Hey, good evening, and welcome to a very special edition of Montpelier Civic Forum. No, Town Meeting Day is not coming up in a few weeks. We're not speaking with candidates. What we're doing instead is we're talking about the reopening of Montpelier. And we've got just a great lineup of shows. We have Anne Watson talking about what a mayor would talk about, the policy of how we open, and her view of what Montpelier might look like as it socially reopens. We have Libby Bone Still, and we have Jim Murphy from the Rocksbury, well I should say the Montpelier Rocksbury School District, and they're going to talk about what went down in the spring. They're going to talk about the graduation, but more importantly, they're going to talk about what the current thinking is in terms of the fall and beyond in our public schools. That's an excellent show. I have Bill Fraser on for an hour, a really good hour, where Bill talks about what is going on with the city budget, what is going on with the reopening, and Bill does a really interesting 10 or 15 minutes on police, and from his view as city manager. And that leads to another really great show that I have with Police Chief Fakos and Police Chief Pete. I have the two chiefs, and they speak of 21st century policing and community policing, and Chief Fakos discusses the evolution of policing in Montpelier towards that goal. That is a really, really good show. And last but not least, I have John Odom, who's speaking on a very timely issue, how we're going to vote in August, and what's coming down in terms of the November election and F&T ballots and the like. That's an excellent show. He also speaks about fines that you haven't paid yet to the city clerk's office. Now today, it's my pleasure to have a co-director of the Cowell Hubbard Library, Carolyn Brennan, who sits in an office in the back. Yes. You're having me. Co-director? Co-director. Yep. Yep. I'm the co-director. Also, there's a comment after that. I'm the library director. So my fellow co-director, Jesse Lynn, is the non-profit director. So the Cowell Hubbard Library is a 501c3 non-profit, and so we have the business end of things that Jesse runs, and then the library services end of things is what I run. Now you took over from Tom McCown. We did. How is Tom McCown doing? Is he healthy during the pandemic? He is. He is. So I think the most recent time I talked to Tom, he actually, he texted me. He was taking a walk in Barry, and he sent me some beautiful sculpture on this hike that he was going on with a friend of his. Well, that's great. Yeah. He's enjoying herself. How long have you been co-director? Just about a year. So we took over. Tom's last day was, I think, the 7th of June last year. And so then Jesse and I were interim co-directors until July 1st, and then we took over officially the 1st of July. So it's been just about a year. And then a pandemic happened. A lot of things have happened. It's been a very busy year, and it's been a very unusual year. But yes, we had that. Unusual in what ways beside the pandemic? Well, as if the elephant in the room never happened. All right. Well, it started out. My very first day on the job as an interim co-director on the 10th of June, whatever that Monday was, we were gearing up to do drag Queen Story Hour at the library in July. Oh, was that the one that got nationally flamed? Yes, exactly. So we were. What was that event? Drag Queen Story Time. We had two local Vermont drag queens come out. So you announced that this is going to happen. Now, I don't think that Montpelier is the only place that this has ever happened. No, of course not. No. Drag Queen Story Time. Well, this wasn't even our first drag Queen Story Time. We had won the year prior with the same two drag queens that came out. And we had a wonderful, very busy, very popular program. And so this was the second time, last year was the second time around. And generally, if you're going to have any sort of, if you're going to see pushback or criticism, either positive or negative, you're going to see that the first time you offer a program. Did you get positive feedback after the first time? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It was very well-received. And it was very well-received in our community. So this is a wonderful program. It was a wonderful storyteller. This is two individuals like any other individual. Yeah, exactly. It was reading storybooks to children. That's right. Reading storybooks, singing songs, and yeah, exactly. It's just like any other themed story time that we do. What's the age group that they're reading to? So it's parents with preschool age kids and probably through elementary age kids. We see a pretty big range, especially during the summer when we do summer story times, you see a wider range of kids. So during the school year, we're really only seeing parents with preschoolers. But as you get into the summertime, you see kind of a wider age. Now this event happened, what was the approximate of the date? I think it was July 13th. So you would have had elementary school kids as well as preschool kids. Yeah. Okay, now when did all of a sudden the controversy happen? There was a Facebook post by a Facebook personality called Activist Mommy. And yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what her name was. It's been a little while now. And she had something like 600,000 followers and said, this is happening in Montpelier. We should protest it and call the library and put our names and our phone numbers on there. And so the calls that we received, we had two local people who called in protest that didn't think we should offer that program. And then the rest of the calls we received were all from out of state. They ranged around the country. Did you get any calls regarding an extended warranty on your car? No. I get those on my cell phone. How many calls did you receive? It had to have been well into the hundreds. It was many, many. It lasted about a week that we were getting these calls. And we were getting the first couple of days, the phone was ringing off the hook and every time anybody picked up, it was somebody calling saying. Were any of them abusive or was it so? Oh yes. What happens when a public library, not even a public library, what happens when the Kellogg Hubbard public library in Montpelier, Vermont gets that kind of controversy? What happens? Does your board meet? Yeah. It certainly came up at the June board meeting, which was happening right after this controversy happened. And as part of our job as co-directors, Jesse and I, we keep the board well informed about everything that's going on. And so the board was aware of it, they were aware of our stance on it and how we decided we were going to proceed. What was our stance on it? That we were going to continue with the program. And the way I think, if I'm recalling this, assuming I'm recalling this correctly, I think I am, what we said was that we might consider it differently if we received significant local pushback. Because the idea behind library programming is that it resonates or is relevant to people who live in our local community, to the people who support and fund the library and who patronize the library. Now if I remember correct, this did make the papers locally. It did make the papers locally. And it probably made the television. I was on WCAX and it was in seven days and it was in... Then you must have gotten pushback on the other side, people saying we want this event to happen. Absolutely. And so we did. Really the local response that we received was very positive. We saw really overwhelming support. And when it was time for the program to actually run, which was more than a month after this happened because it was in the middle of July, we packed the haze room with 135 people. So that's a room that normally we put about 75 people in. And we had adults in there. We had parents with children on their laps. We had people spilling out into the elevator foyer and spilling back into the nonfiction room. It was just... It was a tremendous positive response and we did not see any negative protesters the day after. Did we end up with greater attendance at future story hours as a result? I think even back out, our story times and our children's programs are very, very well attended. They're very popular and very well received across the board. So this particular one, because it was controversial, it saw a record turnout. But I think that after that we went back into our normal pattern of regular story time attendees. Did the Facebook, Ms. Mommy, did she leave it alone after that? She... Well, the nature of Facebook is that things get buried very quickly and you move on to whatever the next thing is kind of coming down the pike. And there were drag queen story time events happening all over the country. So it was just a few days later and it was, all right, guys, call in protest. This one is happening... Somewhere else. Yeah, exactly. Somewhere else. Assuming that story hours are still... We're going to get to that question of, you're never going to have 135 people during the pandemic in that room again. Assuming that story hours are happening, will we get the two drag queens? Are they willing to come back? I hope so. Yeah, they're absolutely... I'm sure they're willing to come back and I hope we have them again. Will they be invited again? Yes, of course. Yeah. It was a popular... It was a popular well-received program and they did it... I stayed for the whole thing. I've both years that they had it and it was just very well done. They're wonderful. The next would be the bond that came on Town Meeting Day. How did that work for you? How did your budget go through? It went through very well this past fiscal year for Town Meeting Day. Our Town Meeting Day prep starts in July and August of the year prior. It's almost a continuous cycle that we go through. First of all, we determine the budget of the library gets set by the Board of Trustees and then we determine what our town asks need to be. Then of our six member communities, Worcester is the first one that has... It's the first time where the process starts for town meeting funding. I have a report that I fill out for the town of Worcester. Which are the towns? Sure. Berlin, Callis, Eastmont Piliar, Middlesex, Montpelier and Worcester are our six member towns. Now, did they all come through on Town Meeting Day? They all came through on Town Meeting Day. Through the fall, we set our amounts. I visit the select boards in the winter time and I generally do about a one-page report, narrative report for the town report. Then I do a page of relevant statistics about the library. I try to keep that in the same format so it's an apples-to-apples comparison from year to year. I don't want to change things up on those numbers. Then I do the select board visits. In Berlin, I get to go to their pre-town meeting meeting and speak there and it went very smoothly. We do a couple of towns where we need to petition every year. Those are always at the front desk? They're always at the front desk. We usually post them in the children's library, in the adult library, and then we have trustee representatives from our member towns. The trustee representatives will also help us get the petitions filled out. The board is also talking about capital improvements, aren't they? Yes. One of the other unusual things from last year was we were in the middle of a $600,000 capital funding campaign called Give the Library a Lift. Capital funding being building. Being building. Yes, being building improvements. Yes, exactly. What type of building improvements will $600,000 funding? The biggest, there's a number of projects, and so I'm not going to remember the complete list off the top of my head, but that information is all available on our website if anybody was interested. Which is? Which is www.kellacovered.org. Our biggest, our flagship project, the actual lift, is that we need to replace our elevator. So the elevator was originally installed in the 1970s and has been faithfully maintained from that day to this, but is starting to show its age and needs a replacement. So a chunk of that money will be towards replacing the elevator, and we're anticipating that that work is going to happen sometime early this fall, but we don't have a set date yet. Have we met our goal for the capital cost? We met our goal by January 1st of 2020. So we closed out the last calendar year by November. So we're back on the perpetual book sale. Yes. As soon as we can open our doors to visitors, we'll be back to the book sale. We're in February now, we're right before town meeting day, and on town meeting day you get all your towns in, and then a pandemic hits. And then a pandemic hits about a month later. So we still have, in the library, after town meeting day, when we know that we've been successful in all of our member towns, the very first thing we do is we put a big thank you to all of the voters up on our website. And the banner goes up. Yeah, and we put thank you signs all through the library building. And because the pandemic happened so shortly after that time, those signs are still up in the library right now, actually. So I have one of the tasks ahead of me for the end of this week and beginning of next week is to update all of our signage. What is the, we're in March now. The library closes along with the rest of the town, seemingly. What did that mean initially? And when did the decision come that people could pick up books in front of the library? Sure. So we actually did, before we closed entirely, we had a week of just filling orders and filling holds for people where the building was closed to patrons. So before we shut down entirely, and then it became clear as things were shutting down and the orders were coming down from the executive orders were coming from the governor. And we actually closed our doors just prior to when libraries across the board, across the state closed down. And that would have been around the 20th or so of March? Yeah, something like that. I think it was a week prior. I think it was something like the 16th or the 17th of March. It was right around St. Patrick's Day. And so immediately, so we had to, so the library closed to visitors and then the library closed to staff. Originally we were thinking, oh, we can use this time to weed out our collection and to do all of these building projects. And then it became very rapidly clear that that was not possible. So we still had a lot of virtual work that we could do. What is virtual work? Virtual work. So distance-based work. So for library programming, that meant that within a week, our poem city, which we had been planning for April, had to move to a digital online format. So there were some presenters that canceled their programs outright and others that were amenable. What would the digital program for poem city be? People on Zoom reading their poems? Yeah, that was some of it. And there were some things that were pre-recorded that, you know, similarly to this that we then posted on our website as videos. We took the entire body of poems that normally we would have professionally printed and put up all around our communities. And those became virtually browsable electronic documents. There were landmarks. And you could see people's poems in front of the house. Yeah. Yeah, well. Or is that different? That's different. But so anyway, so, so everything had to move to a digital format. Our story times, our preschool story times moved to Facebook Live almost immediately. Are we catching a market for that? Yeah, I think so. I think we've got a pretty, I think, I think it's pretty steady. I'd have to go back and look at what our most recent numbers were. But we were, Melissa, our children's programming librarian does them primarily now for a little while at the beginning. We had different library staffers and library friends presenting them. And yeah, and they were they were pretty well received. It was a nice spot of normalcy. Did our staff stay on or did we furlough some of them? We did not furlough any of our staff. So we assigned them professional development opportunities that they could pursue and clean up work in our electronic database. Their remote programming work. So there were there were plenty of projects and things that needed to rapidly change exploration for how we could increase our digital presence. We had to ramp up our social media presence and and what would your social media presence be right now? Well primarily. So right now we do weekly postings on on front porch forum and Facebook and Instagram that have kind of our news and events. What's going on at the library? What is going on at the library? Well right now in adult programming we've got a pride poetry reading coming up at the end of June. How can a person access that song? They would go to your site to find out when at the end of June. Exactly. It's well I wrote it down. It's June 27th at 6 p.m. But you would go through our website and that's going to be a virtual program. So that you so there will be a link where you can connect into it. 6 p.m. Yeah.  So so local poets wrote haikus and put them together with photography and so those are posted on garden stakes all around the library building and then we've had those out in out in different neighborhoods around Montpelier as well. So that's what I'm saying. Yeah that's what you're seeing right now is the haiku story walk. And then in children's programming the summer reading program has started so we have that's some of that is virtual and some of that will be outdoors and we'll do some outdoor distance based programming and then and kids fill out reading logs and say what they've read over the summer and then they get a prize at the end. When can we get in. When can you get in. That's a very good question and it's a little bit of a moving target. So right now is that under your control or is that part of where the governor's office is dictating. It's both. So so for a long time it was dictated by the executive orders and the guidelines from the the Vermont ACCD. What is that. Oh God. The Vermont Association of Commerce and Community Development. And that's pretty good. I'm glad I remembered it because I've been just calling it the ACCD for a very long time at this point. So the ACCD is who sets out all of the rules for how businesses can how businesses are closed or how they can can safely reopen. And so libraries were after libraries were closed the we were allowed to go back to curbside service. So which is what curbside service is that table that's in front of the library. How do I get a book onto that table. You get a book onto that table by either logging on to your library account. If that's we have some folks that do it that way and placing a hold or you can call the library and request a hold. What is what's the library's number. It is two two three three three eight. And what are the library hours that that phone will be answered. That phone will be answered Monday and Wednesday from two p.m. to seven p.m. And Tuesday Thursday Friday Saturday from ten a.m. to three p.m. So you're saying go to the website to remember the hours. You can go to our website to remember the hours. So you so you call you get on your library account or you email us at info at Kellogg Hubbard dot org and you can place a request any of those ways. And then what will happen next is as soon as that book is available assuming it's on our shelf one of our librarians will go and pick it up.  Also it's not the standard protocol of the email when the when the hold comes in. No you get an E you are getting people that are signed up for automatic email notifications are getting emails. But the email they're getting is saying something like your hold is almost ready. A librarian will call you shortly to arrange pickup.  I've got it in hand. What when would you like to come pick it up and you arrange a day we and we put it on the table on the day that you're you're scheduled to come pick it up. Now at that point if you have the email protocol it will remind you that the book is due within two weeks. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. You get like a three day notice and a and a date due notice and like a two week overdue notice are many people availing themselves of that. Of the of curbside surf. Yes. Yes. We're doing the last numbers I took. I think we're on the 10th of June. And at that point we were up to about to just under 60 percent of our regular circulation while we were what we were circulating in the same time period a year ago. Now you're not circulating those books that I still have from early March that I haven't returned. Well a lot of you haven't returned them yet. We can't. Oh a fortune on those. What what's the policy on those books. The minute we close down our book returns we obviously could no longer charge fines that would have been very unfair. So and we are still still not charging fines. Some day we will have to reestablish fines and we will make sure that we notify when we do that and give people some lead time in front of that. But for now we're not charging fines. So we're still working out what quarantining our books. That's 72 hours. Would you explain that because I got a notice in the mail saying hey your book is due when I had returned it the day before. And it was caught up in the 72 hours. Yep and we're and and we're just we just about have that resolved at this point when we first started that process we had a backlog of of books that had been returned that we needed to get checked in and we were limited to how many people we could have working in the building at any given time. So getting everything checked in was a was a challenge and meeting all of the requests that were coming in for books to go out. So but the other piece of that. So when books get returned to the library they have to quarantine for 72 hours. So how do you do that? What what's involved in quarantine just it sounds a lot more serious than it actually is. So the librarians that empty our book drops put on gloves they empty the book drops and right now because we don't have visitors in the building the reading room right in the front of the library is our quarantine room. And so those great big long study tables that have been there since forever for 125 years all of the books are getting stacked there. And then we label the day that they were returned and then three days later we're checking them in. So now we've got a system update actually in our in our catalog software where we can check the books in now the day that they're returned and then they will show a status if you look look them up in the catalog they'll say unavailable in quarantine for 72 hours before they go back into regular circulation. So so those email notices where you're like where you're saying I already returned this book why am I getting an overdue notice those should be stopping probably with the beginning of next week will be will be caught up with that piece of workflow. Are you seeing an uptick in the people who are using the states the connections to ebooks? Yes, we absolutely are. So one of the very first one of the things that we did in March after the library closed we immediately put collection development money so money that we would normally use to buy books and DVDs into our into Libby. So into what is that Libby is the app that you use to borrow ebooks and audio books to digital ebooks and audio books. It's also the older version of that app is called Overdrive. So that might be the one that some people are more familiar with. And all of that is run by the Green Mountain Library Consortium of which were a member just just for the ebook and audio book service. So so we put we put money into Libby to increase the collection size for our digital downloads because at that point that was the only thing that we could make available to people. And we did see an uptick. I want to say so the last statistics I have for Libby are for the month of May and we went from about 2000 circulations in May 2019 to 2700 in May 2019. So we saw a seven hundred circulation increase almost something just a little under a third increase. Let's go to the future. OK. How many square feet does that building have? What's the what's the maximum occupancy that under the rules that the governor is set? Well, the the entirety of the building is over 18000 square feet. And that includes the perpetual book sale in the basement. That includes the perpetual book sale in the basement. I believe that's every every last square foot of the library. However, when we first reopen, we're not going to be able to allow browsing. So people aren't going to be able to go into the into the stacks. They're going to be able to come into a limited amount of the library in a limited way. So can you explain that a little bit? I can explain that a little bit better. So when I walk, OK, let me walk in from the front door. OK. Well, so when the library first reopens, if you walk in through the front door, you're going to see somebody in the foyer at first, it's going to be me, actually. And I'll the greeter. I will be the greeter, exactly. And I'll be the head counter. So we'll have you'll walk in the front door. If if we're not at our occupancy limit, I'll say, how can we help? How can I direct you or how can I help you today? And and at first, you'll you'll be able to request a book in in person, but you won't be able to pick books up from inside the building yet. So you can request a book. You can ask a question if you have a reference question or we answer questions, all kinds of questions. You'll be able to use the public bathroom. We're still figuring out exactly how that's going to work and what our sanitation schedule is going to look like for that space. But but as of right now, ostensibly, that's that would be an option or you can use a public computer. So the area which is to my right as I'm walking in, which has new books, those tables from forever and the magazines, is that closed? That will not be closed. So the areas that will be open when we when we first reopen will be that front reading room, the quarantine area is going to move. We're going to put those in the haze room, the room being the haze room being our first floor conference room. So and I'm not sure when which is where the story time is exactly right. Yeah. And I don't know what will next be packing one hundred and thirty five people into that space. So it's going to hold many hundreds of books that are waiting, waiting through the quarantine process in the meantime. What happens to the children's story hour then? Is that the children's story hour is upstairs? No. Well, so at that point, we're not going to be having in person programming in that way in the building. So I imagine that when that happens, summer story, the the summer reading program will still be going on. And all of our story times are either going to be distance based out on the library lawn or out in outdoor locations in all of our member communities. We're going to be bringing programming out as part of as part of outreach. Will you be required to wear gloves and your calf during the winter? Well, I have no idea. I don't think I'm alone in the fact that I have no idea what this winter is going to hold for us or for I mean, for us collectively, for anybody. So we'll see if we're still doing curbside service and what the library looks like when there's snow on the ground. So upstairs, people won't be going up. No, so you'll be able to you'll be able to access the foyer, the main floor bathroom, the reading room and will that side door not be available. It will simply be front or it will be front or access only. The caveat to that is the so the school street entrance, the back door that has the elevator that does have the elevator. So that will be an emergency exit or if somebody if somebody needs, if that's the way that they need to get into the building, if there's somebody that's a person with a disability and they need to use the elevator, then I will go around and I will open that door for them. But just because of our staffing levels and coordinating two entrances that you can't see one from the other, we're we're going to really be primarily using that front door. What's the what's the summer reading list during the pandemic? What are people reading during the pandemic? Does it differ from normal? It's interesting. So so I did some research with this this morning and I looked since from the middle of March until yesterday, what were the highest circulated books in the library? And I broke it out from adults to young adults to children. And in adult, our most circulated book right now is Pleasure Activism, the Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Brown. Can you tell me what that is? I haven't read that one yet. So I can't tell you what that is and I don't have the snaps. It's off the top. Interesting, interesting title. It is an interesting title. It was recommended. I remember that it was recommended by a former employee of the library. And anyway, I encourage anybody that's watching. One more title and the author. Pleasure Activism, the Politics of Feeling Good. And the author. Oh, sorry, Adrienne Brown. OK, what else is. So Emma Straub, other people we married stories. So this is an author that wrote a book called The Vacationers. It's so this is a short story collection by a popular author. Then we've got Fine Gardening, Fine Gardening Magazine, which is very seasonal, a collection of poetry called Ledger by Jane Hirschfield, City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabeldon. The Graves Are Walking, The Great Famine in the Saga of the Irish People. And then we've got The Great Gatsby, The Impeachers, the Trial of Andrew Johnson in the Dream of Adjacination, and then White Trash, the 400 year untold history of class in America. So the interesting thing that we're seeing is that people aren't checking out. Normally when somebody comes into the library, they go right to that new book section. Right. And with that removed, people are going back to familiar authors, familiar titles. So we're not seeing as many checkouts of our newest books. So, which I find interesting. So we've got a mix of stuff that's topical or seasonal, and then we've got kind of some classics and some familiar authors mixed in there. Now, does this speak to Montpelier that you didn't tell me, oh, David Valdacci or Lee Child or Stephen King? I think so. Montpelier, the patrons of the library in Montpelier, they're very well read, and they very much know what they like to read. We see so many requests for new materials, and... Are we still taking requests for acquisitions? Absolutely. Are we still making acquisitions? Absolutely, yeah, yep, exactly. We definitely are. So the only pause we saw in buying new materials was in the month of April, and that was when we were really focusing on that Libby collection, that online collection. But for May and June, we made our regular orders across the board. We are taking requests. We now on our... One thing that we're doing at the library is trying to move a lot of things to our website, so things... I was just about to ask, if you're not standing there browsing those new books, will the website accommodate better to the new acquisitions? I mean, as best we can. I'm a traditionalist, and I don't think there's really any substitute for browsing the shelves, but we do the best we can digitally. So a couple of the few things that you'll find. So requesting that we purchase a book. We have an online request form. We have an online form now for renewing your library card if your library card is coming due, or for requesting a new library card if you're a new patron. So we have some of these processes that used to be analog. You have to come into the library and you have to do them in person, and now they're available through our website. Also on our website, something we've always done is we take our new book lists for the last six months and we post those on our website. The ones that used to be in color. Exactly, yeah, they used to be in a different color. We would print them in a different color for every month. So those are available virtually through our website. So is there, are there any decisions that you're really pondering over on the reopening right now? Well, the very most current thing that we were talking about this week is what does it look like to reopen a public bathroom? What is, how do we, who cleans it? How often do they clean it? And what does that look like? And based on the square footage of our bathroom, can we have anybody in there at all? So we're doing a lot of thinking about our space and thinking about how we interact with it. We're thinking about how we staff the building to have patron foot traffic while we still have an increased digital presence. We have new digital services that take time and care to manage. And we have a really robust outreach program and a really robust curbside service. So none of that is going to go away when we reintroduce foot traffic. So with a limited number of staffers, most of whom are part-time, how do we get visitors in the building and still do all of these other things that are quite frankly, very time consuming? If there are limits to the number of visitors in the building, will there be time limits as to how long a person can stay in the building in order to maximize the number of individuals who can use the building at a given time? We haven't yet set a time limit, but what we have said is that in our first iteration of allowing foot traffic into the building, it will be for brief purposeful visits. And we do have time limiters set on our public computers. So we're going to move some of our public computers that used to be out in the nonfiction room. Those are moving out into that reading room space and we're only going to move enough so that there's one at each of those big tables so that everybody will be six feet apart. Will the time that you're afforded move from 60 minutes to 20 minutes or 30 minutes? It's going to move from 60 minutes to 30 minutes, yep. So it'll be a half an hour max time. Theoretically, we haven't stated this explicitly yet, but I suppose theoretically, if you weren't done with your time, you would have the option to leave the building and maybe come back a little while later and have another turn, which is something that we always used to do with our computers. And it'll depend on if we have to make reservations for people, it will depend on demand. So some of this we're not going to know until we get to the point where we're opening for foot traffic. I think that some people will self-select. I think that curbside service, I think for a long time, people will still choose to pick up their books via curbside service or use digital, the digital aspects of the library instead of coming in the door. But we don't know how many people will want to come in. We'll choose to come in at first. Do you feel that that diminishes the town? I mean, we're talking, when I talked to Dan Groberg and when I talked to Ann, we discussed the town as a social cohesion. And if there is a cohesive factor in Mount failure, it's that a lot of people relate to the public library. People of all ages come into our public library and see it as a gathering place where you can see other people you know. The vision that you're spelling of Kellogg Hubbard. It's gonna look very different for a while. And it kind of breaks my heart because when I started out as a librarian and decided to go into this career, it's because I see a library as the great civic space. It's one of the spaces that you can go into without it costing you anything.  It's the living room of the town. In a community of people you know. In a community of people you know. And in a community of people that are going to be like-minded. So you're going, if you attend a program, the other people there that are attending that program have a similar interest to you. So it's a wonderful way for people to connect. If you're a new mom and you're taking your baby to story time for the first time, you've probably been home with them on maternity leave for a while and it's a chance to have an adult conversation while you're doing something that's wonderful for your baby as well. So the library is a place where people connect and it's an incredibly important hub of the community. And so the loss of that and is something that we all feel very, very keenly. And I'm not sure when it's going to look like anything resembling normal again. Are you looking at the best practices of other libraries across the country, across the state, across the world? Absolutely. So Vermont has a wonderful department of libraries. It's over in Barrie. And so they give out best practices and educational resources and guidance to libraries across the state. And we contribute. All of the libraries across the state contribute to each other. We have a very, very active listserv that has an ongoing conversation about all of the challenges people are facing. So none of us exist in silos. We're all communicating. There's a very robust page on the department of libraries website where they're saying here are some of the, here are some of the reopening plans for other libraries across the state. There have been lots of opportunities for conversation and meetings via Zoom where different library directors have been able to get together and talk about what reopening means and what it looks like and what are the things, okay, this is what we're doing. What are you guys doing? Or where are you in this reopening process? So we can all compare notes and make sure that we're following the guidance from the department of libraries, the guidance from the ACCD and then supporting each other. Well, I'm gonna hit you with a curveball now. Okay. These people have watched us talk. If they have any other questions, can you write to info at kellochhubber.org and have your questions answered that I didn't ask? You certainly can. You can ask us anything you like and, or you can call us during the open hours. And your phone number again? 223-3338. I wanna thank you for this conversation. I thank you, the staff at the catalog, Hovered, for holding it together during really tough times. Yeah, I appreciate it. And we've seen nothing but positive support from people during all of this. People are so grateful for curbside service and they're grateful to be able to reach out and connect even if it's only virtually and not in person. So we've had a very positive response. We felt very well supported. And when you start to open again, can I have you again on Orca? Yeah, it would be my pleasure. Thank you so very much for watching. Watch the other shows. They're really good and they're well worth watching. Good evening.


ahoy hoy and welcome to the channel i'm dr samarian and today's video is sponsored by it escape from site 19 this is actually kind of heavy which is a good demonstration of how much stuff is in here i'll do more about this at the end of the video but i just wanted to make sure and announce that i was sponsored before i uh let's make sure there you go now you can see the logo the entire time i want to make sure i announced that the video was sponsored at the top good good practices also i think required by law at this point which is good anyway today we are going to talk about the dankest memes from dank memes from site 19 and i'm just gonna start with the very first meme acknowledge the fact that your brother is sorry for murdering you and sorry what am i canadian is sorry for murdering you cares for you and is trying to become a better man or draw 25 draw 25 i actually included this more for there was a comment on the actual reddit post about how the if you think about the biblical story of kane and abel and the idea that this is like you know the first children first siblings to ever exist and there are they have other siblings of course but these i believe are the two oldest and even if they weren't doesn't really matter that's not the point i go on tangents um but if you think about it abel and kane like had no idea what murder was although to be fair the real crime of kane wasn't uh killing abel actually this is true of a lot of stuff in the bible where people pick up the wrong message from it because they're using modern uh senses of morality to understand what happened the problem wasn't that he killed abel the problem was kane lied to god about it it's a little bit like in sodom and gemora where people pick up the wrong message about why that was bad it wasn't about any of the stuff they were doing it was about how they treated guests and specifically god's messengers kane enables the same thing kane had no idea that hitting abel with a rock was going to kill him and that's something that somebody left as a comment which is a very good point but that's not why he's been punished for forever it's because he that's not the reason why abel got you know it's not the reason why kane got punished and abel is you know this whole other thing now doesn't forgive him for it in the scp foundation lore but kane is punished not because abel won't forgive him kane is punished because he lied to god though the real question becomes like what is the real backstory here and if you read enough scp articles you can come up with something but there's just too many to settle on one thing we only wish to reclaim our names so that we might return home the long-eared one uh can't you just make up new names the being who carries ukulele a furry fairy john smith true i don't really i don't have anything to add to that because i just included it because it's very true scp 682 those foundation fools haven't tried to destroy me today have they finally given up or something scp 682 noticing that his article has a negative 10 reading i actually i don't know if this exists in the wiki i feel like if i know i've discussed this as a plot store a story uh pitch before uh on chats with other writers i don't know if it exists but i feel like it must and that's that truly the reason for 682 is impossible like it can't be destroyed isn't because of any necessarily in universe thing but a holy meta problem in that as long as the article is highly rated scp 682 will continue to persevere sort of an andrew swan's proposal style interpretation of 682 which i quite enjoy as a concept but i if it doesn't exist in the wiki somebody should definitely write that i mean the pedophysics stuff that's been going on for forever now it's you know do it do it do it which is dovetails nicely into this a powerful well i mean i don't think he shows up in this i don't know a powerful reality bender i don't fear you then you'll die braver than most uh i feel like the goc being like this reaper of reality benders thing kind of doesn't work for me i like the idea that they fail probably more often than they succeed it's just not you know those they're not necessarily as interest although those could be just as interesting of stories gods in any story god's in the scp universe back with some coffee i mean yeah because the idea is and the problem is is that the scp foundation writers myself included have become sort of addicted to the idea of of subverting your expectations so what's your expectation for god all powerful all seeing all you know all this all that and instead it's just some dude drinking some coffee and relaxing speaking as someone who has written a god into an scp scp two three four three not three four three but two three four three which is my sort of a spiritual rewrite of the original since the original storm the wiki i hate the original um but two three four three is an egyptian creation myth god so yeah and he's just like hanging out in tennessee when they've scp foundation finds them a whole thing is based on a joke of um well joke and or reference to a song called how i got to memphis i just love the idea that uh ancient egyptian gods to mother well mother and a father eight well they are a mother and father because they have a kid but a husband and wife a creation god and a destructive god uh in egypt leave you know and abandon the world for a while when they come back they decide to go to memphis but they get the wrong memphis they don't go to memphis egypt which is an ancient egyptian city they go to i think it might still exist i don't know for sure but if it doesn't it does or doesn't it doesn't matter because they go to memphis tennessee and then they just kind of decide you know what this is nice let's stay here and they have a life for about 30 or 40 years it's a fun story but again we're talking about the ultimate creative uh force in the universe and the ultimate destructive force in the universe settling down in tennessee and having a kid and it's fun but there's also something to be done with i mean well i shouldn't say that because it's like oh we do too many subversions of the expectations but reality there's a lot of straight like oh my god the world is going to end everything is everything is horrible now stories i mean 343 if you consider him to be god which there's really no evidence of that being actually true other than him stating it and he's a reality bender literally alters people's perceptions of him i mean he is a bad guy in the story makes somebody disappear who doesn't believe in him so you know not all chilling he makes people think that's what he is we mistreat mistreat all right our employees worse than any other company activation blizzard no way we treat our employees way worse than you amazon amateurs what was that punk amateurs yeah the scp foundation does not do so good would buy its employees most of the time in some versions of the scp foundations and some cannons i would argue that with uh except for in a very few situations i think they actually do but right by their employees as much as they can it's just a dangerous job there's no other way away or no which way around it scp speaking of scp foundation internal request form uh 02 21 1996 you've detained an innocent man and separated him from his family for no good reason i am requesting you go f yourself invalid request see i like this is because it's an example of um i don't know which scp this is from to be fair uh but the the fun part i think is that it just gives an example of how the scp foundation hands this sort of stuff to me it's like they get this so often like there's the interpretation of this is like you just covering up for feeling really bad but there's an easy interpretation of this that is basically just uh he says invalid request because like they're so used to this kind of behavior because of the way they act and treat people that it's just like oh well that guy's being that being that way yeah i kind of expect that to happen then we've got mtf zeta nine is an elite squadron of the foundation's expert specialists in exploration and containment of underground or enclosed spaces with anomalous properties especially inconsistent topography or unstable spacetime it should be mtf zeta nine in on the scp foundation by description by actions because they just constantly get their asses kicked by every anomaly they go to explore though that's the best way to put this it's reasonable to expect that i mean anomalies are unexpected things even no matter how much experience you have with anomalies there's always going to be things that happen that you're not expecting although there again there were a bunch of great comments on this one uh one of them was uh you would think by the time they entered their say i don't know doesn't i don't know the exact comment but it was something along the lines of by the time they entered their dozens anomaly you would think they would expect the door to close behind them because that happens in so many articles um i do know that there are versions of zeta nine where things don't go badly but if they're not if they don't go badly they're not the focus of the story you might be like well that makes sense they're only worth the story is only worth telling if something bad happens yes and no on the one hand that's the easiest way to tell the story with an mtf but mobile task forces being good at their jobs could be their own story what's the best way to put this a setback does not have to be a failure but with the uh with zeta nine is a great example almost anytime they face a setback that's it it's over they're all gonna die and after the first dozen times that happens maybe even before that uh it gets a little boring maybe spice that up a little bit you're wrong about kidnapping me i did see the video that the source is from um was it tana rad i think is the name of the youtube channel i'll actually include you know what um it seemed like funny content to me it seemed really weird content to me but it seemed funny content to me uh so i'll give you a link in the description to give it a look although uh you know kidnapping uh sep youtubers is not the best idea i do remember and this was included in her video uh when she did the uh she said that i had a beard that would uh who knows what's hiding in there and then of course uh published her video after i had already gotten rid of my beard so that was a thing that happened uh and she mentions it in there as well but i also think you're missing a couple of other key uh things first of all uh let's see yep right there having stuff like this and uh easy easy reach let's see if this is in here yep i'm not gonna this is not real i like to pretend like it is i was gonna use as a prop for a joke here this is just a uh this isn't although if i hit somebody with this that hurt uh oh that's how i'm gonna get avoid you know and getting avoiding getting kidnapped is actually quite hard uh but uh i think this would be useful for it um but yeah i have it's not the only weapons those are the only weapons i feel comfortable throwing off on the thing here not to seem like too much of a neck beard um but i don't know i've always had this this knife is used more for cooking than it is for hunting even though it's a hunting knife but i i think that people might have a little bit of a difficulty at first of all a big guy just in general uh so that's gonna be a problem just moving me uh against my will so all i'd have to do is flop and man would they have trouble moving me into their man much less fighting back uh i'm just saying anyway moving on kids who think siren head is an scp me being happy about kids being introduced the scp universe so my nephew and i think i've told this story before um about shit i want to say christmas or thanksgiving of last year and i know i've said this on the channel before uh was talking about siren head at the table when we're having our family meal and he said what was exact words he said siren head siren my dad stopped him after a certain amount of time because you know kids can go he's only like eight or nine years old he got way way too excited about something that's not worth being that excited about um and was like what is siren head because he wanted to know and my nephew was like he's an scp so here's the thing on the one hand i get where he's coming from for some young people scp has become shorthand for cryptid um which is because i mean like understanding what a cryptid is and isn't is a little bit more difficult than just saying on scp because scp carries with it a lot of context that lets you understand what people are talking about but no no it's not and i actually stopped him midway and was like that is not true and then we had a discussion about intellectual property and why it's a bad thing to try and pretend like something and why but he's not eight or nine years old i think it was seven or eight last year i should have been seven yeah okay so he's seven then and eight now and of course having a discussion about intellectual property and the problems with how the scp foundation is creative commons and siren head isn't and pretending that it is makes some people think that it's okay to use it when they shouldn't uh was a useless endeavor but i can't help myself sometimes people defending the goc because they aren't as bad as people think and that they generally have the interest the best interest of humanity at heart but the chair though again read some of the comments for this and there was another one that was related but not exactly um i think what's the best way to put this the goc is wrong because the goc in most interpretations is very absolutist i mean the scp foundation is wrong too their absolutist philosophy is also incorrect um and that's the problem it's the it's not the philosophy itself of let's destroy things that are threats to humanity which is a good idea and the scp foundation let's never destroy things that are threats well not never but let's almost never destroy things that are threats to humanity because we need to understand them better is sometimes also wrong there's a middle ground which in a lot of interpretations and newer stories both the scp foundation and the goc kind of fall into uh where it is actually you know a little bit more nuanced than that at least their viewpoints of the various geo that geo eyes is um but in their classical interpretations both of them are wrong evil good doesn't really matter and i think we'll talk about that and maybe the next yeah then the next one uh saying there is no good or evil in the scp universe is incorrect we'll move on to the next meaning because this is exactly what we're talking about because there are evil geo eyes and creatures and people that's just a fact there's it almost well depending on how you want to find evil if we want to get into the moral and ethical discussions of what is and isn't evil and what is and isn't good we could be here all day we're not going to do that we're going to say for sure though is that like children of scarlet king or the chaos insurgency are pretty clearly the bad guys like even if you consider the scp foundation to be morally gray which it is it's gray it's in the middle or the goc to be morally great which it is it's also in the middle it's probably a little bit more towards one side or the other depending on your interpretation of it but it's still in the middle and a lot of other geo eyes are the same way but not all of them and not all people and not all creatures and monsters that you run into some of them are just straight up evil that evil exists and so does good in the scp universe to be honest with you although good's a little bit harder to find but evil definitely exists the scp foundation use evil criminals as d-class personnel all the countries in the world with a shitty legal system including the united states and the idea of d-class as they are portrayed in the scp foundation is read you know i should do a whole video on this i'm gonna do a whole video on this fuck this let's just stop here because this is getting way too long i'm i might even cut a big chunk of that because i want to do a whole video on now thanks a lot person that submitted this meme your name's not on it so i don't know exactly it's in the list in the description but i'd have to dig through to find it either way actually hold on i might be able to find it because i see the file name there you are nope that's not right recently closed tabs wait okay so there we go ah posted by u ford slash sam u o l o i think it's zeros actually either way uh thank you because i think you've given me an scp video idea that i'm gonna do sort of a follow up to the you're wrong about video that really dives more into the cultural and moral implications of the problems with d-class we'll talk about that on thursday i think yeah thank you very much for watching and uh with that terrible uh thing let's move on to our sponsor for the day escape from site 19 uh now you may have seen the video i did on this there'll be a link in the description to that and uh yeah there'll be a link in the description along with a link to the website where you can buy this escape from site 19 is a wonderful and just amazing looking and just so well put together a piece of scp content that you can just buy for your shelf and there's all sorts of stuff in here that's great too you see the whole video i did on it but that's neither here nor there the important part is is that i had a coupon code uh it's dr samarian i'm pretty sure yeah it's dr samarian one word again the link the not the link oh there'll be a link that's alongside this but the actual coupon code will be in the description is below um a lot of you guys have actually gone and bought some of these which is great but continue to do so because uh this the code was only good for july originally but i managed to get it extended into august uh it's gonna be the last month for it but until the end of august you can use dr samarian and get 20 off of your total purchase uh and the escape from site 19 website and i highly highly recommend it because it's a lot of fun anyway i also got some other stuff we're going to talk about at some future point uh probably next video will be a good one although the next video is going to be very serious so maybe not thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when i upload new videos and then look first of all if you go down if you scroll down you'll see a carousel of various products there is a product with this design on it there's black and yellow and it's the you're wrong about series which is there's a poster there's a mug there's t-shirts there's hoodies winter is coming eventually it's not here yet but it's coming um and all sorts of stuff you're you know certain classes in college maybe you want to have a year wrong about this t-shirt start a conversation um and all sorts of different stuff there's also the channel logo that you can get on stuff which is a little bit more uh a little bit smaller i can get like a little i think there's one with like on the breast here and so on and so forth there's mugs and so on i think this is the kind of stuff that you guys might really enjoy and if you purchase it that's money that goes to me and that's great also if you use that coupon code down here some money comes to me too so you know think about that and then if you just like to help directly head on over to patreon.com forward slash decimarian and pledge at any level like everybody here on the screen already has including actually i don't have any uh higher than 20 dollar patrons anymore which is disappointing but to be expected i like to do the include when i did the including thing that was for the people who are above 20 uh i don't have any so yeah thank you very much for watching i do appreciate literally every single one of my patrons like so thankful that they exist and so thankful that they're pledging it's nice to know that i'm not alone out here and i will see you all again on thursday