it doesn't sound great, but it is the work that we have to do if we are going to trust our staff to do the work. Training, something that I think is so valuable for our staff to give them the tools that they need, exploring what, you know, querying staff to figure out what would be helpful for them to be able to do their job better and support them better is something that, you know, we can do over and over and over again. So, the one little -- a couple tips that I took when I took -- I took verbal judo is what it used to be called when I was working back in detention years ago, and I took it twice, and really took a lot of Nuggets from them, so when I came to the library, I thought, this would be a really great training for library staff. It has since been taken over and called "verbal defense and influence," and I think that Jennifer linked to a resource for them. When I did the training to be a trainer, I pulled out some Nuggets that I thought would be really helpful for library staff. I didn't think they needed the full eight hours, and this is one of them. The five universal truths, so I refer to it back a lot with staff. Regardless of our differences, these are the things that people generally most people all just want. They want to be treated with dignity and respect, no matter who they are, no matter how old they are. They could be five. They could be 75. They could be somewhere in the middle. >>> They want to be asked rather than told to do something. They would like to know the "why" of why they are being asked to do something. They would like options rather than threats. And they want to be given a second chance. So when I think about how we interact with our patrons every day I hold these in the back of my mind of how do we treat people? We treat people with respect. We want to give them options. We want to let them know the reasoning behind why we are asking them to do something. Another nugget that came out of verbal judo or verbal defense and influence is the universal greeting, and I use it all the time. I use it in email a lot. Staff are always asking me, it feels weird to go up to random stranger and tell them they have to be quiet or tell them I have to correct their behavior. So I think that it's really important that we can give this tool that's a very easy structure for staff to practice and get used to that just becomes natural. It's an appropriate greeting with their name, if you know their name. If you don't know their name, what a great opportunity to ask their name. Identify yourself and your affiliation. Explain the reason. Giving them the "why" for the contact, and then asking a relevant question. So I put an example in here. Hi, my name is Melissa. I work for the library. They think that I am a librarian even though I am not a librarian, everybody is a librarian in the library. I noticed your voice was carrying around the library and I could hear it all the way over at the desk, could you please keep it a little quieter so that other patrons are not disturbed. That's the whole universal greeting in one sentence, and if I knew their name, I would be like, hey, Bob, it's Melissa again. I am at the library. Or how are you? Or, hi, my name is Melissa, I didn't catch your name. I haven't met you yet. What is your name? The opportunity to get to know who they are. Some other trainings that I think are really important, boundary's training. Boundaries came bubbled up as a topic of training when I was at the King County library, and I would get into multiple conversations around setting boundaries with patrons and realize quickly this is a valuable skill that is not taught in libraries. So, I have created a boundary's training that I offered there, been teaching it to some other systems. It is really important for them to understand the difference between Honoring my boundary and setting a healthy boundary, and then enforcing the library rule of conduct. There is a difference. We can talk about that in the training, but boundaries are really, really important to be able to keep themselves healthy and safe. Any type of trauma-informed training that you can access, social work, task force put out a trauma-informed workbook. I bought it for all the people that I support, and a workbook, so you can work through it with your staff group around understanding trauma, understanding how it impacts people, how it shows up for them, and then working through some strategies and some scenarios and some kind of phrases and language. De-escalation. I mean, I think that we probably all do this, or at some point, you know, want to. I would recommend that de-escalation is a repeated training regularly so that it becomes internalized. We create a shared language amongst our staff so that we all know what we are talking about. And then mental health. I mean, we are seeing this over and over and over again. We know that our social systems are broken. We know that the supported in our communities is nonexistent when it comes to mental health support, so, the more that we can learn and understand and really to be honest with you, mitigate the fear that we feel around people experiencing mental health is something so valuable for library staff, and to understand the perception and the perspective of people experiencing mental health crisis. Mental health first aid, if you haven't taken it, it's an excellent training. They have got it for teens. They have got it for adults. They oftentimes will train your staff to become facilitators so you can then train all your library staff. I believe there is a national organization that coordinates it. It is just a really great training. I've been trained in doing that for many years. And opioids, I mean, it is the thing that's happening. We are seeing it across our country. We are seeing it in all our libraries with Fentanyl, too. One of the things that we did was we brought in an organization from the University of Washington to create an opioid 101 class for our staff, and just the information around how opioids work in the body, what it looks like when withdrawal happens, what are some of the symptoms, like, there is behavior that happened that we made assumptions about that people were doing intentionally to get back at library staff, and then once we learned more information, we realized oh, they likely -- that was just a physical reaction to their withdrawal that they are in. So we can stop personalizing it and really started to have more compassion for people that are really struggling with substance abuse disorder. There is plenty more trainings. These are some that are kind of really important for me to try and provide opportunity for staff. It's really, really, really important. So I wanted to dive in just a little bit more into boundaries because I think it's really important. There is lots of different levels of boundaries, different types of boundaries, all kinds offer things. When I think about boundaries at work, I think about organizational boundaries, so there are organizational policies that create kind of our structure for how we behavior at work. These might be your internal behavior expectations or your standards of behavior for your staff, your anti-harassment of a workplace violence policies, those would all be considered organizational policies that support boundaries at work. How can I behavior at work? What are the expectations of my behavior at work? When I think about boundaries within our teams and within our colleagues, how do you work together? How do you provide service to your patrons? One thing I hear over and over and over again is that my colleague, all the time, goes above and beyond or spends more time with that patron, gives them special treatment but then when that patron comes in and I don't have time and I say no, I am the bad guy, so I tell people all the time we don't want to set our colleagues up for failure. We certainly don't want to throw them under the bus. We need to be more aware and more explicit when we are making an exception and setting that boundary with the patron so that our colleague is not the one that takes the brunt of the fact that we didn't set the boundary. Having healthy boundaries within our team helps to build trust. It sets expectations for how we are going to provide service to our patrons. So, we all kind of know, right, we are all on the same Page. It helps us to clarify our roles and responsibilities, making sure that we are not doing any job creep or taking on too much work, and then it can create a supportive environment so that we all feel as if we are heard, and people respect my boundaries. That we are all coming to work understanding that we are all professionals bringing our best selves to work each day. And then our individual boundaries, our personal boundaries. These are the things that are about how we manage our time, how we respond to things and our feelings around things, how we own our feelings and our mistakes, how we apologize for when we have done something wrong, how we can set a boundary and know what our response is. They can be flexible. They change all the time based on our environment and the people we are engaging with, and then they can be situational. So I think it's important for us to dig in a little bit more on what those look like and how my personal boundaries show up with me at work each day. I have done a lot of de-escalation training through CPI, mostly, and just some things that I always like to bring back to staff without going through a full class, some little tidbits, right, little Nuggets, I like to call them. De-escalation, one of the biggest pieces of de-escalation is our own self awareness, our own self awareness of how much we escalate a situation. I can't tell you how many incident reports I have read where I am like, well, we caused that escalation. That's why that person got banned because we contributed to the problem. So the more self aware we can be about what we are bringing to the interaction, the more likely we can take a step back, take a big, deep breath, and make sure that we are responding appropriately. The other thing is behavior is communication. People are communicating with us when they are showing us a behavior. If they are yelling, maybe they are scared. If they are, you know, they are in fear, they are angry -- anger is a feeling. It is a legitimate feeling. And we all get angry. How I choose to express my anger is the piece that I need to address with patrons when they express it inappropriately. We need to recognize what our buttons are -- we all have them, just FYI. We all have got them. They are all probably a little bit different. We probably share a lot of them. But when somebody pushes our buttons, our instinct is to react emotionally. Oftentimes it's an over-reacts. Sometimes it can be an under-reaction. But, we are reacting, and we are reacting emotionally. So, the more we are aware of our buttons, that gives us the pause and the time to take a breath, to respond appropriately instead of reacting because when we over-react or under-react, we generally escalate the situation. And then understanding for library staff the power dynamic that we have over our patrons. And not all patrons have the privilege to set a boundary with us, or to tell us when we are being inappropriate, or tell us when we are being -- when our behavior is unacceptable. There is a power dynamic. We have tools that they need and we decide whether we are going to give them to them or not. We have to be aware of that. That has to be in the front of our minds so that we can acknowledge our bias, acknowledge the way in which we use that so that we don't treat people unfairly. Relationships. I talked about it a couple times. These are like a small list of all the different people and organizations that relationships can benefit you and your libraries. Building relationships with your patrons, getting to know their name. Understanding a bit about who they are. Welcoming them when they come in. Learning about what their favorite book to read is. All of these things contribute to us creating that space where they are welcome. The thing about patrons, I worked with a colleague in a library that had a large population of people that were experiencing homelessness, and she struggled with kind of managing that. People would disregard her direction. She found out who was the person in that group that everybody listened to, and she developed a relationship with that person. And she was able to utilize them as an ally to help manage that and manage that space so that they could all be successfully in the library space. That same strategy works with young people and teams, so if you can find the leader of them, get to know who they are, and you will -- and they will become an ally for you. Building relationships with your team. We talked a bit about that when we talked about boundaries. It's really important for the team to be on the same Page about how we manage the space. Social services, you know, we don't all have the privilege of having social workers in our libraries like some systems, but we do generally have social services in our communities, and we can access them to help us understand what they are seeing in the community, how we can partner with them to bring services to those populations. They might even be willing -- I was working with an organization to help us develop a training on people experiencing homelessness for our staff. There is so many things that they want to partner with libraries about to help be a part of the solution. Schools, if they have school resource officers, get to know those. They will help you when you are kind of having the same problems with the same kiddos, they can come to the library and be an advocate for you, to develop that relationship with them. Civic organizations, and then police. Police are really important to develop relationships with. There is some things to know about police partnerships. Our missions, in general, clash. They want us to kick all the bad guys out. We want to keep them all in. We know that population of people are the most important that need our services the most. We oftentimes use differing language, so being able to communicate with them and understand their language so that they understand our language. Each department is different. So just because you meet with one police department doesn't mean that they all act in the same way. They all have different leaders and different officers, so understanding their differences. And then understanding the laws that impact the way in which they respond to the library. Washington had some house bills recently that influenced the way that they were responding, and that was really important for us to know and understand. And then the crime through environmental design, every police department will come out to your library and do a walk-through and help you make some physical and environmental changes to mitigate crime and criminal behavior, so I would reach out to them to see if they are willing to do that. They are all recommendations. You are not required to do any of it. And then I want to talk about be mindful of time -- I want to, unfortunately, go through this really quickly. The way in which we support staff. Really briefly, we need to, as leaders, and individuals in the library, we all need to be practicing our own healthy boundaries to create that environment for everybody. We need to promote a healthy work life balance, which supports staff not checking their email or teams or Google after work. We are not expecting them to stay longer or do more work that is within their capacity. We need to acknowledge the harm that is happening when they have an incident or a patron is verbally abusive to them, recognizing that there is harm that happened and how do we help to repair that. And then trust the staff regarding the impact that they are experiencing. I might not experience the same impact, but I am not in their shoes. I don't have their past experience, so I want to hear what their impact is and I am going to trust them in that. Provide an Avenue for them to access support. Sometimes, that's your H.R. department. Sometimes that's resources. Whatever that is, making sure that those Avenues are really clear. Advocate for time away from work. Our mental, emotional, and physical health are all health things that we need to take care of, when they are calling in sick, they are taking care of themselves. We don't need to know the details. Understand what motivates staff. What are their strengths, how do we tap into the things that help motivate and they are good at. And mindset. And resilience, we say our staff need to be more resilient. They just need to like, um, buck up, you know, and just kind of figure it out. And I would love to shift that mindset to thinking about how do we not create spaces and environments and situations and systems that cause harm. And so if we are continuing to tell them, you just need to be more resilient, it just means that we are not willing to, actually, address the institutional problem, the systemic problems that are happening that are causing the harm. So, we need to think about that a little bit differently. So, I put some quick take-aways here, just some things that I pulled out that I thought might be easy and good things for you to take back to your library spaces, and talk with your staff around and your leaders about. I think I covered all of them. Get to know your patrons. Learn their names. Finding out what the resources are in your community. Just adding some more tools to your tool belt, of course, and I think -- nope. Just got a highlight that our staff are the most important things in our libraries. But, I think -- yes, Kendra is going to talk a little bit about the public health crisis management playbook. >> Hi, everyone. My name is Kendra Morgan, and I am a program manager here at Webjunction, and we have a resource that was very adjacent to the idea of safety and security and security, and that is a public health crisis management playbook for archives, libraries and museums. This was really designed as a follow-up to the Covid-19 pandemic and what libraries found themselves facing, and the playbook represents a set of guiding processes, resources, and tools to aid cultural heritage institutions when planning for and navigating through and recovering from a significant public health emergency. And this was created with input from leaders, practitioners, experts who work in libraries, archives and museums, Government agencies, and the public health sector about their experiences during Covid-19, and what resources would be helpful in navigating a future public health crisis. I think many of the concerns that people have surfaced today about challenging communications with patrons, certainly, is experienced during Covid, and within the playbook, you are going to find some checklists, forms, questions and exercises to really give you a starting point for creating a crisis response plan that's appropriate for your local community and your mission, your facility and your staff, and I think that that's something that we really try to apply to all of our work is that it needs to be something that works for your community, and you take the pieces that are most relevant, and you adapt them. So we really encourage you to explore the playbook and the pieces that are there, and our thanks to the institute of museum and library services for their support in developing this resource for the field. Take a look. Explore it. It is free to everyone to use. So thank you. >> Melissa: Thank you, Kendra. >> Fantastic. I do have a few more questions, or one that I for sure would love to run by you. People really responded when you talked about trust and developing the relationship with staff. Can you talk a little bit about how you approach a situation where maybe staff undermine policies or procedures, where maybe they have come to a decision about what is acceptable or maybe especially unacceptable, and then maybe change their decisions giving patrons kind of confusing messages, you know, telling them on the next time I am going to do, this but then changing. Kind of in the same vein, you know, as staff providing different services, different behavior with patrons. >> Melissa: Levels of service. Yeah. I think that that is one of the things that is why it is so important for the team to kind of work together to establish what that level of service is. You know, staff disagree with our policies all the time. I think that's just part of working again in a public library. We have to be able to have the difficult conversation with them. They, oftentimes, also don't know the "why" behind our policy. I can't tell you when I first started working in it libraries and we made a change, people were just like, I don't know why this is the rule but this is the rule. So we started digging into like, what's the reason behind the rule. There is a reason behind where we create these policies, and the more staff understands that, the more we can give them the why, and the more we can give them the background, and the other piece of it, too, is being willing to say, maybe it's time to change that. Maybe that's not where we are at any more, right, to develop that trust. And when staff are undermining the policies or undermining other staff, to me, that's a performance issue, and I think that's something that we really need to make sure that our supervisors are aware of, and that they are coaching their staff around that. And the other thing, too, and I say this a lot, is my hope is to get our library systems to a place where all our patrons, however many libraries you have in your system, all of our patrons have a similar experience in each of our libraries. Right. So, when they come into the libraries, the way in which the behavior is addressed is going to be very similar. If there is an exception to it, we, as staff, understand why we are making the exception and can articulate it. It is a problem that we don't articulate the exception that creates the anxiety and chaos. When we don't set reasonable expectations and let people know what the expected behavior is, and people don't know what our response is going to be from day-to-day, we create anxiety in people, and when people come in under this level of anxiety, they are already halfway to escalation. So the more that we can set these expectations and reduce the level of anxiety that they might experience, which is why we try and get to this similar response, so that people know what to expect from library staff, and they are not like, it's Tuesday, so we don't know what we are going to get from here -- that they, actually, do know what they are going to get from us. It is so rigid, that our patrons were telling us that we didn't do it right. Oh, no, you were supposed to inform me first before you warned me or warned me before you banned me because we became so consistent in the way we addressed the behavior that our patrons even noticed it, which is great, right. >> Yeah, that's really interesting. >> Melissa: Yeah. >> Well, we are at the bottom of the hour, and thank you. For those of you who were able to stay for the full 90 minutes, thank you so much, Melissa. This has been so valuable. People were saying that they gathered so much great information to take and explore and apply. So, a reminder that you can reach out to Melissa. She's provided her email here. I am going to send you all an email later today once the record, is posted. I will also be sending you all to a short survey as you leave. We love to collect your feedback, and we will share that with Melissa. It helps us guide our ongoing programming. And if you don't have time to do so now, it will be in that email you received, so now that you don't need to do it right now, either. So thank you so much to everyone who joined us. Thank you again, Melissa, for all your great work and for sharing your -- you do have some expertise there, definitely. [Laughter] >> Melissa: I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thanks for everybody. Please reach out if you have any follow-up questions. Always available and willing to engage. >> Thank you so much. Thank you to our captioner, as well. Everyone, have a great rest of your day.