All right, so for our final presentation for the day here at Big Talk from Small Libraries 2016, we have Diane Connery. She is south of here in Texas, Potsboro Area Public Library. Topic or title of presentation, Slip the Script, Changing the Direction of the Library. This is a presentation about making a big change to your library and what you've been doing and changing the focus to bring in some new things. So I will just let you go ahead, Diane, and tell us about how you accomplished that at your library. Okay, Krista, thanks very much, and just jump in if my sound's not good or something. You're sounding great. Okay, I will paint the picture by telling you I'm sitting here in the evening gown, which isn't an everyday occurrence around here, but I've got a Chamber of Commerce banquet to go to after that, after this, and I think that just speaks to the variety of things we do. I started this morning at 8 o'clock. We had a coffee with the mayor where the community members can come talk to the mayor here at the library, and then we had a head start come for parenting class and a variety of things today, and now this, and then on to a Chamber banquet. I wish I had known I would have done video for your session. You dressed up for us. There may be some, there are many people watching from home. Could be sitting there in their pajamas. It's a total other extreme. Just picture me with a tiara on, and you'll have an accurate picture. And I do want to start by saying what a great opportunity this is for sharing ideas. I love being with other librarians and talking about what's going on in their places, and I've implemented several ideas that I've gotten in previous years. There was someone a couple years ago who talked about their outdoor space and making the outdoor welcoming, and we've tried to emulate that. And so I just want to say, here's my disclaimer. Your mileage may vary because all of our libraries do have things in common, but are also very different. I'm sharing my experience, and probably everything won't translate, but I hope maybe something will spark an idea that you can adapt to your setting. And so I came to this small town, moved from the big city to this small town six years ago, and got involved with the board of directors for the library after about a year. I had no interest in really getting involved. I just wanted to live at the lake and have scenery, but within a year I got involved on the board. And we were at what I now see was a very fortunate point in time, and that was these factors coming together. We were running out of money. There was no city support for us, no taxpayer money coming to us. And there was a group of volunteers who had done amazing things, but they were either aging out or burning out, and it was looking pretty hopeless. And so I come from a background as an entrepreneur and not a background in libraries. That kind of environment gave us the opportunity to explore, to experiment. There was no fear of failure because we were failing already. And so I came on the board, and then about a year ago I transitioned to the director position. And so just to tell you a little bit about Pottsboro to paint the picture for you, it's a town of about 2,000 people and then outside of City Limits. Our service area is about 3,300. And it's a lake community, so it's a very split community. There are people who have lived in this rural area for generations, but there are also a lot of professional retirees who come here from Dallas. We're about an hour and a half north of Dallas. And until 2010 it was a completely volunteer organization, which just blew my mind that that could happen. But then as volunteers were dwindling, we discovered that we really needed to hire a half-time librarian to be here. And so all the money that friends had been saving over the years started going to that librarian position. And this past year our annual budget is $24,719. And early on there was no tax money, and then at some point like 2010 the city started putting in a little money and from there have been increasing their commitment. 2010 was $4,000 a year. 2010 to 2012 they were putting in $14,000 a year. And I will add to that how we've made this happen is through grant writing. We've gotten probably in the last two years about $150,000 worth of grants. So when I got involved we were preparing to shut down. Every board meeting was just this discussion of how much money do we have left? How many more months can we keep going until we have to close? And I can't tell you how fun those meetings were. They were such a downer, if you can imagine. So there were these committed volunteers who had made things happen, but they were losing interest and nobody saw a way out of it. Yet there were discussions about how important a library is to a community. And there were a lot of people who felt like whether or not anybody in the community was using the library that out of principle a town should have one. And I came into it saying, okay now that we have hired this part-time director or librarian and money is dwindling, long-term the library cannot sustain salaries just based on fundraising. And so the only way I could see us surviving long-term would be if we could get some kind of sustainable income stream for that paid staff. So they had been doing fundraisers and we started looking at, okay, what else can we do? And the first thoughts were let's keep doing the things we have been doing, but let's do them better, let's do them harder. We've been doing flower sales, well let's advertise more. We were spending so much time on fundraising that we weren't really offering anything that people valued. It was all about let's raise some money and then save that money in case of a rainy day. And the rainy day had really come. So before my time here I think the fundraisers had been very traditional. Flower sales, bake sales, dinner dances, poetry reading. And we started looking at that and said well let's do something fun. And in addition to that at the same time we were looking at how do we save money. So volunteers were taking turn cleaning, cleaning the bathrooms. We got rid of a fax line. And one of the ways that we then attempted to make things fun is we spring trivia night once a year. And I experienced it, went to Tulsa and saw the high school Bishop Kelly that put on a trivia fundraiser every year. They actually sell out two gyms in 24 hours, 1200 seats. They do it every year and it's fairly simple to put on. In their case they actually have one gym is for serious people who want quiet and another gym for people who are having fun and are building pyramids on their table like beer cans and that kind of stuff. We looked at fundraising and we realized there's a hierarchy of fundraising. The lowest level of fundraising is events. Now it's not to say don't do them because we do some of them. We've cut way back and we try to make them fun. But events are the lowest level. Then above that you have grants and above that you have gifts. And that's where your larger funds are going to come from and people who really care about the library. Because a lot of times if you're doing events, if you don't have the event one time nobody's giving you money. And so we were building relationships to, we established an annual appeal so that people just write us a check now once a year. And that's lovely. But we have continued this trivia pictures last weekend. The people in the community have actually demanded that we keep doing that because they have so much fun. So as we were looking and considering the transition, I stumbled upon something I call the shrimp tail principle. We were looking for ideas. How can we get different people into the library, people who have never used us before? And so one of the discussion points is, well we do have a meeting room. It's not separate from the library so it could only be used off library hours. But what if we made that available to community members to use? And so started a series of meetings where rules and policies and forms were discussed ad nauseam. And so it was like, well if somebody's going to use it, we need to have this thing that they sign and these rules posted in the kitchen. And that's where shrimp tail comes from. Because one of the points that was decided upon was if people were using the library, they couldn't have shrimp because somebody had worked in a library once that shrimp tails went down the drain and it smelled bad. So picture all of this no, no, no and lots of time and energy put into this. After all of that, I think in the following year or two years maybe two people used the library. So what I'm saying is we were spending our time in the wrong places, not focusing on the big picture. And we really try to consider now, are you spending your time on the most important things? And what that brought us to, if you're a fan of Seinfeld, there was a time when George decided to flip the script that everything he had been doing in his life was wrong, was not working. And what he decided to do is whatever he felt like doing, he would do the opposite. And so this scene was he was in a restaurant, saw a beautiful woman, walked up to her and said, my name's George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents. And sure enough, she was interested. And so that's kind of what we were looking at. If we stopped spending all our time on fundraising policies and started focusing on what the community wanted, we had nothing to lose. And so knowing that the only way we were going to survive was to establish a steady income stream, the overarching principle became, what will make this place so important to the community that there would be rioting in the streets if we had to close. I'm picturing people with pitchforks going to city hall. I wanted the place to be packed and for people to feel like we were a part of the community. And so we started thinking big. We said what we want, even though our town is small and has a very small tax base, what we want is for the city to take us over. And I know that's a double-edged sword, because the reason we had so much freedom to experiment was because there was not a lot of bureaucracy. We could beta test everything. So we said, okay, we want the city to know we're good partners. We applied and I've got a woman here, a volunteer who writes grants and she's just fabulous. She wrote a grant application to Outside the Box and we got the award 20 libraries in the U.S. and only one in Texas got the award and we were one of them. And the other piece of it, as I know librarians can tend to be very frugal, but I wanted to go at it again from flipping the script. What if we spent money on professionals? That we didn't try to nickel and dime, but we paid professionals to come up with a website and a logo. And what I have found with that is, yes, we have paid some money, luckily we got money through grants, but they have given us back value for that. And also in most cases have been very generous with giving us time after the paid work was over because we didn't want to feel like we were always coming to people with our hands out, didn't want to just make do, we wanted something special. Now, here's a warning for you. And I did learn this at an ARSL conference. If people aren't mad at you, you're not doing enough. So get comfortable with that.  And I remember in the beginning when I got involved, everybody was so excited, and I actually talked to somebody at the State Library and told her that. And I remember she sounded hesitant like, well, that doesn't sound right. But what I found out is as changes occurred, people started making little comments kind of out of the side of their mouth and it came to a head when we had a semi truck pull-up in the driveway to take away books, to better rule books. We had had, when I came on, we had 14,000 books in the library. We're required to have 7,500. And right now that's what we have, about 7,500 books. And so through talking to the state, they advised us don't have any shelf more than 75% full. We looked at the circulation records and literally we had hundreds, thousands of books that hadn't been checked out in 10 years or more. But people were mad because they felt like these books had a value whether or not they were being checked out. And in our case, because we have such small square footage, we are not in a position to be a book museum, to be an archive of books. We have to think about what will really circulate. And the other part of people getting mad is that innovation is about, it's about what you give up. It's just about as much about what you discontinue as what you create. And so we had looked at things like, oh, these wonderful, sweet volunteers had run summer reading forever.  And the bigger vision is, do you want the library to survive or not? And clearly what we had been doing wasn't working. So sometimes people got mad with me. Now the vision part of it, I think, is having somebody or several somebody involved with the planning who have this set of direction, create a common goal to strive for. You've got to have that clear vision. And like ours was, let's get a sustainable income stream. You've got to have that clear vision before you can share it with anyone else. Don't get bogged down in the minutia. We had a strategic planning meeting. And a big focus of that, and this was back in 2014, was the Pew Institute. And it talked about what people value in libraries and niches that libraries can fill that are currently unfilled in society. And so we really try to focus on big picture and not get bogged down. I think one of the things that I have learned and probably learned too slowly was the importance of relationship building. And that has been key. Is looking at who in the community we can work with and bringing other people together. And this came from Pew Institute. One of the ideas was the library as a platform. It's networks of people creating something. And friends, one of the things that we're working on is building a community garden. And that has brought in rotary visions of sugar plums, which is a food bank for lower income children in the area, and churches. And by us all working together, we're really making progress. And the relationship building turning outwards, I think that was helpful in the sense of finding like-minded people to work with you is so energizing. I don't know if you have this in your library, but we had some people here that when I drive up to the building and see their cars, it was just draining because there were certain people who were negative, didn't like the new ideas. But when we started getting all this excitement from outside, those internal naysayers had a hard time denying the success that we were experiencing, the community support. They still tried and they still had their opinions. But I think that propelled us to levels we could have never gone. And last spring we attended the Harwood Institute training about turning outwards and finding out what your community wants, and that's just been key. One of the biggest surprises I have experienced is when you're open to opportunities to possibilities, how one thing leads to the next. So I'm a big proponent in staying flexible, not getting too tied into one thing but being light on your feet. I'll give you just a couple little examples.  She retired here from Dallas a few months ago, had sold her multimillion-dollar software company in Dallas, never wants to work again, but is now living here at the lake and wants to continue to stay involved with the community and give back. So she had computers that she wanted to get rid of. And she had called our volunteer fire department. They had just purchased new computers so they told her they couldn't use them. And by virtue of them telling her no, she showed up here and is now working with us in incredible ways. I'm so excited, strategic plans, she's awesome. And so it was about saying yes and just following things to see where they lead. We also did, we had early on an involvement with Austin College. And Austin College is a liberal arts school here. And they have provided so many opportunities for us. Every summer now they provide grant writers for us to work on our projects. One of their marketing professors uses us as their semester-long project. Their science outreach person has done programming for us. So it really is about just saying yes to things and seeing where they lead. Strategic decisions, anytime that we can make a decision, we like to weigh, is there one option that would help us more than another? For instance, we got a Best Buy grant for $9,500, which made it possible to establish a team digital media program. So we were teaching the teams how to use Photoshop and Premiere Pro for video editing. We had DSLR cameras. And we used that grant, it also included to hire a trainer. And we hired one of the news producers from the local TV station. We could have hired other people. But by hiring her, she ended up getting media coverage for us a lot of times. It was very valuable. And through that decision, actually one of the teams who participated ended up offering to do a program for us Lego Racing. He coordinated a Lego Racing program for kids. He videotaped the event and then submitted that. We submitted that to YASA, won a national award for that video. As part of the award, we were given a book called Console Wars about video games. And I tweeted a picture of a kid who checked the book out and loved it. And the author responded. So then it became a back and forth with the author who offered to do a Skype session for us. So it was just one thing leads to another. So watch for those opportunities. The senior center meets here. Now, before 2010, there were complaints about that. And believe it or not, one of the complaints was they used too much toilet paper. And they're not paying us for this space. And it's using our utilities. But we started looking at it strategically. Who cares if they're not paying us for toilet paper? It is more important to get those people in the building. And then when we're grant writing, we're talking about this population we're serving in our building. And so those things give us traction. I also, and I think I heard that on this webinar a couple of years ago, is to be sure to attend all the city council meetings. I have sort of wormed my way in. So now I speak monthly at the city council meetings. Here's I like digital media. So this is an example of something that's coming up. Because of the Photoshop training the teams have had and the software we've bought. And follow-on step to that we started thinking about is having people come here to have holiday photos made. And then we can help customize their holiday photos for them. And we've got a photo scanner. We've got a volunteer photographer. And we feel like this is a way to bring in people who have not used the library before. And so it's just about exciting possibilities and everything's a beta test. Some of the things just flops horribly. I'm still embarrassed to tell you that we did an outdoor movie several years ago. It was Catching Fire. We had movie snacks. It should have been fabulous. I advertised it for months and 10 people came. And so that was painful for how much money we had spent on it. But what I recognized is we had not built our base enough. We hadn't been attracting the teams enough at that point to actually be able to count on them coming to the event. Also just as an aside this is a digital board that we have in the front of our library that we use for library advertising. The back of the library we have a community digital sign. And area nonprofits can advertise on that. And again we will provide the training they need. And it is pretty darn simple if you're using Canva, something like that. And in small towns it's hard to get the word out about things. Our newspaper is only weekly so most of the things are old news by the time it comes out. And so that's drawn nonprofits to our library to learn how to create their own promotional materials. Things that have impact. And that was just one of those following opportunities. Because from that one of the youth shelters who had lost a huge grant asked us if we would come to the youth shelter, make a video for them and to help them with their fundraising efforts. We did that. They took that video out into the community and were able to raise a lot of money. And at the same time they were talking to people in the community that we would have never been talking to. So it spread the word about us. I always like things that create buzz. Like if I was a newspaper what would I want to cover? And we have remodeled, but this picture is for summer reading we had many therapy horses come. And because I knew we were replacing the carpet soon, we left the horses in the library. So that's just one of the horses cruising the internet there. And so these are also things in grant applications that we look like. What will stand out? What's going to pop when we're either submitting it for a grant or an award or press? What kind of things attract media attention? I always like humor. Try to incorporate this on Facebook page and just in the experience of being at the library. We actually have several volunteers and board members who live out of town. And they've said the only reason that they stay on our boards is because they enjoy the experience. And like the other people that they're working with and the energy of it. And so actually the treasure of our board lives in a different community but is awesome. We've done things like in the town parade we did a book cart drill team which was a lot of fun. And when we did a remodel I noticed I got an email from the consultant that she looked forward to getting emails from me just because there was always something fun in there to read. And as a result she ended up donating the book carts to us for the parade which was awesome. So I think things that have led to progress and there is no end to this. It's a constantly changing animal which I love. But if you've ever been to improv one of the keys of making improv work is to say yes and. So whatever one person says it's you build on that you accept it take it and build on it. If you're saying no it's cutting off a lot of people who might want to get involved and things that would work in the future. And I think it's just we don't collaborate on everything. Actually we kind of a lot of us work in silos we have our particular areas of interest or passions. And for the most part on those kinds of things people do their do their own thing. They've been vetted we trust them and we give them the freedom to do what they want and just support that. Now you've got to be careful with that and there's definitely a balance with that. But that's what we have found to work for us is to say yes. And fortunately our town has been full of people who have said yes and. That we now are getting twenty four twenty seven thousand dollars a year from the city. And when we look back it was four thousand dollars two thousand and ten and nothing for years before that. And this is in a time of a lot of library budgets being cut and people questioning the value of libraries. But we were looking at giving people something they value. When I was first involved here we were not a kid friendly library kids frankly were not welcome here. And it was a lot of dusty dusty old books and most of them were not being checked out. But it was kind of a click of people who had run the library for a while and were comfortable with the way things were. While at the same time ringing their hands over what's going to happen we're going to close. It is very quiet place. Now we are a no shushing library. We're basically one big room. I would love eventually to have another place with the private meeting room and some study rooms. But right now it's not about walking in and seeing a bunch of signs that say no cell phones. You know know this know that it's a positive place to to be involved. We definitely found money followed money as things improved. Funders would look at that and people in the community would look at that and be willing to give us more money. One of the most exciting things that we had last year and the talker foundation had very generously given us a budget to remodel the library. It's so unexpected. We made this into the wildest most modern looking place when you walk in the door outside. It's still pretty much 1960s post office. But you walk in the door and kind of do a double take. And luckily we have local artists who pitched in and picked colors for the walls like begonia and thistle and things that looked crazy to me. But it all came together. So we had an open house for the remodeling and that day two different people called me from the community and offered to pay for new lighting for the library. Which then it was like hold please. I've got another line who's offering me money for lighting and that ended up being about $8,000. And so people like being part of something successful and exciting. And we always make notes of these things for our grants that we can talk about what's happening and lots of media to show that we're getting attention. Which a lot of times funders want that. They want to see that you can help let people know about what they've donated. And I will say imperfect action is an important covenant tab. It's easy for me because I'm not a perfectionist. Done is better than perfect. And we have built an atmosphere here of experimentation. We're not worried about failing with things. Again because we have that freedom of well we would have been closed by now anyway. But what we found is sometimes people want to research and make sure everything is perfect before they do anything. And so we've decided to we've got an idea let's try it. And so a lot of that goes on and we don't blame. When something goes wrong it's a learning experience and we take it and move on with it. People are drawn to success. Our numbers have just exploded. The numbers of patrons, of volunteers. Volunteers want to be part of something that's positive and fun. And when I go back in my mind to those early meetings we had where people were so woe is me and what are we going to do. It's no wonder that people were jumping ship.  And so people like upbeat and positive and that's helped us in a lot of ways. So I just kind of want to reiterate stay in line on your feet. Don't get too attached to anything but focus on the main thing. I think that's what I've seen is that it's just keeping the big picture in mind. And that's helped me when people have gotten mad because I'm confident based on what I've seen happening that we are headed in the right direction. And every day is exciting and something new around here. And I think we're all in a very fortunate time to be in this transformational stage for libraries. If we were starting with a clean slate what would a library be? And so we are pushing those boundaries and sometimes I think we're coming up with creative awesome stuff. And when I get together with other librarians I hear that oh we did that three years ago. So it's all about just I think the passion for what you're doing connecting with people and living in the yes. So if you've got any questions I'll be happy to try to answer them. My contact information is up on the screen and if you come up with something afterwards I'll be happy to get back with you. Okay, great. Thank you very much Diane. Yes, every library is at a different stage in their growth, change, development, whatever you want to call it. And yeah, everybody's learning new things, coming up with new things. And don't worry about where you are if you hear somebody doing something and they've done it already. You may have the first idea, you never know. We do have some questions that did come in, yes. Let's see what we got here. Oh, some people are saying they've, someone else has also started researching a community garden. And I know some other libraries have been doing that I've heard of. And someone else says they're excited when they get 10 teens to come to an event. In regards to reference to when you said you only got 10 people to come to one of your movie. But it's going to vary from community to community. I had a question. The Lego races, I've heard about Lego clubs and Lego building and Mindstorm. What are Lego races? They ended up, just we taped on the carpet a starting line and an ending line. And so they would push their cars, their hands couldn't go past the starting line. And whoever reached the ending tape, the fastest, won the race. So when they came in, we had Legos all over the place on tables and gave them, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes an hour to build the Legos. And then the races started. And the teen had it arranged in heats and was great about building excitement throughout the day. So they had to build their own car that could be like hopefully the fastest. Yes. This would be something that would be important. Is it on carpet or on solid or flat floor? It was. I'm trying to think. At the time it was carpet. The horses had been walking around on it. Because that would affect your speed as well. The type of terrain that you're trying to go across. And those horses, that was a great thing. That's something I'm sure many libraries have never thought about in planning an event. Well, we're replacing this anyway. So why not destroy it with a previous program or an event? Sure. Let the horses in. Yes. And somebody had even talked about having a red Kuwait and spaghetti party. Who cares? Which normally would be most likely you try. I know you said don't say no. But maybe banned from the library. Someone else had commented about that. They once had llamas in their library for their open house. And like you said, the pictures were hit. They got people's attention. They caught their eyes. Yeah, it's creating a buzz. Like you said. And a couple of people want to know, can you explain what is a book cart drill team? You said you guys did it. And I know their libraries have done it. But there are still some people that have not heard of it. And what that is? Do you have any pictures of that or anything? Just briefly and feel free. I think if you Google book cart drill team, you'll see what it is. But we had the town parade, annual parade is a year long, a year long, a mile long. And so we choreographed these moves. And there were 10 of us, I think. And we would twirl around each other with the book carts and serpentine in and out.  We would sing like I like big books and I cannot lie.  So it was just, again, it was like, okay, we are fighting so hard against, I think maybe the stereotype of libraries in general. But in this town, what our library had been. So we really had to go out of our way to say we are not that library anymore. Change your image, absolutely. It's similar to synchronized swimming. But obviously I'm land. And with the book carts. There's actually some ALAs they used to, and honestly I'm embarrassed to say I don't know. There would be competitions at ALA American Library Association conference. Book cart drill team competitions. And Demco provided trophies. A gold, silver and bronze book carts that were your first, second and third place winners. Received actually book trucks in gold, silver and bronze for the competition. They're a lot of fun, yes. So you're choreographing music and promoting the library and maybe whatever. I know some people do it every year in their annual parade, maybe that summer reading program or some new event or something new that has to do with the library. Very fun. Here's a question. Someone says, we have a great elderly patronage, but how do we draw in the next generation, the younger, without losing our seniors? Well, a couple of things come to mind. One, a lot of our programming is based on the time of day. So the seniors would be here in the morning, but by 3 o'clock in the afternoon, they are not here anymore. So a lot of it for us falls in those kind of timelines. And we do things outside of operating hours as well if we want special programs. But it has been this, I guess, an introduction to some people. We're no shishing library, so it may not be as quiet as you expected. But the other thing we've done are some intergenerational activities. We had an after school club or it's Pottsboro Kids Club. They've come and played dominoes and built puzzles with the seniors. So the seniors, after a couple hours, had had enough of it, but they enjoyed it for a while. And that was a great photo op for good pictures of people sitting around playing dominoes and two of them are eight-year-old boys and two of them are 75-year-old men. That's an interesting way to do it. Yeah, make them play nice together. Absolutely. And at different times of day, yeah, that's obviously, they don't have to be there. And I know you did mention that your building is just one big room, correct? Yes. So that would be something definitely you'd want to try and think, you can't say they're in this meeting room, they're in this side of the library because it's not really logistically even available, yeah. Right, not yet. Yeah. Do you have any photos of your remodeled library? I wasn't sure if any of the pictures here were showed any of that, the remodeled library interior. They are not there, but I can, if it works, I can upload them when we upload the PowerPoint and include some of those. Sure, absolutely, yeah. Okay. If you have them and there may be places online, people can see them or so. Great. Anybody else have any questions? Anything else you want to ask of Diane before we wrap it up? We do have just a couple of, trying to bring it back up here, comments here. Someone says we're only a year old and really needed to hear what you said. Thank you so much, this is great. And someone else said about your failures. You mentioned earlier that, you know, things that didn't work out. And you did show exactly what this person commented about earlier on, that you should not be embarrassed about failures because you and the library use them as learning experiences and don't give up. And you did mention that. And I think that's been a theme throughout a lot of the things that we've heard about today. Not everything is going to work. Right. Stick with it, try something else, try a different way. Maybe if someone said, if your movie day, movie night didn't work, don't just say no more movie nights. Say, well, what could we do differently? Let's try it again. I mean, movies are popular, obviously. There's got to be a way to get in, connect with what our community wants or connect with how we can promote to them. Yes. And looking back, I think that was my being naive. My first thought, like with the Best Buy grant, $9,500 worth of GoPro cameras and all this, that if I buy this, people will be knocking down our doors to get in here. I had not accounted for how entrenched the image of the library was. And now I've really spent 18 months, two years trying to get the word out about, we're not what you think, we're unexpected. And that may be something that some other libraries are encountering to, and you might not realize that there's this preconceived notion that you hadn't realized. Yes. Take a look at that. I know a lot of people talk about, go where your non-users are. Ask your non-users what do they want from the library. That may be who you should be reaching out to. Well, and the community conversations were terrific for that. That was a three or four month process where we really went out of our way to invite veterans and people from all parts of the community, a wide demographic, kids. People that lived here for generations, all that, to bring them together and ask them questions about what's important to you. What are your aspirations for this community? The conversation was not based at all on the library, and I told them up front, nothing may come of this for the library. This is just us wanting to know about the community. And in fact, after we summarized at the end of the process, all the responses, the things that emerged were definitely things that we are taking action on now. It is a place for the library. So more work to be done. Yes. We have one final question that I'll let you answer. Someone wants to know, where do you find out about these grants? Where did you find the grants that you applied for? How do you find grants out there? Yeah, a lot. I used to say as the queen of Google. I just spend a lot of time on the Internet looking for things. But through various, I've taken some grant training, and our Austin College has a very expensive grants database that you can go in, and so other colleges have this, and you go in with search terms and say, grant outdoor movies library, and see what you come up with. Yeah, there's lots of databases and resources like that. Yeah, use Google. It's useful. It works, yes. Okay, thank you very much, Diane. That was a very good wrap-up for our big talk from Small Libraries today, I think, giving a lot of good inspiration to everyone who's here. Well, thank you for having me, and I'll go adjust my tiara and get off to the chamber. Yes, do have a wonderful time. Enjoy. Thank you. Okay, all right. I'm going to just get back to my screen here. And okay, so that does wrap it up. That was our final presentation for today. Wrapped up for a big talk from Small Libraries 2016. Thank you to all of our great speakers. Everyone was wonderful, awesome ideas, and inspiration, as I said, and conversation, and great questions from you guys in the audience. A lot of good interaction. I'm really glad about that. I'm hoping this is very helpful and educational and fun for everyone to attend, and I hope you take some of these ideas back to your small and rural libraries and use them. We are recorded. All of these sessions are recorded, and I will be starting next week working on editing them down. Each presentation into its own video. You don't have to sit through eight hours again later to watch the recordings. Each one will be individual. So look for those the next week or two. You will be receiving an email that will have an evaluation form. We have an evaluation available for you to let us know what you thought of the day. And information about continuing education credits for Nebraska Libraries. We have a form that we set up specifically for that purpose, for applying for CE credits. For other libraries who are not in Nebraska, you will receive this email that will be your confirmation. We don't do actual certificates or things like that, but it's a confirmation that you did attend today that you could use to apply for CE credits from your own state agencies who do that. So thank you so much. I had a lot of fun today. This is great doing this. Thank you everyone for attending. And I hope you will join us next year. Look for... Usually we've done this at the last week of February, Thursday or Friday, depending on how it falls. And I'll say we'll do this again next year. So join us, look for the specific date announcement when we nail that down, but look for us next February 2017. Thank you so much everyone. Good night. Bye. Happy weekend. Bye.


Target for one thing and it's in the back of the store. It's actually a pretty long walk Oh, yeah, you got to get those no candy hearts aren't even Star Wars theme. That one says bling You know exactly what you'd expect the stormtrooper to say Are there no peeps I was expecting peeps a little Leo part Good morning, John. Good morning, John. It's time to get ill Red velvet Oreos that where we're gonna start why you mess with Oreos? Like it's the perfect cookie I'm here for the cream cheese icing. I could eat these all right. Well then you will This is the Reese's pieces with the Leo part. Oh, they're just I am wild about them. That's gonna end up in the background of Hank's videos. I bet good chance You don't want to review these later. Well, I mean, oh, they really know what they're doing with these All right, I want to try this rose chocolate made in Belgium. Oh, well Backed in China. Wow, this chocolate has been everywhere. Oh, it's fall.  Let's take a bite out of it together like we're lady in the trap No I Want to use I hate strawberry and chocolate honestly, maybe you'll be surprised I was surprised by the red velvet Oreos. It's two in here.  I like strawberry pop tarts. Good taste. Yeah I like a pop chocolate. So this is the quintessential Valentine's Conversation heart the quality control is going right out the window. Yeah, like half of these don't even have anything on them I've got the knowledge of candy to make you want to try this nerd rope We made different noises but the same noise Lady and the tram Grudge come on baby Nerds I haven't had a nerd in a long time cotton candy should only happen in one place and I feel weird having purchased it in the store. I Like it though. It's good. Yeah Trolley sour heart.  Oh, I like that was my favorite sugar-based candy so far chocolate truffle Hershey's kisses Like they were made this shape because they were just drops of chocolate, but now this has been manufactured to be this shape Yeah, so that they could put something inside of it clue piece totally yeah, like a professor poop In the bathroom What did he do it with Catherine toilet paper?   You have to look well. Let's make a candy. It's like beard giant pill I feel like they're just lying. They're like we didn't want to buy any flavoring for this bat So we're making it the mystery flavor.  Maybe does not like candy. I hope not. We don't usually celebrate Valentine's Day you and me But we did something this year to this. Hooray. Yeah, I'm looking forward to my stomach ache. Thanks for coming on the channel Happy Valentine's Day Valentine's Day to all of you in platonic ways Also, if you're wondering during the poster sale that we had last week and we raised $71,000 So $7,100 going to 10 different refugee resettlement organizations in America Thank you all so much. Thank you to all the artists and get everybody who I'll put that together and everybody who bought something you're great John I'll see you on Tuesday


How to work from home and still get stuff done. This is part one of a two-part series. Okay, so you're planning on working from home, but you got some concerns. You got some concerns about what you're gonna get accomplished. Well, you should because if you do this wrong, you won't get much accomplished. You won't get much stuff done. Now, this video isn't just for somebody working from home. It's for managers, it's for team leaders, anybody who has to spend their working hours in their house and being productive. You're gonna love this because you're gonna have some great things to help you out and become more productive and we're starting right now. Hey, I'm JR Fisher. Welcome to my channel. I've been selling online since 2009 and I've sold millions of dollars of both digital and physical products. And on this channel, what I do is I share with you those tips, tricks and techniques that will help you grow your online business or start one if you haven't done so already. Now, are you working from home now? Or are you thinking about working from home? Do you have some questions about it? Do you have some issues? Did you have some problems? Put it in the comments below. I wanna hear what you've got to say about working from home and having an online presence because that's basically what we do when we work from home. We rarely have a notepad and pencil, right? We're all on the computer. We're all hooked into the internet and there's some advantages and some disadvantages to that. So let's talk about being more productive and what you can do. Now, I also have a $97 Ecommerce course. It's absolutely free. You can get it in the description below. You just click and learn, no credit card required. In addition to that, if you would, please subscribe. I would really appreciate it. And bell notifications, turn on the bell notifications and turn on all notifications so you get notified you're part of the Fisher family, the VIP group that gets notified every single time I do one of these videos. Now, keep in mind, this is a two-part series. So this is part number one. You will wanna go from this one and in the description below, there's a link and you can click on part two and you can watch the second part. You need to watch part two if you watch part one and don't skip to part two without seeing part one. They're both necessary. Number one, I would say is if you can do this, it's really important, build a permanent workspace. If you have a permanent workspace, it's already set up for you to work, then it's not so difficult. Now, this is my office at the house here. I've got lights around here. I've got the camera here and all this stuff because I shoot mostly videos in this office here. And it's my permanent workspace. I'm not gonna come in here and watch movies or watch TV or play games or do anything else, but work in here because this is my work environment. So if you can set up an area of your house, even if it's a desk in the corner, something along those lines where you can actually work and get things done, it's much better that you do that. If you try to sit on your couch or your lounge chair and try to work there all day long, it's just, it's not fitting of a work environment. And I think you're gonna find it really hard to do. Now, if you don't have the room, that's what you gotta do. You work with what you got. Number two, invest in quality technology. Just because you're at home, it doesn't mean that you have to have poor quality technology. Try to have the best computer you can afford. Try to have the best lighting you can afford. Try to have good furnishings in your office, your workspace. Make sure you have great internet. You know, one of the most irritating things that people say when they work in offices, even in businesses, is that the internet's too slow, that they spend a lot of time waiting for the internet. And when you do that, that's downtime, guys. That's something you could accomplish more in if you didn't have to wait for the computer to load a screen. So, invest in that higher speed internet for your house, even though it's a house internet, it's not gonna be near what you need for a business. We have a much advanced internet for our home because we know we're gonna need that extra bandwidth. Number three, get comfortable office furniture. If you're gonna be sitting all day long, you want a chair that is really good, it's ergonomic, it's gonna be comfortable for you.  I would say a desk, and this is a really nice desk I have here, but it's not necessary. A desk doesn't matter that much, but your chair really, really does. So, get something that's gonna be comfortable. Now, if you have a little bit of money, try to decorate it the way you want. Get a comfortable office furniture, but get stuff that looks nice, something that's pleasing to you, stuff that you're gonna look at it every day and feel good working in that environment. If you can do that and you have the money for it, that's another great investment. Number four, set real work hours, okay? Don't say, when I get up, I'm gonna go to work. You actually have to set real work hours. Whether it's nine to five or 10 to four or whatever it is, understand that during that period of time, you can't get up and just go watch a movie or go to the mall and walk around. You can't do it. Those are your work hours. Those are the hours you're gonna work. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to work nine to five Monday through Friday, because that's just not the case. I know a lot of times on the weekends, I'll end up working hours. Probably every weekend I work some hours, but the point is once I've set those work hours, I don't do anything else in those work hours but work. Number five, avoid work creep. What's work creep? Well, work creep can go two different ways. Work creep can creep into your personal time, right? Work creep can let your personal time creep into your work. So try to keep those separate. If you say you're gonna work from nine to six, whatever it is, then just work from nine to six and then after six o'clock, close the laptop, don't work anymore. Now, if you own your own business, this may be a little harder to do. I know it is for me because we have things that come up on the weekends and nights and they just, they gotta get handled and that's just part of owning a business. But the one thing I try not to do is let my personal life creep into my work life. In other words, I don't say, hey, you know, I saw on the internet here there's this really cool movie. I think I'm gonna run in the living room and watch this movie and then I'll come back and get some work done. It never happens, it never happens because I know I'm actually stealing from me. And when you're watching a show, I have nothing against shows or TV shows, but when you're watching that, I understand you're watching somebody else live their life instead of you living your life. That's exactly what you're doing.  And instead of just living your life. So when you do that, you wanna keep that a limited amount of time because it's gonna take away from your income and your work habits. Number six, discover your productivity periods. Everybody's different. You know, some people work really well in the morning. Some people work really well at night. I deal a lot with other internet marketers and some of these guys don't get up to lunch and they will start working, but they'll work till two or three o'clock in the morning and that's their productive times. Fortunately, with the internet, you can work any time you want, but you gotta figure out when you're the most productive to get stuff done. If you're not a morning person, don't try to get stuff done in the morning.  By all means, you can certainly do that as long as you're not working for an employer that requires you to work at a certain time. I have employees around the world that work for us and generally speaking, unless we're having a meeting or something like that, I don't care when they work. It doesn't matter and I don't monitor that. It doesn't matter to me because they're not answering phones. They're not interacting with customers or anything like that when they're in a foreign country. So I let them work their own schedule. I think they appreciate that and it gives them time to have time with their family when they choose to do so. Number seven, update your to-do list every single day. Certain days, I have certain things I have to do. Like today is a Tuesday and today I have to shoot videos. That's what I'm doing right now, I'm shooting a video, but yesterday I had to get scripts ready so that was on Monday. So I know there's certain days I have to get certain things done. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I have to start sending out emails for my Friday training so I will sit down and start writing those emails and getting those emails set up to go out to do the Friday training. So every day has things I have to do and I update that to-do list based on what's gotten accomplished. Number eight, stick to one project management app. Apps are abundant now and there's so many good ones out there but when you are working on different projects you don't need different project management apps. You can just get one app and use that one app. When you have to switch from one platform to another constantly, this is gonna eat up a lot of your time. I would recommend you find one you like, you can get Asana, you can get Basecamp, there's so many out there, Trello, there's so many ones out there that you could actually use. Just pick the one you like and use that one. Number nine, don't work in your PJs.  You gotta put clothes on that are appropriate for work, okay? Some people will stay in their pajamas all day. I think it's a tough way to work. It's not something I would choose to do and I think mentally it affects the quality of your work when you're doing that too. You're not really in the work mode. So get up, get dressed. Number 10, I recently put number 10 develop a morning routine but I get it. Some of you guys don't get up in the morning and that's okay, you don't have to but develop a routine so whenever you start your day, whatever you're doing, make sure you have a routine.  Maybe you're getting orders or maybe you check them for any problems you have to take care of and then maybe at lunchtime you have to work on a website and maybe after that you've gotta work with clients but have some type of routine that you do on a daily basis. It can often change, especially if you work for yourself, I know mine changes, but I do have a routine set up to where this is what I intend to do and if I have to make adjustments, then I'll do it. Number 11, I'm not saying you gotta get up early, not saying it at all, but set an alarm. Set an alarm so that you wake up at the same time every day. Have the same routine. This is really important to getting things accomplished is having that routine and doing the same thing every day. If you're in the military, gosh, they really make them get up early but they do it at the same time every single day. They don't have them get up at 4 a.m. one day and then 9 a.m. the next and 5 a.m. the next. They wouldn't be as productive. Now, I don't personally set alarms. I'm one of the few people don't because I can wake up pretty much at the same time every day. That's not a problem for me, but if you can't do that, make sure you set your alarms so that you get up and work at the same time every day. Give yourself the same respect you would give a boss. A boss is gonna expect you to be there at a certain time. Give yourself that same respect too because you are now your own boss. Number 12, oh my gosh, this is a big one. I see so many people screw this up. Exercise and stretch regularly. So especially if you're sitting behind a computer, it's easy to get stiff and uncomfortable and really sitting is not good for you. Sitting is, they say, the new smoking. So you wanna get up and walk around every now and then.  This is a big killer if you work at home. I've seen a lot of internet marketers get really, really big because they don't really exercise. They don't have to. They're not walking around an office. They're not walking around a building or warehouse or whatever. So they literally get no exercise whatsoever. You need to put exercise into your program. Number 13, eat healthy. Hard to do, okay? When you are working at home, you can pretty much eat anything you want. If you want chocolate chip ice cream for lunch, you could pretty much do that every day if you wanted. Wouldn't be a problem. Wouldn't be good for your health though. So when you're thinking about planning your meals or whatever it is, having a turkey sandwich is okay every now and then as opposed to having greasy burgers and fried chicken all the time. Try to throw in a salad every now and then. Try to throw in some vegetables. Eating healthy at home is super important because it's so easy not to. Number 14, here's the break you need. Take short breaks. You don't have to work nine to six all day long and never take a break. That's not required of you. Matter of fact, you'll be more productive if you get up every hour or two. Walk around for five minutes, stretch your legs, get a breath of fresh air. Do something different from sitting at that computer and sitting on your butt, okay?  So take short breaks as you would on a job. You know, the state of California, I live in California, they require that individuals get breaks after a certain period of time. Make sure you respect yourself as much as the state of California respects the value of those workers. Take care of yourself. So those are the first 14 tips I have for you for working at home and getting stuff done. This is video one of two. There's another video after this. I put the link in the description below. Make sure you click that link and see the second half.  And I really appreciate you watching this video. If you have not subscribed, you need to do so right now. Before you go to that other video, go ahead and subscribe, just hit the button. It's easy, go ahead, I'll wait. You got it? Okay, cool. Now you wanna turn on all notifications. I'll give you a second to do that. You're gonna click that button and then you're gonna click the part that says turn on all notifications. Go ahead and do it, I'll wait. Good, you got it? Great, now one more thing. Give me one of these. I mean, what does it cost you? It costs you nothing. Give me one of these. Give me a thumbs up there. Or one of these, that costs you nothing either. But give me something, give me some feedback. And in the comments, put in the comments how you're productive at home or how you haven't been productive and the reason for it is because you could help a lot of people out. If you have any questions about this whatsoever, put it in the comments below. I'm here to help you and I like doing it. I really appreciate your input. Thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one. Hey, thanks for watching my video. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and click that little bell right here so you can be notified every time I do a new video. Also, click on one of those videos there and keep watching on my channel.


Moscow is recruiting residents from impoverished and rural regions of Russia for war in Ukraine. Moscow is recruiting residents from impoverished and rural regions of Russia for the war against Ukraine, with Kremlin propaganda inflating the numbers according to the UK Ministry of Defence. According to the report, Russian Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev stated that 500,000 people had joined the Russian armed forces in 2023. It is highly likely that this figure has been substantially inflated. British intelligence reveals that to meet recruitment targets, Russian military authorities allowed high school graduates to sign contracts with the Russian army from April 2023 onwards. Recent data from MediaZona and the BBC Russian Service indicate that at least five Russians born in 2005 have died during the war. It is highly likely that Russian military recruitment to sustain the war has disproportionately drawn from impoverished and rural regional communities of Russia, notes the UK Ministry of Defence. As per the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, there are currently 462,000 Russian military personnel on Ukrainian territory. This includes 35,000 members of the Rusqvadia, ensuring the occupation regime in temporarily seized territories. Starting from January 1, 2024, the conscription age in Russia was raised from 27 to 30 years. The lower limit remains unchanged, allowing Russians to be drafted into urgent service at the age of 18. As of January 15, 2024, the Russian army's losses in Ukraine have reached 370,000 individuals.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The results of the European parliamentary elections are out. And while the traditional power blocks, both to the center left and the center right, have suffered damages, the prospect many people were fearing, the dominance of the far right, has been averted for now. To talk more about this, we have with us D. Raghunandan, political analyst. Hello, thank you for joining us. So could you first give an outline of the results and what you think are the key trends that we have seen in this election? Well, as you said, I think the key trends are that the center, both the center right and the center left have lost ground. And it was feared, some may have expected, that the far right and the nationalist parties would have gained at a European level, which hasn't happened. But I think the more interesting trend is that the big gainers in this, the biggest gainers have been the greens, who have gained virtually across western and northern Europe and they have recorded significant gains. And the other big gainers have been the liberals, which is significant because it marks a major turn in European parliamentary politics. For the first time, the center parties of the left and the right, between them, don't have a majority of seats. So when it comes to important legislative decisions, when it comes to choosing the main office bearer posts in Europe, that's the European Commission President, the European Council President, and importantly, the governor of the European Central Bank, which has to be decided and ratified by the parliament, this is not going to happen just by a coalition of the center right and the center left. And in order to form a winning coalition, which would vote on European lines, there would have to be a coalition between the center right and center left and either the greens or the liberal democrats or both. And I think the significance of this lies in the fact that these four, the center parties, the liberals and the greens are all the pro-European parties, whereas the nationalist parties, the far right parties, etc., are the Eurosceptics who are likely to pull in different directions. So one of the key narratives ahead of this election was the possible rise of the far right. So like you talked about in Germany, in the UK, Italy, France, and in many of these countries we did see them actually dominating. For instance, in I think France and Italy they were the leaders and in the UK too. So what sort of implication do you think this rise has on the domestic politics of these countries and Europe as a whole? Well, till now the dominance of the far right has been restricted mostly to the new entrants into the European Union. Whereas the EU-15, the original members were not so affected by this problem except for France with the strong showing of the National Rally which is now called the National Rally. But now you've got the Brexit Party and you've got strong showing from Italy, of course. So these three parties in Western Europe have pushed up the numbers of the far right. The only thing is that so far given the fact that the key driving forces behind these far right movements tend to be nationally restricted and they share perhaps only one common thread which is a Euroscepticism. But Nigel Farage's party is the only party that actually wants to leave the EU. No other far right party has indicated a desire to quit. But they want a greater assertion of national sovereignty compared to a centralization of a European identity. But I think all the far right parties would find it very difficult to work together as a block because I think they don't share as much ideologically as it may appear from the outside. Le Pen's party, the Front National in France, has been consistently reluctant to join any other far right grouping because it thinks it has a unique role in a place to play which is central to French society rather than having a common European thread or a pan-European thread. So I think that while in the national context there is a considerable amount to be worried about the far right but at a European level in legislative terms they may not be that much to be concerned about because I think the concerns of each of the individual parties ranging from populism to a far right conservative agenda to extreme nationalism I think vary so much that they would find it difficult to work together as a block. But one of the issues many of these parties seem to have a common understanding on is the issue of migration. So would you see the movements against migrants and the xenophobia actually increasing in the aftermath of these results and success for them? See the sentiments about immigration have actually been rising in Europe for some time even among the centrist parties and it's not a concern confined to the far right. The far right have made it a central point of their agenda and also made it a xenophobic issue whereas the concerns about immigration have even been central to many of the centrist parties the conservative party in the UK for example the CSU in Germany have been concerned but now the concerns about immigration including the populist parties and the far right parties and so on have certainly come to occupy a more central place in the European discourse than before and I think that the centrist parties are finding it increasingly difficult to sound pro-immigration the stance that Germany's Angela Merkel took when migration from North Africa and the Middle East was at its peak as pro-immigration as you know took quite a beating in Germany as well as elsewhere in Europe as a result of which Angela Merkel herself has had to retreat from that position and I think there are few parties in Europe today which can take a very openly pro-immigration stance. And one of the other key issues in this election was of course around centered on climate and one of the major victors in this election like you pointed out has been the green parties across the continent. So how do you see the rise of these parties and what are the advantages and limitations there? Well firstly the greens have registered a very dramatic rise although in percentage terms the rise of the greens is matched by the lies of the liberals in this election. But the greens have shown across the board not just in terms of representation in the European parliament but in terms of the votes polled a significant rise. For example in Dublin city it is a green party candidate who had the highest percentage of votes around 26 or 27 percent. I think environmental concerns particularly on climate have become even more central in Europe today than they were earlier and in particular the concern is that whereas earlier many parties of the center left even of the center right in Germany for example have shown pro-environmental concerns about climate change these have been frankly more rhetorical than actually in action. And what the greens have said now is that they are now keen to ensure that legislatively and through executive action these are translated into positive laws and actions to ensure that the laws are actually followed. So I think one can see in the months and years to come a more concerted European stance in favor of positive action on climate change and on sustainability issues within Europe. But the greens also have not just environmental issues but social justice issues as a central platform and have made what they call social Europe a central slogan for them which along with human rights makes a triumvirate of issues which the greens look forward to. If you ask me today in Europe a young person who likes to think of himself or herself as radical would vote green and that's what these show. But it should be noted that the success of the greens is largely restricted to western and northern Europe. They have very little presence in Spain, marginal presence in Portugal and virtually no existence at all in eastern Europe or southern Europe. So they have very little in Italy, very little in Hungary, Poland, etc. So this is also to be taken into account that this is centered around the better off part of Europe in central and northern Europe as a phenomenon. So one will have to really wait for this to spread to other parts of the EU 27. And finally to look at the other section we not talk much about that's a left. They actually suffered a bit in terms of their overall number of seats and voting percentage. And this has also happened when for instance there have been popular mobilizations across the continent. The Yellow West being the most primary example. So what could be the reasons for this and what would be the challenges for the left? See, to my mind in the popular imagination in Europe, nationally, there are very few countries where the left has a significant electoral presence. However, and this is a phenomenon which I think we are familiar with in this country as well as in other countries, the left has a greater role in the popular imagination than it does in representative politics and electoral politics. And I think that is the role in Europe also. When there are anti-capitalist movements in Europe, when there are environmentalist movements in Europe, and many movements where these two coalesce together, the left imagination or left ideas plays a very strong role. In fact, I think viewers also need to know that apart from the greens, there is a coalition of parties in the European Parliament which call themselves left green. Right, the Nordic greens. Exactly. And they have a fairly significant presence in the European Parliament which reflects a lot of the left imagination in western and northern Europe, which is also a combination of left and environmental imagination. Where the younger population, younger and radical populations of Europe seem to identify themselves, certainly in electoral politics. I think one will have to wait for quite some time more before the strong conceptual and ideological presence of the left in popular consciousness recovers the kind of electoral representation the left used to have a few decades ago. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching News Collector.