>> Jennifer: I want to mention that there is a Learner Guide created for today's session to use as a follow-up to extend your learning on the topic. 

We create these guides for you to take next step, perhaps to bring the conversation to a group at your library. It is something that us customize, if you have a facet that you would like to focus on, you can make it your own. What we have done is a precurriculum exploration. A few questions that could be expanded on as well. Some of those questions of why you are doing this work at the library and some of those initial steps you can take. 

We encourage you to explore those questions and a guide as well. I am so excited to welcome our presenters for today. Welcome back, Tamara King, who has presented with us before. She's the Chief Equity and Engagement Officer, at the Richland Library. Heather Mccue, they are codevelopers and cocreator of this area. 

Kathleen Montgomery is going to join us at the Charleston county public library. We are so glad to have all of you here. I am going to shift us over and have Tamara getting us started.

Welcome, Tamara. 

>> Tamara King: Thank you so much, Jennifer, for that wonderful introduction. I am very excited to share about Let's Talk Race. I am excited to be here with my co-hosts today. I want to talk a moment about "Let's Talk Race" and how we started. The world is divided, still. I want us to talk a moment back in 2015. 

I will tell you about our library so you will have an idea of the community that we currently sit in. We are committed to values of equity, diversity, and inclusion. This journey towards equity, diversity, and inclusion of the work we have done originated, I would say long before 2015. 

The attentionalty of the work started with this one conversation and these moments that happened in our community that not just changed who we were as a library, but it also helped us to change the community. 

One conversation of myself and our executive director kind of put us on this path to see those curriculum be brought to you all today, really speaks to the power of conversation and the power of proximity. That's a little bit about us. We have about 375 employees in 13 locations throughout Richland County. Our main library is two blocks away from our state house, where a lot of things are happening, and we'll talk more about that. This is giving you a snapshot of who we are. So, one of the wonderful things about our library, we are always asking the question. We are always seeing how we can help our community and how can we respond to our community in a way that improves our quality of life and so we ask ourselves this important question and I know many of you have asked yourselves this question too when whether it is covid ordealing with book bans ordealing with some of the challenges in our community today, how do we respond? It is a very important question. It is essential for our library, and that's the question we were asking ourselves back in about 2015 because if you will remember Walter Scott, an unarmed black man that was killed in North Charleston, which is about an hour or two hours away from our library. It happened in North Charleston, not for the first time but the first time since Rodney King had people seen this type of interaction and the murder or the assault on an unarmed black man in realtime, while you got to see it on camera.

It was big in the nation and it was very huge and significant for us in our library. Because we start to ask ourselves these questions of how do we respond. July of 2015, we had nine parishioners that were gunned down by a white supremacy. We knew a lot of the people who had connection. I knew Clemente PignyPigny. This impacted us in real ways when those nine people were killed. Then, a few blocks away from us, they took The Confederate Flag down. Our state decided that we were not going to continue - we had to ask ourselves this question, was it a relic of history or a weapon of hate? We as a state decided to remove the confederate flag because it caused so much pain to so many. When we did that, we realized that not everybody in our community felt the same way. We knew that. I think it became clear to us that there were real divisions. There were lines being drawn. We had to ask ourselves as a library, are we neutral? We saw this post on Twitter. Neutral or necessary? Can we be neutral when it comes to diversity, inclusion, and issues of equity? Can we turn ourselves away from seeing racism and hatred as something very real. We really ask ourselves, are we neutral to the conversation?

The division was really dark.

We had people talking at each other and not to each other at Richland Library and around our community. 

So, we came up with this idea, we had a conversation, I sat down with our executive director Melanie H. We had a conversation, staff feel really stressed and stretched. They don't know what to do and they are in the middle of these divisions and are feeling it. How can we help? How do we respond? Those are the questions we asked ourselves. We partnered with a local museum that was having a race exhibit. They were having these conversations, and we started something called the Social Task Force where we had dialogues led by members of our own staff who were trained by facilitators. We created this circle of dialogue and having in-depth conversations. We had things about social justice. We had conversations about women's rights and we went to race. 

There were so many things to deal with. So, in those first few years of us doing "Let's Talk Race", we heard these comments. I feel hopeful of the community and what is opened to our neighbors. People talking about joining the NAACP, finding out the power of proximity is real. How do we get more contact? How can we become approximate with our neighbors? What we noticed, people wanted to talk. They wanted to have these real, deep conversations that they can't have anywhere else. 

The library provided good ground for that to happen. 

So, we already kind of started this one. We are already dealing at that point with trying to handle some of the divisions in our community and had a real thoughtful conversation. At that point, our largest event was 90 people coming to talk about - I think the issue was Colin Kaepernick and when he was taken a knee. We were in realtime had these conversations that were deep and thought-provoking and asking questions like what does white privilege looked like?

Is it racist or I ammpolite to touch a black woman's hair? 

We were at across road. 

While covid was happening, also what was happening was the murder of unarmed black people, again, in our communities and our television screens. We were seeing it all the time. With George Floyd's murder, it opened up our country to a racial reckoning.

We asked ourselves the question, how do we respond?

We felt we were born for a time such as this in those early moments especially in the 2020 and 2016. We already did the work and we were ready. We got people asking us, how do you do it?

We want to join you and do this work as well. Between in 2016 and 2020, I would say 21 or so and now in '23, "Let's Talk Race", we have seen over 4,000 participants. We won a national and state award and made it to the cover of library journal for our award. So, we were getting a lot of people asking how can we help? How can we do this?

How do we start these conversations? Those are real questions but, there are a few of us on staff that are doing this work. It is a very small group. So, to be everywhere, we were getting requests from Florida to New York and California. It was everywhere. Okay, we'll put it in a Word document and give it to everybody really quickly. So, they can find out how to do this work. So, we really started with this project, this is why this picture is up there. We joke and say the project started out as "Dorothy". Elmo has a wonderful fish and the fish is name Ed Dorothy.

She's small and cute and the right size for a goldfish. 

The project started off as a nice, little Dorothy. With the interest that was being had, we were not Dorothy anymore. We could not go back to Kansas. We were not Dorothy. We were carrot. 

Carrot was discovered a few years ago in France, 66 pounds. We started this as a small project and it has grown. It is grown because of the divisions in our community. I think it is grown because the interest in doing this work and being intentional about this work for libraries that's grown. 

That's a good thing. Not the division part. Definitely the interest in really trying to solve those problems or at least provide assistance in solving those problems that have grown. 

When we sought out to do the curriculum, what I love about this and I talk about this quite often, what we were most proud of. We are proud of our participants gone through and proud of people who have shed some of their perspectives and open up new dimensions within themselves because of the work they have been able to participate in "Let's Talk Race," I am really proud that we had such community support and local businesses and fundraising arms in our community to support this work. So, we had central Carolina community and our friends and Foundation, the fundraising arm of the library, AARP, Dominion Energy and Colonial Life, those are some big names they trusted our project and help give it air in those early days as we were trying to decide what was next. We ended up with a beautiful curriculum. We worked with curriculum designers and sent out an RFP. We put it together so we can share it with you. We could do the fillation but we didn't know we could teach it in a way that resonated with everyone from Iowa to California to New York and all the places that we were receiving requests. I turn this over to my wonderful and amazing colleague, Heather Mccue, who'll tell you a little bit about the curriculum and how we have been able to use it.

>> Heather Mccue: Thank you, Tamara. I am going to jump in with great comments because that's how we work together. Very connected. 

This is me, I am the children and teen Services Manager cap, and I am thrilled to get to do my part and my work with Tamara King. It is incredibly important and daunting at time. That carrot is no Dorothy. As we approach this part of the conversation, I want to throw it out to the audience and please feel free to respond in the chat what do you see are the benefits of having these kinds of conversations whether it would be personally, over the holiday table, or at your place of worship or at your organization, or another kind of community venue? 

What do you see are the benefits of these conversations? Jennifer, when you see some responses in the chat, please feel free to let us know.

>> Jennifer: Connections, more understanding from each other, creating safe spaces from open dialogue, increasing empathy for others, allowing empathy through hearing perspectives we don't ourselves experience, depolarization, comprehension of lived perspectives, understanding one's own bias. Empathy again. Understanding on history. Having conferences opted in so people can mentally and emotionally prepare and benefit. Again, identifying biases. People are often less reactionary when they understand more deeply. Not repeating the past. Wonderful, wonderful. 

>> Heather Mccue: Thank you, thank you. Those are definitely benefits. When I speak to my own experience when I think about approaching this work, if I want things different, I have to do something different. As I jokingly say and stalk Tamara at night in her office, I knew I wanted to do something different. I want to be apart of this work. For all the reasons that you beautifully shared in the chat. Thank you for that. We gotten to experience all those things and seeing some of those changes in our own community. I am going to flip the coin now. What do you see are the challenges, again, both personally and for an organization? 

>> Jennifer: One's own past or lived experience can be a challenge. Keeping conversations civil and respectful and making sure divergent views are at the table. Not just preaching to the choir. Fear, lack of understanding of the benefits. Facilitators being able to make space for multiple points of view and maintaining agreed upon norms for the group. Someone coming just to argue, not having my own bias get into the way. Getting the community to show up or to see the value of the conversation. Not jumping into conclusion. Super hard.

Owning one's own issues. 

People being worried - people worried about being judged for their opinions. Finding conversation participants. 

Excellent. Lots more is coming through. 

Retraumaizing the people. 

Not having connections with people of color who are willing and have time to participate in leading a group. Behavior remains the same or if not challenge if not like therapy. It will hurt at first. Really powerful reflections on challenges. 

>> Heather Mccue: I wish I had an image because, you know, on the scale of all the things you mentioned of the challenges, they are daunting, they are scary, and they are risky. They are all those things. When you are doing this work and really, really trying to focus on those things you mention first. That connection, that change, that real conversation and getting to know someone as a human-being, you know, as a whole complete human-being. 

Dealing with your own stuff is hard but has great benefits. You know I think as you are doing this work, you got to really focus on the benefits because it is risky. We want to cheer you on always to do it because it is so needed. That was 1 Of The Driveing forces. In our mind, we would love to sit besides you all and talk to you and tell you our experiences and oh, we can do this. The curriculum is our way of delivering some of that to you all. As Tamara mentions while we are wearing many hats, we have not developed the curriculum before. They really held our hand in this process and walked us through how to take all the rich information, experience, and collateral that we had and turn it into something that could be utilized and could be really helpful and easy to use for everyone. Before I go forward, I want to say it several times. This curriculum is a buffet. You can take a small plate and get a little bit right now. 

You don't have to go full force and take everything. 

So, we want you to feel it is scaleable even if you are starting with yourself and a group of friends. So, really the way forward is a step. 

Whatever step that you can take today or tomorrow is a step forward you have not made before or your organization have not made before. That's what we are here to do and that's what we are constantly pushing ourselves to do at Richland Library. We want to make it so that, again, an organization can do it or individuals can do it. We worked with wonders and advance Purpose. They are awesome. One of the things we want to make sure happening is our vibe and personality, our way of approaching this work really came through. We think that's part of our secret sauce. We try to bring our authentic self all the time.

I remember Tamara, the first go around when Advancing With Purpose was like, TA-da, here is what we got? 

No. It didn't feel like us. 

They patiently went back and took all of our great feedback. They hit it out of the park the second time around, or at least they were in the neighborhood of that. Together we were on the same street and the same house. They were great. We had incredible testers as part of this process. This beautiful color palette when we started working on this was close to the murder of George Floyd. The mood of the nation was different and our mood was different as we approach this work. We started with a somber color palette and very serious. 

Then, as we work and it took us six or eight months or nine months, Tamara is shaking her head -- some where in there.

When we send it out to the beta testers, one of the things we heard right away is this color is not inspiring and it does not make me feel that I can do this work. It does not give me hope to do this work. We really - we went back to one of our designers and came up with this beautiful color palette. That's just a little bit of behind the scenes of the work we did together. We try to make it very user-friendly. So, there is a place getting started, if you want to go there and we'll talk about that. We have it for large organizations and smaller grumgroups and individuals. You can do a group check and see where you are on this journey and some of the things you may go back and do. You don't have to have anything to check off to start this work. It does give you great things to think about as you approach these conversations and this work. Assembling your team. 

Now, one thing that's really presing and I think it gives us a lot of confidence and a lot of comfort in doing this work, although we live indicesindices - in discomfort as Tamara likes to say. We create as a team. We take on the challenges. We come together beforehand and we really work together to develop a whole conversation so assembling your team. 

This is a formal look at that. It could be a group of your dear friends or your church group. This is where these conversations start. 

You get a group of people who are diverse perspectives and diverse experiences. You start the filtration group and that's what the team is.

It is great because the team will push you and challenge you and support you and cheer you on. As I said, so, facilitation, we dive into a lot because that's an important part of these conversations. It is a bit different, if you had training and facilitation, a lot of times they encourage facilitator to be neutral as we were talking about with libraries. Because we are asking for vulnerability and such, people to share experiences, we often share our own experiences and we can't ask for vulnerability from someone in a conversation and not give some of that ourselves. 

Understanding the role of "let's talk race" facilitator, we'll walk you through that. We kind of let you in on a planning session on how we go about "Let's Talk Race" conversation. I remember this in the chat, somebody was talking about safe space. We welcome the safe space. We have particular tools that we utilize that. We have some videos as part of a curriculum for how to redirect the conversation or how to get back on track if something does happen in the conversation and it is going in a direction that's not beneficial for the group. We talk about encouraging participation. This is a little peak behind the curtains. These conversations start off quietly. You think oh, will they ever get talking? By the end of an hour and a half or two hours, people are like can we stay longer and continue the conversation. When is the next conversation? So, don't feel - silences can be uncomfortable.

It is part of these conversations. Participation will come. We'll give you some tips about that. Most importantly and it is tied back to those challenges, too. How do you take care of ourselves when you are doing this work. Self-care is a huge part. We have learned that as a team. What can we do to replenish ourselves so we can keep going forward and keep doing this work. If you never had facilitation traintraining, you can go through our modules. Jennifer did a beautiful job. It takes 15 or the longest one is 40 minutes.

You can print out the slide as we go through. You can walk through video and also through our slide deck of how to prepare yourselves to facilitate one of these conversations. Again, we talk about how we go about planning a "Let's Talk Race" conversation to let you in on what we do. We try to have some connecting threads of ideas and as Tamara said, we had one focused on Colin Kaepernick and what was going on. Current events are a huge hit of these conversations because everyone is hearing about. 

Instead of going on social media and having an argument with someone where you can come to the library having a productive conversation. It is a really nice change of pace, I have to say. We have some of our most popular conversations. We have them kind of packaged for you. A general let's talk about race. Talking to our children and systematic racism. We had such great conversations and discussions and participation around that idea. Another part - aside from our team which is one of our secret sauce is our conversation guides. The guides really help as we are facilitating. We know where we are and who's doing what.

It allows us to pivot. 

Sometimes we realize we run out of time or this is a place where we stay in a conversation because we are getting such good commentary around it or maybe we need to take a break. We have this guide to keep on track.

In addition to the conversation guide, we have slide decks for you. If you want to be in a larger space and utilize those. You can write them on a white board if you are on a more intimate space. These conversation guidelines are key. Setting the tone and the foundation for a productive conversation. So, what we try to do is everything you may need to create a conversation. 

Again, we can't be with every one of you but we try to make it as easy if we were with you, here are the things we would share with you. We also have the option of, again, I compared it to a buffet so you can create your own and hear some of the things you can choose from and again, you can totally come up with your own. We are going to be updating this curriculum because we are constantly pushing ourselves to have more conversations, more inclusive conversations. We had some of our first conversations this is year addressing native and indigenous communities and being able to talk about what happens and what their lived experience is and what has happened and what is happening. We have been able to bring in our Jewish community as well. We are constantly pushing to make sure that we are having really robust conversations to reflect our entire community. This goes back to the tool kit. Something like our book and media groups, we are a library so we do book groups. We understand book groups. That may be a way to get our administration onboard. We have links to book group discussions that we hosted on our website. You can actually pull from there if you want. But, those are an easy way to jump off. 

Diverse books for families. 

I am going to go forward with that because I want to point this out. This was one of our first ways to really making sure extending conversations. We have these book bags from families.

It is about 15 books. It is books for every member of the family. It goes from four books for babies to picture books to YA. There is a rounder of questions so you can utilize the questions to talk about the books. We are always looking for ways to encourage these conversations in whatever ways they may happen in our community. This is an ongoing project for you - for us, it may be appealing for you and your library. As I mention, our books in media groups. 

Dinner Table Talks, we have a small team of library staff. I am actually one of the people that gets participation and we choose a children's book or a teen 's book to create a whole conversation so parents and caregivers can have this conversation around the dinner table.

We are trying to make it easy. Another way you can approach these conversations, our #own voices. These are blogs that written by our staff of color.

We have them -- this particular one, our staff members talked about how important tella Novas are in the community. We got so many incredible pieces that are written by staff, again, encouraging these conversations and our own learning. Again, you can start with your group of friends or make it a formal pitch to your organization. 

We use Project Management a lot at Richland Library to give our project backbones and some stuckture.

We have it here if you would like to take that formalized approach to pitching the idea to your administration or your board of Trustees. 

We have a way of measuring success because we are always growing in these conversations. We are reflecting and try to think about how can we do it better next time or what do we need to bring in. What is our community looking for? 

We have ways to self-assess ourselves. I love the Glows and Grows because it is easy to think about what you wish you didn't do in the conversation. Also remember that the things that went really well. We have participants survey which are really important, too. I am going to pause now because I would love for Kathleen Montgomery from the Charleston County Public Library, she has had the experience of utilizing the curriculum. Tamara and I would love for Kathleen to share her experience. 

>> Kathleen Montgomery: Thank you so much, Heather. I am Kathleen Montgomery, I am the director of the Charleston public library here in south Charleston, north Carolina. 

Just to give you a little bit of a context, Charleston is on the coast of south Carolina and the county stretches, it is kind of long and skinny. It stretches a long distance about 100 miles. We have 18 branches from rural areas to suburban areas and our city branches as well. Tamara spoke about certain instant of splash points of instances of racism and hate. A couple of those violent acts happening here within our Charleston community. Cynthia was as branch manager in our system. She worked here for decades. She was really near and dear to many of our staff members. The shooting took place a block down the street from the library branch downtown as well. The importance of these topics around race and equity, inclusion at the front of our minds as a system. We are aware of hosting a system like this, "Let's Talk Race" program could be really powerful for our patrons and the Charleston community. We were excited to hear about the curriculum that Richland developed. We thought it is a great fit for our group to tackle. Our committee is a staff group that's split into two different subgroups. My boss and I oversee over the programming group. Our committee consists of 15 staff members from all different service areas. We have people in adults, teens, children services and circulation and administrative side as well.

We got branch members and part time workers so it is a really nice variety of people who are working here in Charleston. We are committing that in June to watch the webinar. We want to discuss how we can adapt this program for our system and our community, specifically. We immediately saw the value for this program to open a dialogue and to provide a place in our county for people to have safe conversations. We are also really excited about, personally, I am a logistics person so to have the resources that is Richland created was wonderful. The guides, the checklist and the templates made it so easy to adapt this whole process. So, our staff familiarize themselves with the resources. We had multiple meetings to discuss virtually and in-person to see how and if we wanted to adapt the program. We decided that we wanted to broaden the topic a little bit to better fit our committee goals. We adapted the program to be called" let's talk low country: Breaking barriers."

We decided to host these staff-only sessions rather than public programming so we have an opportunity for our IDI members to get comfortable leading these types of conversations and this discussion format. We hope to provide public programming down the line. 

Hopefully, next year. 

Leading up to these discussion days we held for staff, we have our community members pair up so we have a facilitator and we held an in-person meetings so we can do a run-through with these discussions and finalize our format. We came up with specific questions that we wanted to ask or our group to ask our staff members participating in the conversation to keep the conversation flowing and bring up different points. 

We adapted the tool kit and a format that we thought works best for our staff. We picked two topics to start off with, based on the interest of our staff group.

Last month we hosted four sessions in total during the day. Two in the morning and two in the afternoon. We actually had at least two staff members attended both or the whole day with us in this conversation format which we were really excited about. Many library people that I work with don't want to be the front or center, they don't want to be leading a discussion.

Because they have these training that they could go through and the support of this tool kit and because it is so important, I think everyone is willing to dive in with this. Another reason to mention another reason why we started with staff session was because that I think it is a little lower stakes than public programming where we can guarantee everyone who signed up for these not mandatory sessions, we could guarantee they would be coming in and be respectful and ready to engage the conversation in a meaningful way, allowing our staff to practice and gain a little confidence in this. I do think that we are all really excited. We'll review our feedback and figure out a plan for next year and how we want to continue with this. We had about 5 to 10 people signed up for our staff sessions, which I think is a great number. We had the one with fewer people and the conversations were shorter, more people, the conversation is longer. 

I think an hour and a half to two hours was pretty much the average and great length of time. I think the survey was beneficial for us to collect as well as the experience. So, like I said we have a meeting plan with our committee next month where we'll be discussing what we'll be doing going forward. I personally be discussing as a group. I personally want to see us create a plan to provide our staff with so they can take this into offer to their branches so they know how to use all these resources and host a successful program. 

Like I said, I would highly recommend that other library systems use our curriculum and resources. These are really important conversations to be had, to make meaningful change and the curriculum is a valuable resource. I really love what you said, Heather, you said the way forward is with a step. So, here in Charleston, we started our journey with the left curriculum and I am excited to see where we go from here. 

>> Heather Mccue: I love it.

Kathleen. It should not be a replica of what we did. It should have your own perspective and personality and flavor and vibe. I love that. I should have mentioned at some point that we do like staff conversations that it is so important. I love it that you started with staff. I want to throw it to Jennifer, I know Jennifer popped in the chat some questions. We want if anybody already formulating a next-step. 

>> Jennifer: I wonder if I can jump in. Kathleen, I wonder if you can repeat the name of your initiative. I didn't catch all of it. And also those two topics that you were focused on. 

>> Kathleen Montgomery: We call it let's Talk Low Country. The two specific sessions were language access and accessibility for the diverse. 

>> Jennifer: I love that -- being able to look and see what's happening in your community, the needs in our community to pick those topics for your discussions, really, really powerful. 

There are some other questions coming through. 

Somebody asks, how can library suffering from understaffing and budget cuts find the band width to take on this curriculum. 

Heather and Tamara, maybe you can talk a little bit about it. I know you talked about baby steps, how do you get buy-into make it a priority? I know that sometimes that conversation can be tricky in terms of being able to set aside the time for staff. 

>> Tamara King: I want to go back and say we started with a budget of 0. We started with no money. With question to keep us motivated. We started with a group of about 12 staff that we were able to get trained through a partnership and so we didn't spend any money even for our additional training.

It is easy to say but hard to do. I think when you start with the big wedding cake like solving racism or solving community problem, that's daunting. If you make it a cup cake, well, let's start with a book club. I have a feel willing, the coalition of the willing here at my location that are willing to have these conversations. Build it and when we see this success, maybe it is changing a display that you have at the library to start this conversation. I say when people say we don't have any money or we are a small staff or can we still do this. You can still do this.

It meets you where you are and help you tune into what works best for you and your community. I will say this again, it is free, free, free. That's even better. 

>> Jennifer: Fantastic. I know you did do a number of sessions online. There was a question whether minority you met in-person and this person was part of a team that ran a book club found it challenging when cameras were off. Can you talk about how you structure those sessions and how you think folks can maximize those engagements and environments? 

>> Heather Mccue: During the pandemic, we became pros at the virtual conversations among many things virtually.

It is challenging. I think that's why the team facilitating as a team really helps. Sometimes, you know, you want your community to feel comfortable. Sometimes video is actually a connection challenge. They can't participate because the video is taking too much band width. We can see each other hopefully. We had a side text thread where we'll be like I think things are going well. Chat provided us another level of conversations. Kathleen was talking about -- we know our staff and community. 

Sometimes people don't want to be the person that says it. The chat really opened it up. It can be a little hard with cameras off, but I do think keeping forward and, you know, gently prodding if you can turn on your camera while you speak.

Again, that could be part of your guidelines. My reasoning is because we are making connections and being able to see each other really does help us. 

>> Kathleen Montgomery: Can I chime in and say our staff sessions were held in-person. We did have a couple of staff members who is joined some of your virtual sessions from Charleston, which we would not have been able to do in-person. They really benefited from attending and participating in some of your sessions virtually. 

>> Heather Mccue: Thank you, we'll have more virtual sessions in 2024. Feel free to join us. 

>> Jennifer: I think this is an interesting thing that came out of pandemic library hosting events around the world and certainly around the country and region. 

Thinking about that as sort of another layer of the community onion that you are unpacking and making it assessable to us as well. 

Maybe they are at a community they don't feel comfortableing their conversations with their peers or neighbors yet but this is the way for them to become apart of that and learn how to do that as well. Any other questions? I guess the other -- I just want to acknowledge that this, I think centering staff -- sometimes when we plan our programming or, know, what we are doing at our libraries really is a public-facing first. 

Kathleen, your experience doing this with your staff is going to - and of coursely the Richland folks did as well is going to give you so much learning and to be able to bring those conversations for your staff to feel confident than being facilitators being in those conversations as well is super, super powerful. So, hopefully, I know that and I really recognize the capacity issue and that - I am so glad that folks are here to learn about it. I know that fitting it in and figuring out how to fit it in is tricky. Hopefully, as you -- I am always an advocate for figuring out how to bring this thinking and bring this work into your everyday work. How you are connecting with people, you know, at your desk and thinking about - like Heather said, I know having looked at the curriculum there and things in there that sparked ideas for me in conversations I had with my adult children. Oh, this is a great piece to bring to that. Lots of different Nuggets that can be used with different engagement with people in your lives as well as your communities. 

Really think about mixing and matching and using those in the ways that you are able to - I know folks have been talking about book clubs, certainly, adding these elements to your extinct book club is a great way. 

>> Heather Mccue: Jennifer, I'm jump in. Everybody can use more people and money and time. Library, that's our symptoms always. That's where we live. I will just say because I think it is good to remember and Tamara is always good at reminding me that we have been doing this for a long time. When we started, we were doing like maybe once a quarter of these conversations. Again, DON'T think that we are turning around every week and having these because they do take time and planning in capacity. If you can say whatever your capacity is, we'll do this once a quarter or twice a year. We'll do an in-between, we are librarians and we are sharing articles and watching podcasts and doing all of that stuff. Education for ourselves to prep us for conversations like Jennifer said. We are having those conversations personally with whoever that's closest to us. We really can be prepared to have them with our staff and with our community. 

>> Tamara King: You have to give yourself a lot of grace. When you are doing this work, it is daunting and heavy. It is a lot. You have to give yourself grace.

You are going to stumble. 

You have to check the eagle at the door because you will get called on something. You have to be comfortable with the uncomfortablety of talking about things that have not been talked about in our communities our neighborhoods or even in our homes. March out of here today fired up and ready to go. I want us to give ourselves and the work grace because when you give us grace and you give yourself grace, things are able to grow into things you didn't expect. You can go from Dorothy to carrot. That's the cup cake the the wedding cake, right? We, ourselves, when we started, we did it in reverse. We started our external conversations and our staff said - wait a minute, you guys are starting talking about race in the community. When we did that, our work became way richer and deeper. Not only with the small staff group of really concerning and thinking of IDI, how our whole library is thinking about EDI. Now, they were the ones leading it and passing out books. Did you hear? Are you going to be at the Let's Talk Race conversation tonight. That was a misstep or a step we would not take again. I encourage you to start working on your staff first, and then move yourself out into your community so you will get a little more buy-in. 

>> Jennifer: Super helpful. 

Excellent. Well, I know that Heather and Tamara, your e-mail information is on the next slide. A reminder to folks if you have additional questions for their team, you can reach out, definitely. Spend some time in the curriculum and note those questions you have and connect with them. I know they are eager to hear from folks who are doing this work, adapting it. 

Definitely don't be shy and not share with them - I know they are excited to hear about what other folks are doing. Thank you so much to your whole team. I know that you have a large group of folks that all put lots of work into this. Please, thank you them as well. 

Thank you so much for bringing your work here today. Kathleen, it was so great to hear how you adapted and the great work that's going on there. Thank you so much. And please, please, explore this amazing resource and we look forward to seeing how folks take this work and extend it in your communities as well. A reminder that I will send you an e-mail later today once the recording is posted. I will also automatically send you a certificate for attending today, you don't need to request that. I am actually going to send you to a short survey as you leave. If you don't have time to take it now, the link will be in the e-mail I send you. We love your feedback on our sessions. We'll share it to our presenters and it helps us guide our ongoing programming. Thank you all for being today. Thanks to all the attendees and our captioner as well. Everyone, have a great week.