We have a learner guide for this amazing series that you can revisit.

It pulls together all of the content across all six of the webinars in this series.

It includes questions for you to consider, action for you to take, discussion for you to have, at your library.

It can be customized, so you can make it your own.

Thank you to Rebekkah for pulling this amazing series guide together.

Again, we're so excited to be able to to have traveled this journey together with Sustainable Libraries Initiative into our final webinar of the series, and I'm really just so honored to have worked with all of the folks that you've brought to this series, Rebekkah.

It's been such a stellar group of folks doing such amazing work in libraries.

And I just want to mention that we have a new sustainability topic on WebJunction, so we'll be continuing to collect great work that's going on, programming in this area as well.

So thank you to Rebekkah for making this happen and bringing all these great folks.

I'm going to introduce Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, we're so honored to have worked with you, Rebekkah.

She's the Executive Director at the Mid-Hudson Library System in New York and she is the author of many, many books and articles.

Also joined by Jenny Garmon who is a Civic Engagement Specialist at the Kansas City Public Library.

Gabrielle Griffis is the assistant youth services librarian at the Brewster ladies library and a Blue Marble librarian, and Lu comes to us as the Chief of Equity and thank you for being here.



>> REBEKKAH: 

>> REBEKKAH:  I can't thank you for your support, I'm going to miss working with you after this one.

I just wanted to thank WebJunction and SLI, the Sustainable Libraries Initiative has been on a journey for the past eight years to help accelerate the work of climate action in the library profession and to have the platform WebJunction OCLC has given us this year has been phenomenal.

We have met so many new people in the audience I count as my new friends.

We're wrapping up with an important topic.

This is where the magic happens, as we like to say, when we think about all the things across the series and I know all of you have not been here for the whole series and we're going to do you a solid and walk you through the basic concepts this morning.

When we talk about what does it take to be effective when it comes to climate action, it takes people working together with respect, empathy, and understanding.

If we could get that right, we could solve so many problems in our world, but there's urgency to do this work when it comes to climate action.

As we start to think today about the role that libraries play in our community at catalyst for cohesion and social participation, this is some of the most important work we can do on the climate action front and we think of these as separate, but as we've discussed throughout the whole session, these are very intimately intertwined.

So as I move forward, I want to acknowledge the fact that I know not all of you have been here for the entire series.

That's okay.

We're going to have a good time.

I have an amazing panel you'll meet in a few minutes.

As we think about climate change, it's here, it's making itself felt, and it's worsening across all regions of the country, if not the world.

We've seen record-setting heat, record-setting plague, record-setting storms across the country and the climate data pulls into punches with us anymore.

Since 2020, they've been saying every year since 2020, those were the good ole days.

It's only going to get worse for climate change for at least the next three decades.

So despite the amazing news that many of you saw this morning that came out of the CLP28, the companies participating came to an agreement that this is official the end of the fossil fuel era.

The first time that fossil fuels has even been acknowledged in those agreements that have come out of the CLPs, so recognizing that we are still struggling to work together as a global community on the topic of climate change means the activities we take on a local level are going to be intensely important as we move forward because we are our best defense, what is happening currently and the future and the devastating impact it has on people's lives, livelihoods, and our environment.

So welcome to the good ole days, we're going to work together to find out what's coming next.

We've talked about the American Library Association, last year, they issued a call to action, inviting the library communities, part of this conversation, part of this work and part of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative so we can accelerate this work because we've got to move faster than you have ever moved before on a project.

Not easy in our profession, right, so we're joining with the medical profession who noted during the pandemic that climate change is the greatest thread, a code red, from the secretary-general, and pulling up a seat to the table and saying, this is our generation's grand channel.

It has so many issues that the library work on and we have the opportunity to be leaders on this topic and own our role as not only early adopters but models for change in our community.

What we're going to talk about today, which is probably one of the more exciting things is how to be a catalyst for good work in our communities.

So as you know, we work with over 200 libraries now on the Sustainable Libraries Initiative across the United States and Canada and through the eight years we've identified four major characteristics of sustainable libraries, and are doing work not just with good intentions, but actually having an impact.

They're libraries that lead with intention, authentic in how they run their own operations.

Our policies affect our values, how we treat our co-workers reflects our values.

How we treat the environment reflects our values.

Number two, we're going to spend a lot of time today, is talking about deliberate action as catalysts for social cohesion he and civic participation and I'm identifying those things so we know what we're talking about.

And things we focused on earlier in the series, which is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which is fueling climate change and confronting the reality of the needs that our communities have to adapt in the face of what's happening in order to be resilient in the face of the effects of climate change.

These four characteristics are very deep.

There's lots of work to do in each of these and that's why the Sustainable Libraries Initiative created a path forward or a methodology to help libraries do work comprehensively.

So I did want to unpack a few phrases and words at you.

I knew I threw a lot at you there if it's the if it's the first time.

When we say climate action, we're talking about a combination of some of those things we talked about.

Climate change mitigation, the slow down, a call to reduce by 43% our greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade.

A lot of our libraries are not thinking about this at all, so you have a lot of goal-setting and adaptation on that front.

The mitigation and adaptation, they prepare and adjust in the face of the

 particular climate hazards for your reason and overarching all of this is climate justice.

We are not operating in an ideal state when it comes to our society or economics or our treatment of many of our neighbors.

So as the most simplified version of climate justice could possibly be, increasing empathy, respect and understanding for our neighbors as a very basic level so we have the relationships we need to work on these very intense topics that are confronting our communities and that can look different from region to region in our world.

Now, we talked about climate adjust and devoted a whole session to climate justice.

We talked about the six pillars, and right away, we'll talk about social, racial, environmental justice, Indigenous climate action and just transition, and that was discussed at the CLP28 conference that just wrapped up yesterday.

They talked about transitions away from fossil fuel and doing so in a just, orderly, and equitable manner.

These are words we've been using.

As we make changes, as we shift away from fossil fuels, there's no doubt that it impacts some people's livelihood, that it impacts the natural resources of some people's neighborhoods, and there is no doubt that those communities that have been marginalized for many, many years will continue to be so if they do not have a voice in our transition away from fossil fuels.

So as we discussed, it talks about many aspects of our lives and where libraries are perfectly positioned to do work because of the trust equity we have in our communities, on our campuses, and in our schools.

Now, we're specifically talking a lot about social cohesion, and the folks on the panel who you're about to meet are the absolute leaders throughout our country.

There are many people doing excellent work on this, but these are our standout folks.

They were the first on my list to ask to come be a part of this work because a lot of times we're doing good work in our libraries but we're not talking about it, using the language that connects others with what's necessary in the face of climate action and you may not realize that you're doing so many things that contribute to social cohesion and civic participation or you may be very savvy about it, working towards marketing yourself in that way and getting to the right circles in your community to do so.

But again, at the heart of climate action must be the ability of people to work together.

The Healthy People 2030 program from the Department of Health has worked out simple definitions and you can see your work reflected right away.

We can get people up and out of their homes, they have a sense of purpose, working together on something, a larger sense of community and they can see what's possible to do when they work together, the not only cut down an isolation and depression, but when you put aside long biases and see people for who they are.

Once we have respect for people's life experiences and we have more people civically engaged and acting with more compassion and empathy, that's when we see the things necessary.

Our company is desperately struggling on these topics today and libraries are fighting hard to retain that just equity as nonpartisan catalysts for good things that can be possible when we learn how to work together and that's why I'm so excited what we're doing here with WebJunction OCLC, all towards the end of collection -- 

collective impact in your community.

So, again, just to review this idea of collective impact, we all have really good intentions.

A lot of times we're on our own in the corner, but we have to coalesce with like-minded people who understand the need to work together with more urgency and as we find those people and align ourselves along the work that is necessary with urgency, that's when we can all start to pull together and make the difference that is called upon for our generation.

So again, we've moved through this as a profession.

What does it look like when we're able to do that same kind of work in a community?

It's incredibly powerful and you'll hear from people doing the front lines of that work today.

If you're not familiar with collective impact, this is a go-to article by Kania and Kramer, and it acknowledges the reality of what we are faced with, large-scale social change comes from better cross-sector coordination rather than from the isolation.

We must work with others on the issues of the day to make even a smidge of difference, and we need to make way more than a smidge of difference.

So here we are with three practitioners, working on real problems affecting real people and making a real difference.

You're going to hear from Lu Bangur, Jenny Garmon, and Gabrielle Griffis, who I've admired for a long time on the blue marble library in Massachusetts.

I am simply the fan girl that asked, not begged, for them to be a part.

I'm going to have each of them introduce themselves and you'll hear in-depth from each of them what they're working on that currently reflects the ideas, then I have a few questions for them and I bet you have a few questions for them and we have time to do it all.

So I'm going to ask my panelists to turn on your cameras, turn on your mics, and we'll start up with the introductions.

Lu.

>> LU:  Think -- hi, my name is Lu Bangura, and I'm in Baltimore City 

>> JENNY:  I'm Jenny, I had more prepared because I wanted to share why I'm here, and I'm excited to be here.

I'm honored to be here, with Lu and with Gabrielle and with all of you.

I just want to share that sustainability thinking is sense-making to me.

If you read Rebekkah's amazing back, you know it makes sense to frame our work in terms of environment and social equity.

It makes sense to do our work with empowering and engaging in our community.

When we talk about social cohesion, it means a lot to me, how we are weaving our social fabric.

When we do that, the library has much to contribute, but the library can be a loom for that social fabric.

I'm here for you today because "Stronger Together" is kind of my motto.

I love collaborating with partners.

I love collaborating within the library.

And I hope to encourage you with some of these examples I'm going to share that epitomize "Stronger Together" for me.

I'll stop right there.

>> REBEKKAH:  Thanks, Gabrielle, go ahead.

>> GABRIELLE:  I'm with Blue Marble Library, and thank you for being here, and thank you, Rebekkah and Jennifer, for inviting me, and Jenny and Lu, it's nice to be here presenting with you.

>> REBEKKAH:  We're going to talk about the work they do to the fore and with that, Gabrielle is lined up first, really tuned in to a lot of the work that we've been doing at the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, giving her co-founding of the blue Marble Library group, a Memorandum of Understanding so all members of the Massachusetts Library Association are members of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative so we are teaming up to accelerate that work in Massachusetts.

So Gabrielle, I believe you have control of the screen and should be able to begin your portion.

>> GABRIELLE:  Thank you so much, Rebekkah.

I'm thrilled to be talking to you about the work I've done with the Blue Marble Library but also the fix it clinic, the this is the grassroots movement as they exemplify what Rebekkah described so beautifully in the introduction here, and I really loved the phrase that she used, which is, respect, empathy, and understanding.

And I think they are a perfect example of how we in libraries can bring our communities together and embody all of the values that we're trying to advance by promoting social and environmental justice, empathy, compassion.

So I'm just going to jump in to talking about what repair events are, just to give you a little bit of context, I was on Cape Cod, which is a coastal community, if anybody has been to Massachusetts, and I started organizing Repair Events in 2018, six different clinics founded by Peter, and he has hosted over 1,000 of these events, and this year was the milestone year that he did that and it's been a real privilege to be able to coordinate them in my community, but also to amplify this whole right to repair movement and what it means for how we can get people in our communities to feel empowered, to feel involved, and to feel hopeful that they can have an impact in terms of what we're seeing to our communities and to our climate.

So what are Repair Events?

They are an intergenerational program, and they bring broken things to hopefully fix their broken items and keep them out of the landfill.

So they're incredibly dynamic programs, and they really cover just sort of this range, right, where you take a broken item, you're bringing people together, you're teaching people lifelong fixing skills, and at the end of it, not only have you brought people together but you've also hopefully kept things out of the landfill.

So Repair Events, they go by many, many different names, but some examples on my screen here, all of the different logos that represent different Repair Events movements, Repair Cafe, the first Repair Cafe was hosted in an Amsterdam movie theater in 2009 but someone who was tired of seeing so much stuff thrown into the landfill.

So she decided to organize an event at this movie theater and a little over a decade later, I'm talking about it and it has become a phenomenal global movement where people around the world are getting together to fix broken things.

Restart is a European-based organization, but they have something people can tap into, but really, any of these are worth looking into.

So a shout out to all of this.

So Repair Events, they truly embody the triple-bottom line, a paradigm of shift from views and practices that treat objects, people, and their environments as disposable to inherently valuable and reparable.

So again, really thinking about how we live in a throwaway culture and how our economic system and the private culture is affecting culture on a local level and how that obviously is impacting our climate.

When you have economic models that are based on, you know, linear, degenerative, throwaway culture, you're manufacturing, you're not designing things to be repaired.

You're designing them to be thrown away so people will buy more stuff.

So we, unfortunately, as individuals, as communities, we get stuck in these cycles, but, you know, at the heart of it, the devastating results of a system that functions this way is first and foremost the communities, the environments, and the people who are being impacted by these manufacturing practices, because, you know, communities and their environments are not being seen in terms of the environmental impacts that it's having.

So I love repair events because they start to change the conversation in a very -- just humble way, where you're getting people around a table to fix a lamp, to fix a toaster, drinking tea or having refreshments, telling each other stories.

But they're not -- and the bigger picture, right, it's so humanizing and it gives people the platform and the opportunity to talk about the bigger picture.

So, again, I mentioned just linear, degenerative economics -- sorry, stumbling over my words, doughnut economics, that I feel is the framework and the guiding principles of that text and I also had the privilege to be able to contribute a charter to that book on repair and how it fits into all of that so I just have this slide here to demonstrate really how Repair Events, fix-it clinics, repair cafes embody practices that are regenerative.

And really, this understanding that no people and no place, right, are disposable.

And when we value objects and understand that they come from the environment, right, that sort of -- that idea sort of translates.

So again, as I talked about the sort of the environmental impact, there's also the added component of teaching life-long fixing skills.

So a major goal of Repair Events is to teach lifelong fixing skills and this is one of the things that Peter really talks about when he remotes the fix-it clinic.

When people come to fix-it clinic, they are the ones doing the repairs and hands on and they have someone guiding them through.

So they have a coach that's telling them, you know, basically what to do.

Because it's not always guaranteed that you're going to fix an item, but it is usually guaranteed that you will learn something new and the other part that I also wanted to say of, you know, just how empowering fix-it clinics are, teaching people and instilling new cultural practices that I feel that we cannot expect to fix the climate crisis if we don't have alternate behaviors in our community and this is a perfect way to do it.

When people are hands-on, engaging in repair, the science also says that when -- that we're wired to use our hands, that using our hands and being engaged to impact activity actually makes us happier.

So we are a social species.

We need each other.

So these events, they really, you know, bring people together who might not necessarily ever meet.

They might not ever have a platform or an opportunity to share their skills.

So there's just so much amazingness that happens at Repair Events.

So I can't say enough good things.

One of the reasons I'm here.

So again, outcomes of Repair Events, lifelong fixing skills, community building, creating sustainable culture, based on health and happiness of people and ecology, not GDP, and connecting patrons to resources.

We have a Repair Events in our program, an I fix toolkit, a machine, there are so many tie-ins to these events that can also really just enrich your community and promote library resources.

So if you're interested in getting involved in Repair Events or maybe you already know about them and you're looking for more ways to support them, I highly recommend these four books that I happened to contribute to.

We have repair Revolution, libraries and sustainability, 25 ready-to-use sustainable living programs for libraries, and how public libraries build sustainable communities in the 21st century from Emerald, and to go back to Kanen and Kramer, the idea how that ties in with fix-it clinics.

So I know I'm coming to the end of my time.

How many -- how long -- 

>> REBEKKAH:  Five minutes.

You're doing great.

>> GABRIELLE:  I'll go back one more second.

The links, I think, will be provided.

I have a quote here, which is, Repair Events starts conversation about stewardship and sustainability as well as inspire cultural change at a grassroots level.

Libraries, as places for information access and community outreach, are perfectly positioned to create a space where neighbors can connect with one another to envision and create a brighter and sustainable future.

This means imagining systems and infrastructure that are not designed for profit at the cost of human and environmental well, but rather, communities and neighbors where people work together, care for each other, and mend that which is broken.

So mending is important for library collections.

There are so many beautiful books about fixing and mending usually with -- especially with fabrics and textiles and you don't have to do a giant fix-it clinic.

You could focus on sewing and mending clothing, bicycle repair, book binding.

There are a lot of different ways we can approach Repair Events, but the premise of them is, you know, just really powerful.

And so my last slide here, before I finish talking, is about Boomerang Bags, which is also -- I often connect to Repair Events.

This is also another global grassroots movement.

It starts by Tonya in 2013, and they were tired of plastic pollution in Australia and they decided to start sewing these beautiful reusable bags out of post-consumer, upcycled fabric.

This was their grassroots movement.

This was their way to create new patterns of behavior, new cultural practices in their community.

And so Boomerang Bags, selling these, if you go on to their website, you can get a kit to start one at your own library and the way that I do the one at my library is, you know, I ask for fabric donations.

I create flyers and people come and we sew these bags together.

You have to get the patches, which our library generously paid for.

I feel that in closing, the problems that we're confronted with climate change are so overwhelming and I think it's hard for people to sort of like emotionally, right, and mentally digest all of that, but these sorts of events are incredibly empowering for people, because people go, I know how to sew.

I know how to fix a lamp.

And by doing these things, we're making a difference.

And we're having conversations that we might not otherwise have.

So I just love using Boomerang Bags as an example, because it's just another event that is socially and environmentally conscious and brings people together around hands-on skills.

And yeah, I think that's probably everything I have to say except for my true last slide, Blue Marble Library, we have an online presence and we focus on climate resilience so we do a lot around climate resilience in Massachusetts and that's a whole -- it's a whole nother story.

But if you would like to learn more and get involved, we have an active social media presence and on the Instagram one of the things that I -- because I manage it, is trying to highlight and promote libraries that are working on sustainable programs and keeping the conversation going because I feel that something is better than nothing, and even if it seems small, I think if we all do something, you know, rather than nothing, than we're -- 

we're going to be in a better place.

So with that being said, thank you all so much for your time and attention.

>> REBEKKAH:  Okay, Gabrielle, there's a bunch of questions for you in the chat.

So when we get to the Q&A, we're going to need your secret sauce on getting the experts to show up.

I want to thank Gabrielle for sharing that introduction to the fix-it clinic, because you've probably heard me say at least twice during the session that I can remember, I feel these repair cafes and events are triple bottom-line program, stewardship, equity, and feasibility, and helps people start small to understand that even though this initial is important and complicated and tied to all the icky things in our world, we can work together.

It's a bright, shiny happy place that is created through the library and you have tangible, fixed things at the end.

It's so perfect.

Gabrielle, we'll be back to you with our Q&A section.

Lu has one of the best titles in the industry, Chief of Equity and Fair Practice at the Enoch Pratt free library.

>> LU:  Thank you, Rebekkah.

I will start off with the free grocery store that we will be launching in March/April of 2024.

This is a part of our initiative to try to address food insecurity.

And those free market in the upper left-hand corner and the establishment of this 100% free grocery store, we're hoping it holds the potential to combat climate change through various avenues.

But we're hoping that offering free groceries and the surplus of food that would otherwise contribute to -- that we're hoping by offering free groceries, food that would otherwise contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and landfills can be supporting climate change mitigation.

We're hoping that a provision of free groceries addresses food insecurity and making sure that families have access to nutritious food, overall community resilience, we are working with the Maryland Food Bank to make sure that the grocery store is stocked.

It will be opening, as I said, in spring of 2024, but in preparation for that that the community knows, this is happening and we are here, and we are venturing into this side of library services, we started doing food giveaways every Thursday of the month and August to November, we're taking a break in December.

And in November, we did free two-day giveaway for Thanksgiving.

We gave out over 34,000 pounds of food over 1500 families and that's what we could count.

We had to stop counting at 1500 and we received generous donations from Blessing of Hope, Maryland Food Bank, as well as Amazon and local, local community organizations donated turkeys.

We gave out 550 turkeys.

We were hoping that by addressing food insecurity, we're helping to create a more sustainable future and we're really introducing a different side of library services to the Baltimore community, letting them know that we are here to help them in any way that we can.

We're also helping by distributing groceries locally, our store will help reduce transportation emissions and promote efficiency by minimizing packaging waste, also, a platform for people to have food -- also providing a platform for food insecurity programming.

So we are working with a local farm to do urban farming for our team to show them, this is another career path that you can take.

We plan on presentations and programs about food waste, food insecurity and proper dieting and how to prepare meals with certain produce and they can lead their way out, collect the produce that we're telling them to cook with.

We're really hoping that the free grocery store will not only help mitigate some community issues and struggles, but will really be a place of -- I'm sorry, I lost my train.

Will really be a place of collaboration, a place where we work with various community organizations to promote programming that will help for the betterment of the community overall.

And in that, in that same motto, we have our series, the Amplified Voices Series, and the Amplified Voices Series is meant to be an open dialogue forum where we attack community issues that impact our cities, our community in Baltimore City and what we're hoping, what we hope to achieve by these platforms is to -- by these conversations, to have conversations that the community cares about.

We have a goal of bringing in people -- bringing people into the library that may not otherwise be coming to the library in overserved and underburdened communities.

We have seen over 200 people in participation in -- in-person and virtually and these conversations really bring the community members together, businesses together.

We have policy-makers and elected officials that come to these conversations and you see people from all parts of our community that make up the various unique identities in our community.

So we really hope to continue to have this series and this -- 

because we really feel like this series promotes social cohesion and strengthens social cohesion through understanding and empathy and a shared responsibility for our community progressiveness.

And lastly, we have the Enoch platform, probably my favorite, it is project encore, encouraging new community opportunities through reentry and empowerment and through that, one of the parts of that program is we work with the Department of Corrections to transition a cohort of five women a year into a program for Pratt, the -- they are employees, however, they are not on the city payroll as employees.

They're being paid through private funds and when they work for six months in an internship and after six months -- during the six months we put them through professional and personal development classes.

They have a reconnection navigator, not only a job coach but a case manager to make sure they're assimilating into the workforce and at the end of the six months overall we transition them into full-time employees on the payroll.

We have successfully transitioned three women so far and working with the Department of Corrections to get into the prisoners and we will be asking the women's as well as one of the men's prisons, when they're coming home, not having the ID, not having a Social Security card, not having a place to go, we can help mitigate some of those issues before they are released.

So we also have an entrepreneurship program, regroup, and in recoup, a business accelerator, which is an eight-week program to assist individuals with starting low-capital businesses.

Our graduating class is -- their graduation is today, I'll be going to their competition, and we're fortunate enough to work with IBM to do a second IT cohort starting in January which will be a STEM to get their A-plus certification so by offering opportunities and entrepreneurship, we're hoping to be a hub for economic empowerment within the community and we're hoping that encouraging these business models and fostering a sense of responsibility will help promote our local environment.

So that's all I have for my program.

>> REBEKKAH:  That's all you've got?

Come on!

Like when you think about one, like -- I mean, you talked about hundreds of lives being changed by the work that you're doing, but you can see the ripple effect by one life, having the opportunity that you're presenting through these programs, what a difference that will make for a program to come together and understand the value of every person in that community.

Phenomenal work, Lu, thank you so much.

>> LU:  Thank you.

>> REBEKKAH:  I'm jealous, I want to go to the graduation with Lu after the event.

We have lots of questions that have come up while you were speaking as well.

So you're going to be talking a little more later when we come to those.

We'll transition to Jenny and then go to questions.

Jenny Garmon, I met a couple of years ago -- I didn't get to meet her until this year, but I've been following her, not in a stalky way, but watching the work going on in Kansas City, like I have with Lu in Baltimore, because I see these two libraries have invested in their community in some new ways and have branded themselves as such.

When we talk about libraries living their values out loud, meaning being very obvious about the things we care about and we're investing our time in.

You might hear some of the things going on.

My library is doing that.

But are you branding it in a way that's getting you the respect for the work you're doing, and with Jenny came to the Kansas City Public Library that started to happen so I'm thrilled to have Jenny speak with you about some of the work she is doing.

This is the tip of the iceberg that I put on this slide, Jenny, so please, feel free to touch on anything that you're working on here today.

>> JENNY:  I love this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

I'm missing the reaction button, heart, heart, heart, like when Gabrielle and Lu were talking.

One of the things I love about this series is how it highlights the larger community that we could include on our list of assets.

I'm in Kansas City, Missouri.

And sort of a ten-location system.

You might be in a small, a rural library.

You might be in a huge, multibranch system, somewhere or you could be somewhere in between.

But what you know, and what you can see is in this -- in this recording, that there's power in community.

And you are part of this community and you're not alone.

So I really want you to be encouraged, hearing what's going on and knowing that if you have any questions for me, following this, that I hope you would reach out.

I'll start with what's on the left side here.

This is one of my favorite examples.

When I think about collecting impact and how we're stronger together, when barriers of social engagement are reduced or eliminated.

And I'll tell you the back story, June of 2022, when I read how an experimental service in the library prevents incarceration.

This was about the amazing working done at the Saint Louis County Public Library, an awesome team there, and I pitched this to our library.

But it was three months later when we had outreach from the Saint Louis Public Library that it was able to move to the next level.

We were able to get started in July of 2023.

That's almost a year after I pitched it.

And this was kind of to the patience and the perseverance you have to have something come together.

We have -- at the bottom there, that's the Kansas City public defender, Jackson county prosecutor's office, the project, which is affiliated within the University of Missouri, Kansas City school of law, and this is an amazing team.

That -- the engagement coordinator that I get to work with.

When we are there at these events, we have people with library resources, programs that can be of interest.

Anyone -- a whole person, right?

We can get pretty crowded at these events and since they have young children that come with caregivers, one of my favorite things is, with permission, take kids and make sure they have books and make sure they have snacks.

But the concept, this happens, is to connect people to experts who can help address outstanding warrants, to get a fresh start for the expungement process, the center, because we want to encourage people who have tapped out of the justice system, they're frustrated with the justice system, they can't seem to move to the next level, they don't know how to navigate it.

But the idea is tapping back in and regaining that civic power.

I want to share a quick story, a man in November came to my table and shared his amazement.

He was shaking his head, this --

he's heard about it at a clinic, and I'm working with his [indiscernible] so that he has talked with our staff and I wrote down what he said about his hope for the future.

Because it impacted me so strongly.

He said, it's no way to live, looking over your shoulder all the time.

And fast-forward from July to today, we hosted our fifth event next Monday, I can't believe it's December 18th, and this exceptional team has been able to help about 50 to 60 people at each event since September.

Took us a little while to get started.

They've been able to recruit more helpers each time and I think it's because they see the difference they make each time.

As of today, I know that over 400 warrants have been cleared as a result of this team effort and it's marvelous.

I'm really excited about it.

It's something I'm very excited to see continue.

As a result of our collaboration and our long-standing experience together, my record project team and me hosted some living room conversations, and again, that speaks to that social cohesion thing and there are living room conversations and if you haven't used them before, I would really encourage you to try those out.

There's one in April for the national youth conversation, that restorative justice and one in July with reentry and recidivism and I just want to give you all a quick sketch of how that works.

We start with a communal -- 

where we get to know each other.

It's strangers in a room.

They are no longer strangers by the end of the evening.

Because after dinner, I've paired them off or teamed them up randomly to get into the in-depth conversations and then the teams report out, what did you learn today or what might your next steps be and with participants' permission, I tape those next steps and share them out with people who can make decisions about that or people who can help implement them, the next step.

I wanted to share a little bit from the feedback from those living room conversations, just a couple of examples.

One of them was with the first model, I found common ground with a stranger and could talk about restorative justice.

The second was, please continue having these living room conversations, many people together to work on solutions, as we did tonight.

So this is very action-oriented and this is, you know, both the center and the living room conversations with very action-oriented.

I love this program, and I'd really be happy to share more about that with you guys.

The next thing I want to talk about is the little icon there from our flyer, which was for our Kansas City ready in three program.

It was my -- my example for how we're stronger together when we connect people to resources and civic authority that can help them be prepared, a great example of how you can have excellent support from a grant, a great community partner, great program and disappointing turnout.

This is what happens.

I guess internal library partners on IMR front and have the funds for -- so we can host that in September and I was -- I got to move forward with that, connected with Kansas City's office of Emergency Management.

There are marvelous experts, and they were ready to go ahead with the event in December until our experts were pulled away to an emergency the day of the event.

We rescheduled for November 30th and got all cap emails, I need to register for this, and it was really great.

And that put together 40 backpacks, thanks to the ILMS grant, and they had a solar powered, hand-crank flashlight that was a charger and a weather radio and from the Kansas City office of Emergency Management in there, I pulled together a resource list and we had a display of books for participants to check out.

And then six people showed up.

That was all, out of everybody who registered.

But the event went really well.

The experts were -- just jumped right in and participants were very engaged and the survey results were super, which was very gratifying.

We have decided, wait, there's more.

We have decided to try again for severe weather week in 2024 and I bet everybody on the call already has a whole calendar of ideas for 2024 for ready.gov, how that might work in your library in that way.

One thing I do not have a slide for is our climate cafe pilot, and I love these calls piece people are really frank.

What do you do about climate anxiety?

There's so much to try to take on.

What do I do with this, with these feelings?

And this is an example to me of how we can be stronger together when we connect people who each other and to community experts who can really help us to be more resilient.

We don't have to be alone.

I get to serve as the chair of the education and programming committee for sustainability roundtable, and we hosted Sammy Aaron here in Kansas City, she presented on promoting climate change resiliency, the intersection of private change and mental health.

And based on the interactions --

at the end of it, I was surprised, anybody interested in learning more about climate cafes?

And she gave a quick pitch of what they were, and as of today, we are aware of 17 libraries around the country that are interested and in the climate cafe and we've been working since June-ish with the sustainability roundtable.

You might wonder what the climate cafe is and I'll give you a quick sketch.

The way that it has been done here in Kansas City is that you have facilitators for the resilient activists and you have a climate awareness therapist to guide the conversation in a way that this really supports people, that really -- I guess I'm just -- kind of catch people, like ah!

I don't know what to do with this anxiety!

I gotcha.

That's okay, to describe it that way.

But this is one of those things, and I'm a very action-oriented person.

This is not about action.

This is not, what are we gonna do?

This is where you take a break.

What are we gonna do.

This is where you -- where you can just breathe and you can just say, I just want to share my thoughts.

I just want to share my feelings.

I just want to talk about what's happening and the anxiety that I feel and the way that it's happened here is that they make this a warm place, a friendly place, so that you can -- so that you can just kind of have that chance to be resilient.

And recharge.

So I'm excited to see how that comes together and if you're into learning more about climate cafes and signing up at the library that you'll let me know.

I will get to continue chairing that committee until the end of next summer.

I do want to have full disclosure here.

I started at the library in May of 2019 as a part of a community reference team.

We are a complement to our traditional awesome reference team at the library, but we have specific focus areas that were pulled together as a result of survey results from patrons and staff, what do they need?

And so my area of expertise is [indiscernible], but my specialty is government resources, civic engagement, and as Rebekkah has on here, I over see literacy registration, coordinate tax services at the library, and, yeah, media and new literacy is my jam.

I really love that too.

But I will be leaving before the end of the year.

That doesn't mean I'm leaving library land, just this particular library.

I hope you would reach out to me for any questions about that.

And that is the end of my presentation.

>> REBEKKAH:  You're not done yet.

Thank you so much for giving us just a taste of some of the stuff you've worked on there in your four years at Kansas City and of course, we wish you the best with whatever is best but how lucky we are that you volunteered your time on the sustainability roundtable and you're the second presenter we've had from the roundtable, what good work, they just celebrated their 10th anniversary, the fastest growing ALA roundtable folks like yourself giving yourself to us in the profession to do better on these topics.

We're going to invite all of our panelists to have cameras and mics on now.

We have a lot of questions and I noticed some trends throughout all three of your discussions, which did exactly what I hope they would do, which is to shine that light on the catalytic power of libraries and address really big issues, and sometimes it's person by person but that's what it takes.

But I noticed all of you talked about the partnerships you forged along the way.

And so that's my first question of you, and in a broad sense, what has been key for each of you in building trust with community partners to create these working partnerships you have that resulted in these great programs?

Lu, I'll ask you to go first.

>> LU:  Yeah, trust and voices, we recognize while we are not the standard institution you would think of when you think of government institutions, we are still a government institution, which means our community specifically, our community, 64% Black, that equals distrust, even though we are here to serve.

So in doing that, in recognizing that, we enlist the trusted voices in the community that -- 

that our community leverage already rely on.

We do not -- we cannot fathom doing it without boots on the ground organizations or community leaders and whether that means inviting community leaders to be the moderator for the panelists or inviting a community organization to join us in being a partner as we provide the resources and we're just asking them to cosign us so the community knows we're not just putting this on.

We're, for example, dedicating February, Black History Month, to the sororities and fraternities, and we found that working with the community organizations that are already doing this work but giving them the support of the institution really told the community that we care and really told the community members that we care about these community members and we care about the work we're doing and we're here to support them.

We get a lot of gratitude and thank yous.

We realized that doing this work on our own, we may have the greatest intention but the impact is not the same and we've seen a significant increase in our programs where a program like the amplified voices series, when we try to do programs like that before without partnering with those partner community organizations, we might have been lucky to see five or ten people show up.

So our first program when we first started working with not only Johns Hopkins but a local organization, nobody asked me campaign, we saw our person that we saw go from like I said, lucky to get 5 or 10 people to 50 or 60 people, 20 of those people were youth.

Now, youth with gift cards for $15 and they showed up.

But they showed up.

And they asked questions.

One of the panelists was a superintendent for those Baltimore City public schools and we asked some very bright young people that attended that asked some hard questions and made sure we had a youth panelist on that panel and that was someone in the community that was vested and known for speaking widely about changing the dynamics of our community, actually opened a community garden as an after-school program for youth to come have something else to do.

So he's a trusted voice among the youth.

And having him on the panel meant the youth that supported him came to support him on the panel.

We brought him back for the second, My Brother's Keeper, and we went to 250 + on the panel and we brought him back and made sure the people on that panel were people from Baltimore, people from the neighborhood, that individuals wanted to see and we brought people into the library that said, hey, I've been in Baltimore 40 years.

I've never been to central library.

And the amount of people was disheartening, but also, inspiring, because it felt that what our goal is getting people to the library who normally do not come into the library normally.

So we have seen an increase in our participation.

Once we became intentional about strategic partnerships and who we invited, who we directed invitations to, that made a lot of community organizations feel special.

Of course, we have our compass, our website, but we send them to people we think would be impacted or would care about a topic, directly inviting them.

Hey, we would love it if you would come.

We send invites to city councilmembers, especially if it's in their district.

We show them the respect, if an event is in their district, we invite them and if they can't make it, we ask them to put it in the newsletter so people who follow them will get the information.

So we really became intentional about not deciding to traditional marketing in libraries and really just getting out there.

We went to -- like my Brother's Keeper, that was about youth violence and how to curb violence along the youth in Baltimore City.

Right then, unfortunately, we had an incident at the Brooklyn home and we handed out flyers personally.

Hey, we're not just in our ivory towers telling you the events you need.

We're asking you, what are the events you need and bringing in the people you care to lead those events and the same thing, we worked with Catholic youth and family services, who they do food giveaways and just little things like that, we're letting the community know that we want to support you in several different ways -- economically, environmental, emotionally, physically, and we've seen an immense increase with all demographics.

>> REBEKKAH:  You just gave a masters class in less than four minutes.

That was amazing 

>> LU:  I talk fast.

I'm sorry.

>> REBEKKAH:  I've often been blamed for that, so I thank you.

I love what you're talking about.

It goes back to something I learned up here over the years.

Word of youth is king.

When real people are talking to other real people, trusted people, over and over again, your trusted neighbors, people who have that trust equity.

I'm not saying you're borrowing, but you're asking to be a part of it and that humbleness you showed, listening before preaching is something a lot of us need to learn.

Thank you for modeling that.

>> JENNY:  I couldn't agree more.

As an example of that connection, with the center, we started kind of small, but we delivered.

And I think, to your question, how do you build trust with community partners, you deliver at every step of the way.

What do you need, how can I be of assistance to you as a library, you go and make that happen.

You make that connection with your community partner and deliver for them.

But when you deliver for your patrons and you deliver for the people who come in and experience that program and who experience that service, that's the difference maker because we started small, but when the word got out that people's lives were being changed in that tap-in center, the local influencer said, this is the real deal, guys, you have to come here if you want to check your warrants and things like that, it was exponential in growth.

>> REBEKKAH:  Gabrielle, did you have anything you wanted to add on what you found to be key in building trust with the community?

>> GABRIELLE:  How can I follow up, amazing, I'm so inspired by both of you, Lu and Jenny.

I was in a very rural area and it's -- you know, it's -- it's one of those things where I used to be the outreach coordinator for the public library and one of the things I was left with, we have a lot of community organizations that come to us and I just have so much respect for the work you're all doing because every library is different.

Every location is different.

But what I will say is that for, you know, the fact that libraries do spend -- we're all, whether you're an academic library or if you're in a city, in a rural library or if you're, you know, whatever the case is, I would just say that I feel like -- and I just wanted to speak to people who -- libraries that maybe don't have a lot of staff because I feel like there's a lot of burnout and one of the things that I just often say in terms of -- forging community partnerships and taking on the work that is just, you know, difficult climate, social, all of it, is, again, having that platform but also like as I said before, it's like doing something, right, I feel like some libraries are at a place where they're not well-funded, you don't have a lot of resources, and so for us, it's like -- I'll just use the example, the wealthy recyclng commission or the Brewster recycling committee, and it's like giving and delegating.

It really makes people feel more involved and you have -- for instance, we've had greater outreach in that way.

So I think that especially when -- when dealing with like -- staff and, you know, I've -- my library has been really understaffed in recent history, so figuring out how to delegate and make those partnerships, it's just a huge amount of work.

I just -- I feel like -- yeah, I -- so struck.

Right.

>> REBEKKAH:  So it's interesting to see how things are done in different places, which is why we thank WebJunction for listening to people from different places.

I'm going to ask you one more question myself and open it up to the chat.

A ton of questions that will fill the time we have for the meeting.

So I want to close my own question to you.

What advice do you have for your peers?

Like Gabrielle said, many are overwhelmed, not just by the capacity by the climate action as well.

What kind of advice do you have for them to be focused and do things that matter and keep going?

Gabrielle, do you want to start since you brought up the capacity issue?

>> GABRIELLE:  Yeah, I come from central Massachusetts and my town library was so small and there are libraries in Massachusetts that are just like don't even have running water.

So I always try to think about that, in terms of the work we're doing.

Our libraries are better funded, but one of the things that I do also just love about our -- very volunteer oriented, so you can run them without a huge budget.

So I love that, but also, not to be a broken record, but I -- and Rebekkah and I talked about this when planning for this webinar, but the Blue Marble Library and the -- I had gotten involved was to keep the conversation going.

So if you follow the social media, one of the things that I try to do is just highlight the programs that people are doing and the initiatives that libraries are doing as a way to inspire others and I think that for me, when I feel burned out and when I feel tired, it just helps, you know, to see, you know, other people sort of like what other libraries are doing, but also like in the -- in the sharing and in the amplifying, like that, in and of itself, I think, has a ripple effect.

So I guess that's -- it's a little bit of where I'm coming from, and also, just to say that, you know, a little bit, I think, does go a long way, but also, we should all pat ourselves on the back.

We live in really hard times, and, you know, I feel like kindness solves a lot.

I think all the world's problems could probably be solved with just kindness.

>> REBEKKAH:  I love that.

To wrap up, be kind and find hope in action.

Love it.

Jenny?

>> JENNY:  I would.

Honestly, listen to your community, what the most pressing issues are for them and work for those priorities and never feel like you have to take it all on yourself.

The Avengers, right?

You find -- let's bring everyone together.

If the library is the right place, let's do it.

But even if you aren't the right place or host, you are a resource at your local library that we have curated for you and be a part of it in the way that makes the most sense for you.

Never feel like you have to take it all on your own because you're not alone.

>> REBEKKAH:  Lu, any advice?

>> LU:  Definitely piggyback off what you said.

You can't solve every issue and you definitely can't do it all on your own, like Jenny said, so rely on the community allies.

You also can't learn everything about all of the issues that affect climate change and solar justice and I can't know everything and that's my job to.

So give yourself some grace and along the lines of that, also, practice some self-care.

We go to -- I manage a team where we go to retreats when we can or give ourselves some mental health breaks.

We're relying on each other when we need help, having the outlet to have someone to talk to your frustrations about.

It's okay, about your job.

I'm a strong advocate of that.

It's okay without having a hard time at work, gets some of that frustration off your chest, you live to fight another day.

So I encourage you and definitely focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses and your successes rather than your failure.

I would rather try and fail than not try at all.

I have no fear of failure.

You might succeed, something as big as a free grocery store is a very, very scary thing, but I'd rather have taken a try to have an impact rather than just had a dream that I never brought to fruition.

So focus on yourself, focus on your strengths and don't be afraid to -- don't be afraid to feel, definitely, but don't be afraid to fail and definitely practice self-care and remain realistic in your goals for yourself and your institution.

And also, this probably won't be a popular answer, but be able to recognize that the institution you are at is not the institution for you.

That's the best advice that I can give anyone.

You don't have to stay there.

You can find somewhere else that more aligns with your vision and your goals so that you can go home and sleep at night.

So that's what I will say.

>> REBEKKAH:  I love it.

I love your points about failure.

It's one of my mantras.

I talk about fail faster and move on.

Learn from it and move on.

The joyful funeral.

We tried something and it failed. 

>> I love that.

>> REBEKKAH:  Let's learn from that.

What did we learn from that?

What are we never going to do again?

We have a lot of questions from our panelists, and Gabrielle, we're going to start with you.

How do you find the volunteers to do the repairs?

>> GABRIELLE:  Yeah, I love that question.

So when we were talking about the community partnerships and I mentioned the recycling commission.

So now I return to -- a recycling committee or commission, but they have been -- that was honestly how I got involved in Repair Events in the first place, the recycling community was the outreach coordinator at the library.

They reached out to me and I did a lot of work with them and so it was kind of just a natural partnership and so what was wonderful about it was we had, you know, someone, we always have had an outreach coordinator for the -- the repair coach coordinator is what I should say, and they were responsible for the recruitment aspects that I've always done, the flyers and the publicity.

So to answer your question, first and foremost, we put together a flyer that just asks for volunteers and what I would like to say is that all of the instructions focused on the four books that I shared with you on pretty much every single one, I think, has step-by-step, how to run a Repair Events specifically for libraries.

But also, if you go online to the fix it clinic.org website and these other websites, they also have a breakdown of how to go about coach recruitment.

Again, what I would say is, you know, it's better to have a community partner that's environmentally oriented because it is a lot of work to organize a Repair Events, eventually if you're doing the coach coordination.

So I always delegate that and ask, you know, our recycling person to do it.

But we have the flyer.

We put it on all of our social media.

We put it in our newsletter.

We send it out through the interlibrary loan system.

We contact the newspapers.

I do PSAs.

And so the recruitment, you do pretty much like two months, really, two -- you start doing that two months in advance and especially if it's your first clinic ever, once you host one, usually, right, you keep a list of the people, if they want to come back and it makes it so much easier.

It's really like getting your program off the ground is the hardest part.

But word of mouth is incredibly powerful and, you know, making those community connections really does make all the difference in terms of coach recruitment and that's the thing is like -- if Lu and Jenny have put some beautifully, right, we can't do it all and we can't know it all.

And that's where I -- my mindset is very much around what's my role at the library and often I think of knowing where to get information, knowing where to point people, curating, but also, being strategic, right, in those sort of relationships that we create in the community and how that aligns with, you know, our library's values.

So hopefully that answers the question.

It's just a bit of a -- it's a process, but once you get going -- 

>> REBEKKAH:  Did a great job in the library and sustainability books from the ALA edition, and step by step, here's how you make it happen and a lot of people are talking about it, a lot of advice from people who have tried.

So Lu, the next question was about your Amplified Voices Program.

They would like to know more specifically who has come to talk on those panels.

>> LU:  Yeah, so the first, the first thing that we had was we partnered with Johns Hopkins and nobody asked me -- nobody asked me campaign is an community organization and literally was -- they speak to the youth directly about what will help them stay engaged.

And they did an amazing report.

They interviewed 156, I think, either -- I know -- I'm not sure if it's 26 or 56, but interviewed a lot of youth to ask them directly, what will help you stay engaged, what will help you stay out of bad situations, so we started off with them.

They did a quick 30-minute presentation of the work, and then our panel consisted of some panels from Johns Hopkins, and the school, and now youth panelist, who I mentioned, does a lot of the work.

But my Brother's Keeper, we focused on getting -- because the concept was focused on Black male youth engagement, we got Black men who were known by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, for lack of a better term right now and overcoming the barriers of growing up in an inner city environment to get where they are today.

Because we wanted to appeal to the youth, we made sure that we had people with a large following on Instagram because that's the generation that we are in, focused on panelists from 8,000 to our highest panelist which was [indiscernible] who has if I'm not mistaken, about 150 or something thousand followers on Instagram because we know that is what would get those individuals into the building.

So we can Aaron Maben, a former NFL player, Watkins, a popular author in Baltimore City.

We had [indiscernible], he is a community organization, youth panelist.

We had also previously had Rivas, a big ticket speaker to speak on the transition of DEI and the importance of programs like food insecurity programs and the libraries have to be more transformative, right, and our impact has to be transformative, otherwise, where are we going.

So we've really focused on getting speakers that people want to hear.

Not that we want to hear.

That the people are saying want to come into the library, that they want to hear.

And I don't know if [indiscernible] to say this, but we do look at a person's following in the community, but also, online, to see if they have people who want to hear what they're saying.

We can have these conversations all day.

If we're not having anyone in the seats to listen to them, then there's no point in having these conversations.

So we want to make sure that we not only have people who can speak on the topic but people who already have a following that people already want to hear speak on this topic in this building.

Most of your libraries are free, so we definitely pride ourselves in when we reach out to speakers, we reach out to them as if it's a charity project because we should consider this a charity event.

We're not collecting any funds from this event so the one we had recently, Jada Pinkett came through, so we're charging people, it's a charity event.

So we really focused on getting people into the building so -- 

some of our speakers and we focus on speakers who have a large following.

>> REBEKKAH:  Fantastic.

That's aspirational for many people on the call here today.

That's fantastic.

I guess I just finished reading Jada Pinkett's book.

You got one question about the climate cafe, we'll talk about how you got out that childcare was available during that program so folks could see themselves participate.

>> JENNY:  We don't advertise that childcare is available.

Children are welcome in the library.

There's not like a separate room for them to be in.

I don't take the child away from their parents unless they can get the book and I'll walk them over -- the but I do -- what I do is just something that -- 

it's empathy.

If I'm trying to do something and they have a baby, I can hold your baby for you if that's all right.

We did have childcare.

>> REBEKKAH:  We have lots of questions about the climate cafe, folks had questions about how do you find a climate aware therapist, can you talk about what would happen at climate cafe, are social workers prepared to run a climate cafe.

>> JENNY:  I dropped in the chat a link to the climate therapist directory, thanks to the -- I hope I didn't lose it.

The -- I didn't lose it -- the parents organization for that is -- [indiscernible] belongs to -- thank you very much, climate psychology.

And it is a specialty, kind of, to have that lens to look through, and that is -- thank you.

That's exactly where it is.

It really -- the climate cafe, the way I've described it is I think the reason why we have the pilot project working as we're trying to figure out exactly how does that look inside of a library.

Where we're crafting that right now with the hope that it will be after we're done with the pilot project, we said, okay, we can do this better or shape it this way, then kind of a turnkey operation and it's not, well, now I've got to go find this and I've got to go find that.

The idea is, I would like to have a climate cafe, please.

If that's what works for your community, the pilot project will inform how to create that as easily as possible in your community.

>> REBEKKAH:  More specific version of your living room conversations, which sounds like they've been a big hit in Kansas City.

>> JENNY:  It is.

What I like about it and how I contrast them a little bit, living room conversations, the ending is, what are the next steps.

And with climate cafe, it's just breathe and you have somebody guiding the conversation and this is what's on my mind and it's not, well, let's get the solutions space on that.

It's thanks for sharing that.

Here it is.

And here are some tips for bringing down your anxiety, how to increase your resilience for this.

Just on a personal level, on a personal level.

But also, I feel like I've said this a lot.

Just knowing that you're not alone.

You're not the only one with this worry.

That you have that community and you have strength in community.

>> REBEKKAH:  Perfect line to end our series on, Jenny, because that's exactly what we tried to do here was to widen the community of practice of folks in the profession thinking about climate sustainability, climate justice, ultimately, impact, how do we bring folks together to solve the problems in our backyard.

So I want to thank the panel for their time and energy.

I know Lu has a graduation panel, jealous of that, but thank you for the amazing work that you're doing in your communities.

So as Jennifer mentioned at the top of the hour, we have a phenomenal amount of resources that have come out of this series.

They're all cataloged on the web junction site and there's a new topic area on WebJunction devoted to sustainability where some of the good ideas, not just for the sustainable library initiative and the panelists, but you, the audience, have shared throughout all six events are curated on WebJunction website so you have no excuse, a lot of things to keep the conversation going, come to Sustainable Libraries Initiative, they're free.

We have meet-ups, newsletters, the mobile app.

There's a lot of good work coming on in the profession.

So again, thank you to the audience as well as WebJunction for being a part of this series because it wouldn't have been as great without you all.

Thank you very much.

>> Right back at you.

This has been an honor.

I have learned so much myself and I know that many, many folks have learned and are enthusiastic to lead and do this work.

And Rebekkah is right, we will continue to nurture this new topic area.

There's more to come.

We are not alone, Jenny.

I appreciate you reminding us of that.

You are not alone.

We're here with you.

And we will help you do the work.

Thank you.

A reminder that I'm going to send you a recording -- an email today once the recording is posted and I'm going to send you to a short survey as you leave.

If you don't have time to complete it now, the link will be in that email, but we really appreciate your feedback, especially as we wrap up the series and we'll share that feedback with our presenters and it helps us guide our ongoing programming.

So thank you all so much.

Have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll be thinking of you doing this great work in your library community.

Thank you.