Summer Symposium Intro & Keynote

>> Welcome in, everyone! We have a lot of people coming in fast and furiously here. We are at almost -- well, passing 360 right now. We have about four minutes until we get started so we will see a bunch of people come into the room here hopefully in the next couple of minutes. We have well over 2,000 registered. We will see what our final count is throughout the day. Any time I do those last minute e-mail checks and we will be back with you in just a few minutes. >> I want to welcome you in. We

have two minutes before we get started. You are in the right place. If you wish to share where you are coming in from today, then please do so in the chat. We have so many states represented. It's so great to see everyone from far and wide here. Welcome in, everyone, once again. We are nearing 700 entering the room here. We did get many registrations, so we will see that number tick up a bunch. If you are just joining us, if you care to tell us where you are tuning in from, please do so the cha

t. Everyone is sharing all of the states that are represented. Great to see all of our towns and places where CSLP is represented today. I think we have no minutes left. It's actually straight up 10:00 and so in order to keep on our time schedule today, because we do have some great content for you, I think we can go ahead and get started. If -- there she goes, she got the recording going. Hello and welcome in. We are so glad you are here today with us for our 2023 CSLP summer symposium. I'm Daw

n Krause. I'm the Executive Director of CSLP and this is my first summer symposium and I am so incredibly thrilled to be here withio as your expect -- with you as your Executive Director. It's been a great six months plus on the job with CSLP so I'm grad to get this event under my belt as well. I have a couple of introductory slides to get you settled in for today. I think. There we go. Just a couple of housekeeping issues. We do have live captioning going on with AI Media. If you go to your too

lbar at the bottom you should see a closed caption symbol similar to what's on your screen. Should be able to click that and get the captioning going for you. Please put any questions for our presenters in the Q&A box so we don't miss them. There is a lot of people in the room today. Everyone is muted and video is off and the chat is probably going to be pretty full of commentary. If you can do the Q&A box, that would be really great. It's another thing that's on your Zoom toolbar. All of our se

ssions are being recorded today. They will be uploaded as separate events, separate videos on to our summer symposium page which we will pose periodically. The link throughout the chat so you can get access to those. In addition to that, we will have some resources on that page. Some of our presenters do have handouts there and then we have a continuing education certificate that will be available for you to download and add to your name to and use as you need to. Our schedule today. Just a brie

f overview. Obviously we have our key note and we will have three great sessions for you. Two are panels. And then we have some breaks scheduled. Longer breaks on two ends of the event today so we can get across time zones and get you to lunch. Feel free to come in and out of the sessions. Just using your registration link so you can pop out and pop back in using that. Some of you are on your desks and trying to keep an eye on that and customers while you are doing the event with us today. That'

s great of you to try to fit us in with your schedule. I am also here today, one of our hosts is our incoming President, our 2024 President, Donna Throckmorton, the library services consultant at the Arizona state library. Hi, Dona! She is the one that has coordinated this event and so we really thank her for all that she has done for us but for also wrangling us today and our committee as well and I will get to them in a second. We have a small but mighty staff here at CSLP and I always want to

acknowledge those folks today. We have Melissa Hooke behind the scenes doing all of our tech for us with Zoom. And we have Alyssa Graybeal -- I don't know if Alyssa is here yet. She is our wonderful managing editor of our program managerial and she will be on with the folks that have put together the 2024 manual and are going to give you some great bits of that today later on. So just thank you to the staff behind the scenes here so you know who is back here helping run the ship in addition to

all of our volunteers. Much appreciation to our symposium planning committee. We had really dynamic committee. Great ideas. It was hard to actually thin down our program. We had a lot of really great things and suggestions this year. So hopefully we picked the best of the best. So a little bit aboutcrat lp. For those -- CSLP. We are the collaborative summer library program. A non-profit formed way back in 1987 by a group of library staff just like yourselves that wanted to share resources around

summer reading programming. We really are much the same today. We just have 45 states and island nations involved in doing the work and making decisions around summer reading and we eat, sleep and drink summer reading all year round. I know we are talking about summer and it is December. We don't care, we will talk about it any time. We are so glad and fueled and shaped by our volunteers. We could not do the work we do, the amount of work we do without really dedicated volunteer base. >> Here i

s our mission and vision. We empower libraries to foster community. We are obviously still a collaborative non-profit. We provide re-producible programs with a unified theme. The theme is chosen by our members. Our themes and slogans are always chosen by you the members. We share resources and offer a lot of professional support which is great. And in the words of -- one of our former Presidents, she said we are a group of people trying to make summer programming easier for practioners and more

meaningful to communities. That's really it in a nutshell and why we are here. We are a non-profit. We fund our organization with membership fees, our program managerial sales and store merchandise sales. All of the money raised supports future programs and we do have a lot of interesting things on the horizon that we would like to do to further support programming in public libraries. So stay tuned. We do have a store. Our shop site is where you shop for merchandise through CSLP. This is a comp

letely open website for you all to purchase from. You do not need an account. The only caveat is if you are in a non-member state, we do charge an annual fee of $20 to be a member of CSLP, and that gets added on to your first order and it's just a once a year charge. Know that is something that would be added on if you were in one of our non-member states. So we have 2.5 staff as you saw at the beginning. Not a lot of people behind the scenes here but small but mighty. We have a 10 to 13 person

volunteer board super dedicated people. We have 13 volunteer committee chairs. Another group of really dynamic people who give a lot of their time on key things that we need to -- key milestones we need to reach throughout the year. We have 150 volunteer committee members and, of course, we have all of you. And then we work with a lot. Contractors, illustrators, fulfillment warehouse, IT, web hosting, product vendors, traffic designers, all of those folks that we need in order to produce a reall

y high quality summer reading program for you. So this is 2% are paid staff and the rest are volunteers. When I say it's volunteered powered, I really mean it. A little bit about CSLP by the numbers in terms of our data, states join at a rate of $65 a year plus $2 per library outlet. This rate has been in place for decades. It's not gone up. States get discounted rates on programming manuals. Each state has a representative that is on our various Listservs and is keeps you all informed out there

in the states in your libraries. Really a bunch of very dedicated volunteers as well. Individual libraries and non-member states can join at $20 and that fee goes back to our programs for you all. How do I get involved? We want you. We need your brains, time, empathy, creativity, all of that. Foremost we really need folks that are passionate about summer reading and summer programming. We really run on your energy and so if you want to get involved, with very a lot of committees to choose from.

We do our committee recruitment in fall usually but if you have an interest, you can contact any of us at any time and we can see where we might be able to fit you in. We can put the link in the chat at a later point. Our programming manual really is the bread and butter of what we do here at CSLP. This year it's 261 pages with 12 chapters. It's 80 pages of stand alone printables. Super high quality. Things you can just take and print and use in your library with your patrons. Very easily. High

quality art work by professional illustrators and graphic designers. We have slogans in various colors. Black and white clip art. Individual images that are extracted from our poster work. Images designed for marketing to each age group, social media banners, power point files and more in there. It's 15.95 for on-line access and free to libraries and member states. Ask your state rep if you don't yet have access to this resource. Submit an idea or resource by our website and then we do have a g

reat planning Facebook group, super active. Tons of great ideas and images of what they are doing in their libraries which is very, very helpful. And then the program cannot happen without you. So we need your input. Even if you are just giving input to your state rep about themes and slogans and things you want to see in the future. That information does trickle up to us here at CSLP. Please keep giving that feedback to us so we can constantly improve for you We are thinking about customizable

products that you can add your particular branding to. Downloadable templates. Grant programs. Donor support. We do not currently take donations and we would like to in the future to support grant programs and other ways we can help public libraries deliver summer reading. More partnerships with great organizations that can add to our programming and enhanced what we do in summer reading. Improved product quality. We try to always be looking at the next products available. A continued focus on i

nclusion within all aspects of CSLP. And a new programming manual format in the works, possibly a database of our past programs as well as our past artworks. A lot of really great things on the horizon for CSLP. And without further adieu, I am going to hand it over to Dona to welcome our key note speaker Jen.Jen. >> Shares her opening slide, I get to introduce her and I'm excited to have her come to you and share her enthesism for summer reading. Jenifer Strauss uses her passion for story to hel

p educator, organizations and individuals connect with others, communicate ideas and achieve goals. Following ten years as a public school educator, Jenifer combined her love of teaching and story telling and in 1993, founded her business story be told. Now traveling nationally, Jen offers interactive story performances, dynamic conference keynotes, workshops, trainings and coaching along with writing workshops and long-term involvements as an artist in residence. Please welcome Jen as she prese

nts simplifying summer, adventurous observations from a seasoned story teller. >> Thank you, Donna! And welcome everyone. To be with all of you this morning. I want to thank Donna and the committee for inviting me to share some ideas with you today. Welcome, everyone. It was so much fun to watch the chat and see where everybody is coming in from. I want to -- this morning from northern Michigan and in Michigan we have a habit of holding up our hand as a map where we've been and where we live. No

t only the lower peninsula, but also the upper peninsula. I want to tell you that I'm coming from you this morning from a place called Travers city, Michigan, up north far from Lake Michigan. It was great to see where everyone was coming in from. Welcome. Story teller, a speaker and narrative consultant and I have had the great honor and pleasure for many libraries across this country and have presented both live and virtually in trainings and webinars for years. And libraries and librarians hav

e become my favorite audience. For those of you who have been with me for story telling programs and story time trainings over the years, you know that I love to start with a welcome song in honor of the 2024 summer reading them of adventure, we will start with a song today about adventure that I learned at summer camp many, many years ago when I was just a kid. So the words are up on your screen. And in pure style of teaching audiences about songs, I'm going to do a few lines and then I'm going

to ask you to join me. Even though I'm not going to able to hear you singing with me, I'm going to assume you are out there singing along. So we need hiking sounds so we will keep a beat on our laps for this welcome song and you can do that with me if you want or let me keep the beat. I will do a few lines and then ask you to join me. On the road, to anywhere. With never a heartache, with never a care. Let's try that. On the road, to anywhere. With never a heartache, with never a care. Second p

art. We have no home, we have no camp, we're grateful for anything the new day brings. Let's try it. We have no home, we have no camp, we're grateful for anything the new day brings. Third part. On the road to anywhere, each milestone seems to say, almost there! Ready? On the road to anywhere, each milestone seems to say, almost there! Last part! The road to anywhere, the road to anywhere will lead to summer reading one day! Ready? The road to anywhere, the road to anywhere will lead to summer r

eading one day! All right, good job if you are out there patting your legs and singing along with me. Now you have a song ready made for summer reading this summer that you can begin every program with and end every program with if you liked it. I want to start today by giving attention to something really important to me as I travel across this country and worked with many librarians. The realization that we are living in sensitive and tumultuous times. The last four years have not been an easy

time to be a librarian or serve the public because of COVID-19, the issue of book banning, political struggles, and of course social issues. As librarians and public servants, you have had to be many things to many people in your community while offering a multiple of resources to satisfy needs from your youngest story time patrons, their families and care givers to your oldest and often technologically challenged patrons and everyone in between. Sometimes including latch key kids and people ex

periencing homelessnesses. Social and political peace so you don't ruffle anyone's feathers. So I want to begin today by taking a moment to recognize the important work that each of you do in your libraries and the valuable services that you provide while trying to keep all patrons happy and satisfied and, no, this is not an easy task. Especially in this day and age. Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the impact you have on those that you serve. So I want you to remember that people, especiall

y children, just need one caring adult to take a special interest in them to change their life. You are the ones who open the doors to knowledge and information every day that empowers the patrons that you serve. So before we dive into the 2024 summer reading theme, I want to share a few stories about inspiration. While I'm doing this, and while I'm telling those stories, I want you to think of the people who inspired you to do the work that you do in libraries. And I also want you to think abou

t anyone that you know that you have helped and inspired along the way by doing the work that you do. So let me take you back to about 1963 in Detroit, Michigan. The Sherwood forest library. My first library. I was five years old. My older sister Leslie was ten. Now Leslie was afraid of everything, but she also knew that reading was important and that the library was a magical place. So one day we wept to the edge of our street and on the bus -- we went to the edge of our street and got on a cit

y bus and in a short time the bus let us off at the Sherwood forest library. We walked into the doors together and met the librarian. My sister told her that it was my first time at the library and she took me by the hand into the children's section and sat me down in front of the picture books and told me that I could have any of them that I wanted to take home. I couldn't believe it. And I sat on the floor right there in that window, you see the front window, the sun spilling in that window an

d grabbing books off the shelves and by the time I was through choosing, I had an arm load of books that we had checked out with that same librarian who said I could come back the next week and do exactly the same thing. We got on that city bus. And we rode home, walked home with that big pile of books in my arms. When we got home, we sat on Leslie's bed and she read every single one of those books to me. Over and over again that week until we went back to the library to get more. That was my fi

rst library experience. Now about the time that I was entering Fourth Grade, I had just come out of a terrible year in third grade. I had a teacher whose name was Mrs. Benson, that's what we called her when she wasn't looking. She was a strict teacher and I was a really energetic kid and she had to get used to me. I was doing really well in school, I loved everything about it except my third grade brain had not connected with the writing process yet. And when I got my papers back from Mrs. Benso

n, well, with that red greased pencil that she graded them with, it looked like she killed my papers. That didn't improve my grades nor did it improve my self-esteem. My mother knew I was struggling. And one day I went into the kitchen where she was making lunch for my sister. Made the mistake of telling her that I was bored. Usually when we told her that I was bored, give me the toilet brush or the vacuum cleaner. That day she went into the closet next to her bedroom and got out this and handed

it to me. I said what do you want me to do with that. Here is what she said. She said, honey, I want you to -- this summer and have an adventure. I want you to try something new. Something you have never done before. When you do that I want you to bring an object home that reminds you of what you did that day and put it in the box. Every night you can show me that object before you go to bed and I will try to guess what you were doing. Genius. So I went off every day that summer and I had adven

tures. The neighborhood and the sand lot, on my bike, in the woods. Every night I came home with a different object and I showed that object to my mother and she couldn't guess. She would try to guess, but ultimately she would end up saying, I don't know, honey. Well that went on all summer. And about midway through the summer she gave me a journal. The stories down because they were good ones. And I wasn't thinking about Mrs. Benson or the red grease pencil that she graded the papers with. I wa

s having adventures. I would come home every night and tell my mother about those adventures and by the end of that summer when I entered Fourth Grade, I had 30 objects in that box, stories in a journal that I showed my new teacher. She loved the stories and the idea of the box and made every Fourth Grader a box so we could save items that reminded us of a story that we had lived. That was an inspiring time in my life. Summer going into fifth grade. I was up at parks and rec at our elementary go

ing in the summer and you can play games and make craft projects and I got tired of playing knot hockey. So I started to wonder around the building. When I got to the other side of the building, I saw the library was open and inside was Mrs. Wells. Our school librarian. I walked in the door and, Mrs. Wells, it's summer, why are you in the library? She said haven't you heard of summer reading? I hadn't. She called me over to her desk and got out a five by seven card and put my name on it. It had

lines. I was going to read that summer and a place for a stamper. When I came back to the library after reading those books. I didn't know where to begin. Dear Ms. Wells took me by the hand over to a section where all of the Laura wilder books were and she said, why don't you start here. I spent that summer going into fifth grade on the prairie. The next year I knew about summer reading so I went back to visit with Mrs. Wells in the summer. And the summer going into sixth grade. I spent that sum

mer in Narnia. Mrs.Wells introduced know summer reading and I never stopped reading in the summer from that point on. And the last story I want to tell you is about all of you. You see, in the last 30 years I have been presenting for libraries and I believe that you all have super powers. You are the most incredible people that I have ever worked with. Your super power is being right brained and left brained at the same time. You are the most creative and organized group of people that I have ev

er worked with. Your integrity has inspired the work that I have been doing for all of these years. So here is your first opportunity to go into the chat box and you will get a copy of this chat later on. Here is what I want you to do. Chat number one: Who in your background inspired you to do the work that you do as a librarian? I want you to chat that person. Number two I want you to chat somebody you know that you have inspired over the years by doing the work as a librarian. Go ahead and cha

t those and Donna, after we let people have a little bit of time chatting, I would like you to read one or two of those. You will have this chat later after this symposium that you will be able to read over those as well. >> Okay, I will take a look at those. Jen, just so you know, the internet is cutting out just a little bit in and out for you. So if it gets too bad, we may ask you just to turn off your video. >> I'm hard wired in this morning so I'm not sure why. >> It could be just that we a

re a big group. Hopefully -- all right, do you want know read some of the answers for you? >> Yeah, I think I will turn my video off right now just to -- okay. >> So this is who has inspired you. I see school teachers, Mrs. Glover and Mrs. Miller. And they inspired her to read, her love of reading and eventually move to librarianship. A therapy dog. Those were inspirations. My boss and my mom. Specific names of people that were very inspirational to them. And I'm assuming these are who has inspi

red you. And then, oh, my goodness, there is over 117 answers so far. A lot of teachers. My childhood librarian. Other people have inspired others by helping them get a job in Alaska. Who else have you inspired. Who have you inspired? They inspired their aunt, their children, a tutoring someone was very inspirational for that person, co-workers, we could be inspiring to those we work with. Someone was inspired by their grandmother who was a voracious reader. A lot of children they've inspired. T

his person inspired by her young readers. That's really fun to read. And is this person inspired a 15-year-old library volunteer who wants to be a librarian right now >> Thank you so much. Those are wonderful. I hope when you get the chat you will read over some of those. It helps you know how others are inspired to remember the important work that we do. Thank you and thank you, Donna, for reading those. I hope I don't cut out again. I turned off my video. This summer is going to be my 31st yea

r that I have taken the summer reading theme and created interactive library programs for all ages. And I do that by embracing story telling, singing, artistic expression, reading and writing and in this slide you can see some of the slides from summer reading programs that I have been involved with over the years. I have averaged 40 library performances a summer in both urban and rural and everything in between. So in those over 1,000 programs, I have witnessed several different approaches to s

ummer reading depending on the size of the library, the community, the resources available, and the number of staff and volunteers who helped to execute the summer reading program. I'm always amazed at the amount of energy and planning and creativity that goes into creating a summer reading program to motivate not only kids but all of our patrons to continue to read all summer long. I also recognize that executing a summer reading program is an adventure in itself and it's also a very exhausting

one. So today is about building excitement, inspiration and ideas for the 2024 summer reading theme, adventure begins at your library. We are going to consider ways to enlest community -- enlist community partners and streamlining the program process so you aren't begging for summer to be over before your summer reading program ends. So in order to embrace this idea of adventure for this coming summer, I would like to begin with some definitions. First the definition of adventure itself. An unu

sual remarkable and exciting experience. Adventure is a daring and exciting activity calling for enterprise and enthusiasm. Enterprise being the readiness to act boldly and get something started. Next adventure, our next definition is adventure rest. The willingness to try something new and push beyond your comfort zone to grow and learn. Willing to go where you haven't been before and do things you never done even if you don't know how it's going to turn out. Being adventurous means embracing t

he unfamiliar and the unknown for the sake of learning something new or accomplishing a goal. When I first read and wrote out these two definitions, what came to mind for me is not only as adventure our summer theme but it's also a librarian's job description. Don't you think? It just sounded like what you do every day but especially in the summer because libraries make things happen. So I just wanted to read those. Place where I first learned about adventure beyond my mother and the story I tol

d you, the place where I first learned about adventure was at summer camp. So the summer going into seventh grade, I had heard about a camp in northern Ontario called out post camp. I came home with a map and told my parents I wanted to go to the north shore of Lake Superior, outside of a town where I wanted to attend an outpost camp where we would be hiking and canoeing and climbing. My parents thought I was crazy but my mother knew the importance of adventure so she found a way to allow me to

go. That camp and those adventures absolutely changed my life. Not just learning how to take a risk and do something I have never done before, but also the process of learning how to work with others. This was a place where we slept in cabins but there was no running water. We had a big water tower and we pumped water up from the lake and that's where we brushed our teeth at troughs in the morning. We had a great big kitchen and cooked meals for each other and the only way we could get clean was

by either diving into the cold lake or taking a sauna and then diving into the lake. This place changed my life because it taught me through adventures how to trust myself, how to know I was strong, how to work with others, how to cook meals for big groups, and how to become a human being that had integrity. Knew how to work hard. Knew what it meant to do something without always knowing what the outcome was. So this was an important place for me to learn about adventures, but I want you to now

chat in the chat box a time and it doesn't have to be a canoe trip or climbing a mountain, but a time where you had an adventure experience that taught you something about yourself. So go ahead and chat those in the chat box and, Donna, again, will read a few of those out loud, maybe three or four of those. An adventure and it doesn't have to be the out of doors. We can have adventures anywhere but it has to be something you are trying for the first time. Something brand-new. Something that tau

ght you. Something very important about yourself. Go ahead and chat those >> Girl scouts seems to be a popular adventure and experience. >> Absolutely. >> Someone else said this is a great passive activity to make a bulletin board using this question. >> Absolutely. >> All of the different vacations they've gone on, adventuring in a foreign land can be quite the adventure sometimes. Moving to a new place is another thing that is really popular. Flying for the first time to visit my brother and h

is family >> Thank you so much. I'm sure there are other great ones. I can't wait to read the chat when this is over as well. We all had adventures that are either big or small but have changed us. You don't have to go to summer camp to get those. I would like to suggest that these are the three things that I learned from those adventures that apply directly to summer reading and our adventure theme this year. Number one, trying new things helps you grow and become a more confident even if you a

re nervous or scared. Caring mentors provide knowledge, resources, positive support and motivation that allows people to try something new. Creating an inclusive and inviting space where everyone belongs. Helps build a greater level of comfort and community. That's what I learned at summer camp. My suggestion is that summer reading is just like summer camp, but the kids don't have to stay overnight. I want to remind us all that libraries have always been life long learning hubs for whole learner

s. Experience new things. Learn and grow. What better place to launch a summer full of adventures than at our libraries. It turns out that psychologists have a lot to say about the value of adventures. Apparently adventure is good for us no matter what our age is. So I want to talk about a few things that I learned from two articles that I read about the psychological advantages of having adventures. The first one was in a 2023 blog post from sorry mom adventures called quick look, a psychology

of adventure seekers and the author indicates these things. The need for adventure is embedded in our human DNA. Our ancestors relied on a daring spirit to adapt to change. Adventure seekers are curious, have a sense of excitement and are quick to adapt to new situations. People who engage in adventurous activities experience a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, happy transmitter, associated with pleasure, reward and satisfaction. Adventure seeking people develop resilience and experience

an increase in personal growth and self-discovery. They report a higher level of self-esteem, satisfaction with life, check it out. A decrease in stress and anxiety. Challenging activities require quick thinking, problem solving, and adaptability. Trying something new and overcoming obstacles fosters a deeper sense of capabilities and strengths as well as increase in confidence and an expanded comfort zone. Wonderful benefits. From another article, from shape magazine, entitled the health benef

its of being adventures, Arthur Schwartz cites research from frank barley, PhD, professor at Temple University and former President of the American psychological association. Here is what Frank has to say. Whether it's physical, mental artistic, instrumental, culinary, literary or virtual, adventures make us feel good. Engaging and focusing during a new activity ignites creativity, curiosity, and creates a sense of well being known as flow which causes a spike in dopamine. And the feeling of wel

l being that lasts long after the activity is over. And then finally, for our older patrons especially adventurous experiences improved brain health and increased learning and adaptability and therefore neuroplasticity. So I want us to all consider this research when we think about the 21st century skills that we as educator are sort of tasked with for educating the youth for the future. I want you to think about how the adventures we are going to offer this summer will meet some of those 21st c

entury skills of creative thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, information literacy, media literacy, technological literacy, flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity and social skills. So just by having adventures this summer, we will be able to work with our patrons on those 21st century skills. How do we do this? And I know that it's a huge task to plan for summer reading program. Takes an incredible amount of time. There are so many details to consider when you start p

lanning your program like budgets and staffing, decorating and programming for multiple ages, doing enough marketing to ensure numbers and attendance so you can justify the money you are spending on programs and supplies. Tracking reading and participation, securing prizes, not just to mention executing all of this. And I need to tell you the truth. In the last few years as I travel and I perform in libraries, I've noticed a level of exhaustion in many of my long-term library friends. They used

to get excited about summer reading. But because of the trying events of the last four years, many librarians are experiencing a certain level of burnout. And what I noticed last year as I travel from library to library, we are still building that audience back. Even though it's been a little while since the pandemic, people are changed their behaviors or they are still living with fears. So we are still building those audiences back. Last summer was the smallest audiences that I had in 30 years

. And all of the librarians I talked to said they have been working on it they are marking. It's really hard to get people back to the library and maybe you experienced some of that as well. I would like to offer some suggestions today for simplifying and streamlining the summer reading process so that you are working in the parameters of your library for your level of resourcesser your community to ensure that you are not hoping that summer reading is over before your program actually ends. So

let's take a look at a few of these. The first thing I want you to think about is your library logistics. Your community. So I want you to be realistic. I know librarians get excited and want to offer everything during the summer. But we have to be realistic. Consider the size of your library. Consider your program spaces both indoors and outdoors. How many staff members do you have that will be committed to planning your summer reading program and executing it. Consider your budget and your res

ources and make sure that you are not taking on too much. I mean that. Simple its good. For you and your patrons. Life has become very, very busy for all of us. It's easy to want to do it all, but with creativity and community partners, you can build strong programming without burning yourself out. So consider not just live programs but path of programs, on-line and take home programs. I've heard many in webinars that I have given over the years say wait a minute, I'm the only staff member doing

everything. And it's usually in those smaller and rural libraries that I hear that. So you do not have to offer six programs for every age group if you are a very small library and you have a small staff and limited resources. You might want to think about instead offering more multi-generational programs so that all family members can participate together, even the grandparents. Also think about if your staff is small, do you have volunteers already engaged at your library? And if you don't, w

ho else could you enlist to help you? Your teens and tweens either advisory councils or those that are hanging out at your library are wonderful helpers. And in my community here in Travers city, we have a great number of retirees who are just looking for ways to give back to the community and many of them are volunteering at our libraries. Look at your high school and community college students. Can they help you during programs? Can they help you create decorations? Can they be the ones that p

rint your tracking journals or go out and solicit prizes for you? Then finally, on this specific slide I want to emphasize the last point and that is six weeks of summer reading is plenty. So limit the number of weeks. We usually begin our summer reading programs one to two weeks after school let's out. So how many weeks do you want to run your program? Six is usually enough if you are wrapping up by the first week of August, most families will appreciate that because they are going to spend Aug

ust either looking toward school and getting ready for that, with school starting earlier, earlier across the country. Or they will want to get those last summer things in before school begins. So this theme is probably one of my favorite themes for years. One, because I'm an adventurous person and I love the idea of adventure as it helps us grow and learn. But also this one is limitless. Last year I heard a lot of complaints about the all together now theme because it was just a little too much

out there and people weren't quite sure what to do with it for programming, but this one lends itself to just about any adventure that you could have. You don't have to do it all. So I want you to choose programs and ideas that best fit your community and your patrons. So I would suggest that right now even though we are heading into the winter time and most parts of this country, not all, but the winter season and summer reading is kind of far out there, survey your patrons. Ask them what type

s of adventures they would be interested in having this summer. You can give them a list and see it they check it off and give them a space to write about adventures they would be interested in having. Do they want adventures this books, stories and writing? Do they want video games, board games and outside games? Do tewant to have some adventures and travel locally or travel in a series of travel talks? Do they want outdoor adventures, hiking, arts and crafts, adventures in cooking, science, mo

vies, scavenger hunts, adventures in exercise like yoga and Tai Chi. Survey them and find out what it is that they want and that can inform how you plan your program this summer. Simplify your focus. So this is a wonderful theme. Adventure begins the our library but who are we going to be? Are we going to adventure seekers across all of the ages of your programming? Do you want to get a little more specific with that and call everybody explorers and focus your programs on exploring your specific

community? Do you all want to be super heroes this summer and have adventures learning super powers or new skills? Maybe your focus will be time travelers and you will focus on the history of your community and learn more about that? Or might turn your whole summer reading program into adventures that are mysteries to be solved and therefore your focus will be becoming detectives. My next tip for you is to venture out into your community. So every single one of our communities have unique thing

s to offer and every community has something different, big or small, adventuring into that community and engaging with those community partners is a great way to engage with this adventure theme. In my community here in Travers city, because we are a vacation destination, we are rich in a lot of different ways to have adventures here. I want you to ask yourself what's in your community. Are there parks or zoos? Do you have water parks? Trails? Are there community gardens? Nature centers, skate

parks? Bike clubs? Museums? Businesses and municipalities that might be able to partner with you. Performance sites, art galleries, outdoor adventures, climbing walls, hiking and biking clubs and anything else in your community that you can collaborate with. Also I want you to be thinking about ideas for resource people in your community who have a specialty and maybe that you can enlist them to teach a class, give a talk, or lead an activity. In return you will also be showcasing these communit

y businesses and these people in your community who have something to offer. Also and I hear this very often, too, is that no, I don't want a whole -- hold programs outside of the library. We try to get people into the library. I'm here to tell you that I have been part of many successful programs that have taken place outside of the library but then have led patrons back to the library. Cathy Lancaster, you will remember this picture on the left side of the screen. When Cathy was our youth libr

arian here in Travers city, we held a program at our movie theater on a Saturday morning because we knew that all the kids would be there to see cartoons that only cost a quarter. So Cathy held a pre-program before the curious George movie that day. She had me tell a few stories. She did trivia questions. Threw prizes out into the audience and we had a few librarians out in the lobby of the movie theater who had books that you could check out right away, back to the library. And then also sign t

hem up for library cards. I've done programs for summer reading in parks where people are camping all summer. And those programs invited all of the summer reading patrons but also invited all of the families who are in that camp site. The bottom picture shows me doing a science program when our theme was space at our community botanical gardens because they wanted to bring more families to their site so we did summer reading programs there all summer long. Finally the other picture is an art par

k in Travers city and I did an adult program by telling stories for all of the art features and leading people through the trails there as part of a library program. Other places where I've performed, creatively, a Burger King on a Saturday morning in the play room. Only we didn't let them play on the equipment. We served them breakfast and I did a story telling program for summer reading. Farmers markets where everybody is shopping and there was a children's area. At this farmers market in nort

hern Michigan in iron wood and I did a program at farmers market about vegetables and gardening. One time last summer I was at a library and it was raining. This was in the upper peninsula as well and I said where are all of the kids? And the librarian said they are all over at parks and rec but it's raining so they don't want to walk to the library. We took all of the patrons that gathered in the library and went over to parks and rec and had an audience of 120 and did my summer reading program

there. Finally a suggestion to hold programs at senior centers. Bring your younger patrons to those senior centers and hold a program where those elders and the younger ones can share together. And that's a beautiful way to do a program off-site. Because we were momoting adventure, this summer I want you to think of these three goals and see if you can include them and each one of your programs across the ages this summer. That your patrons read something to learn how to do something new to the

n do it, so they can come back to your library and somehow share what they have learned with others. So that might be becoming back and adding to a bulletin board or coming bab and actually sharing with another group what they learned. Or just giving you feedback in their logbook about what they learned in that program. So I learned an interesting idea about a year ago when I was presenting in Montana. And the presenter that morning talked about having a community book walk and scavenger hunt. A

nd in her community they engaged a number of the community businesses to put a page of the book walk up in the window of their business. They gave patrons maps and clues to go to each one of those businesses, read the page from the book walk and then also receive something from that business that they would gather or collect, sometimes it was puzzle pieces or another clue. And then at the end of that, the last page of that book walk and the last business that they visited, they came back to the

library and had to do something with it. So this is a really wonderful way to do some programming that might be ongoing and maybe it will last a couple of weeks during the summer that families can engage in and maybe come back and submit an answer or bring a puzzle piece back and build a puzzle or have a solution at the end that brings them back to your library. So another suggestion that I like to give to you all and I think this is well received by hard working librarians is that you don't hav

e to re-invent the wheel every summer. And in the next session after mine, you will go through the program manual. I went through every page of this manual because I'm getting ready to do summer reading workshops this spring. And it's the most incredible resource that I have ever encountered. And it functions on many levels, age level and multi-generational and every different kind of program that you can present whether they are passive or on-line. It's just an incredible resource so please use

that manual so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to use every single idea because of every library being different and having different circumstances, you can pick and choose the program manual ideas that work best for you. Point number two, recycle and adapt and re-use program ideas. All of the programs that you have been offering over the summers are adventures. With a little tweaking and a little adapting, you can re-use ideas that you used in past years so you don't

have to come up with all new ideas this time. Finally, collaborate with all of the other librarians that you can, especially like on days like today or other conferences or just getting in touch with local librarians around and say, what are you doing? And share ideas so that you can grow your ideas together. I'm going to skip this chat, Donna, because I'm looking at the clock and I'm going to skip this one but I'm going to say I want you all to be thinking about adventures that you can have in

your own unique communities and you might want to just jot a few ideas that you may have had while listening to it key note and jot those ideas down if they are new ones that have come to mind while I have been talking about ideas. >> Okay, I'm looking forward to that just a reminder that we have until 12:15 for this session. >> Good! >> And then so the last ten minutes we will have questions for Jenifer. So if you have any questions you would like to ask her, go ahead and use the Q&A. And we wi

ll hold those until the end. >> All right, I am going to have you chat, into the chat box so everybody can benefit from these, okay? Two or three adventure ideas using a community partner in your unique community. Somebody who you could collaborate with this summer who you know would help you create a great adventure and you wouldn't have to do all of the work. Go ahead and chat those. Donna, thank you for the time reminder. I was looking at the top of the hour. When we get a peek at those and i

s my connection better now that I turned the video off. >> It's much better. >> Thank you, good. Sorry about that. So let's get some of those ideas that are coming through in the chat box about community partners who can help you have adventures with your patrons this summer. >> Even before you asked the question, someone had shared that they do do the community scavenger hunt with their Chamber of Commerce, like a community partner that helps them do that. And let's see if I can catch some of t

hese that are flying pass. Connecting with a nursing home. Oh, the Historical Society was what they had partnered with. NASA solar systems ambassadors are great partners. Let's see. >> I really want you to be thinking in your own community so that you can reach out, connect to a partner and then you can also then feature their business. So it's sort of a give-give, win-win situation. Think about -- >> The recreation department or this community has an eagle railroad adventure train rides. Local

scavenger hunt, fire department. Department of Wildlife. Community garden. >> Yup. >> Think about trails and natural areas, nature centers, conservation districts, those kind of things that can offer help this summer too. >> A lot of great ideas in here. Cooperative extension service in your community. >> Perfect. 4H, awesome. >> I believe we will be hearing more about forest partnerships. Oh, I skating rink and the YMCA. >> Oh, yeah, the YMCA is a great place to connect. >> And the family resou

rce networks and some states have family resource centers that are often located in the school. Yup, community family resource centers are great. >> Let's do one more and then I will continue on. >> Wolf mountain conservation center or the local zoo. >> Awesome. Perfect. So I hope that when you go back and you read that chat again after this session that it will give you more ideas. Every community is unique and every community offers unique adventures and partnering with those and you will hear

more about this later today in another session. Partnering with those community organizations and businesses is just going to make your job easier when it comes to programming and your programming is going to be diverse and interesting and maybe when you look at that survey that you hand out to your patrons you will see those ideas come up on those surveys. Awesome. Thank you for sharing out on that. So this suggestion came from our youth librarian coordinator in Travers city at the Travers are

a district library and he said keep your tracking log simple. So I want to give some suggestions for how to do that. And it can be your adventure seekers log or whatever you are going to focus on. The explorers log or detective log whatever your focus is going to be. Keep it simple and easy to use. Make it small enough to throw into a purse or attached to a lanyard, King ring or a -- three by four or four by six on tag board works really well in that log, includes summer reading schedules for al

l ages. Only one log for all ages so you don't have to re-create a different log for every single age group you are serving. Include your summer reading schedules. Have several pages to record the books or minutes they are reading all summer but also have it be that there is a way for them to add more pages if they need. So that Caribbean -- carrot beaner or ring attachment would be a great way to do that. Several pages asking patrons what program did you attend, give the date and time. And one

thing that they learned in that program. You might have a special stamp or a sticker earned for attending programs that is placed or stamped on that page and at the end of the summer when these logs are turned in, you might give prizes for the most read or the most programs attended. This takes a lot of time to create logs like this so I want you to think about who you can enlist to help you create that log. Here in Travers city we have a technological high school where they do printing and ofte

ntimes projects are taken to those students they design them, they print them, as credit for their schooling with very minimal costs to us. So think about how you can enlist to create those logs for you. Technical schools, community colleges, they might be able to design and print them for you. And that would take that off of your plate. Another suggestion is can you offer -- and this is different for every library in terms of your staff and your community, can you offer digital tracking options

so that patrons can use their phones? Again, if you're short on staff or don't have the way or knowledge to do that, is there a digital native in your community who can help you? Digital Natives are those under the age of 30 who just sort of innately grew up knowing how to do that digital stuff. See if there is somebody you can enlist to help you create the logs this summer that are going to be simple, easy to carry around, and then they will turn those logs in at the end of the summer where yo

u can track reading and track program attendance by those logs, as long as people turn them back in to you. Finally, and in my last points to you, probably the biggest headache I hear from librarians, especially if you are the only one doing everything at your library, because marking is incredibly important and incredibly hard to do because it's time consuming. I am not criticizing when I say that I do a lot of the cross marking when I'm performing at libraries because it helps them greatly. I

will go to websites to see where they have my event listed and because they are short on staff or maybe don't have a web designer that is a staff member that sometimes I have to click four times to get to the kids section, summer reading program, the calendar, the date that I'm presenting on and then when I open that up, oftentimes there is not enough information there for people to sign up, to register, or even know what the program is about. So you gotta go beyond your website calendar. Here a

re a few ideas and again I'm recognizing that staffs are small, that resources are spread thin. So I have a few suggestions for how to combat that as well. So are there fliers and posters that you can put up all over the community. Are there newspapers that are just a community calendar? We have one up here called the northern express and all of the things that are going on in town are listed in that calendar. The only caution is that you have to get your calendar to them a month ahead of time.

Local TV is a wonderful place to advertise if they have you on and interview you or let them give you videos about summer reading programs. Getting on the local radio station and pushing out that summer reading program. E-mail blasts and, of course, social media. But it can be a headache for a lot of people, but it's really the place where we can get a lot of hits to promote our summer reading programs. All of the social media sites, having videos on the social media sites that are exciting and

short and inviting and again I encourage you to find a digital native who can help you do all of that. Maybe you can secure a teenager, a community college person, a tech student who is really good at this who would love to help you. Maybe so they could get credit. Might have to pay them a little bit if you have a budget for that they can help you with those social media posts. Spring school visits are still popular. I heard from a lot of librarians that the schools are harder and harder to work

with because their plates are loaded, too. But I encourage you to do those spring school visits not long before school lets out. I'm -- often the performer that libraries send in to get everybody excited about summer reading and they come with me and then they talk about how to sign up, how to register and all of the wonderful things we are going to be doing. They bring books that kids can check out that day. It's a wonderful way to get kids excited before school lets out. Making connections in

your community. Where those audiences already exist. So connecting with those summer school programs. Those religious organizes. Youth groups in the area. Day camps that might be functioning in the summer. Day cares, preschools, your parks and rec. Senior centers, the places where people are already gathering and make sure they know about your program so they can possibly bring them to your library or maybe you can go and take a program to one of those community organizations. Here is a little

statistic that I learned when I was learning more about marketing my own programs. People need to see an event nine times before making a commitment to attend that event. Incredible, right? They need to come across that event nine times before they wake up and go, wait, this might be something that we want to go to. So just keep that in mind when you are doing your marketing and trying to enlist some help to get all of those marketing kits out there so you have a successful numbers at your event

s and people know about the wonderful work that you are doing. So we started this keynote with definitions about adventure and adventurous activities, adventurous people. I would like to end our time together with a few quotes that I hope inspire you. The first one comes from Eleanor Roosevelt. The purpose of life after all is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. Beautiful. Second quote and I hope I'm saying her nam

e right. She is a physician, philosopher and author you can Google. Life is a daring adventure towards an unknown future. Its beauty depends on how much you enjoy the journey. So we will try to enjoy this journey of summer reading this year and finally, let us remember the words of Hobbit Bilbo baggens who said, it's a dangerous business, Frodo. Going out your door. You step on to the road and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to. So I want to end this

key note by saying this to you. Reminding you, good programming is important. Simple is better. And community partners are key. So I hope you consider your particular unique situation in your library for programming, keep it simple, don't burn yourself out, and know that those community partners are going to be key this summer especially with our theme of adventure beginning at our library. So I would like to open this up now to any questions you might have and I'm going to unshare so that I can

maybe come back on. Should I, Donna, come back on? >> Either one is fine. Yeah, why don't you go ahead and join us via video and see how your connection is. Thank you so much, Jen. You should see all of the hands and the hearts and the high-fives and everybody loved your presentation so far. We do have about five minutes for questions and I have a couple of them for you. And if anyone else has a quick question, you can add it to the Q&A. First we heard some great references to adventure researc

h. One of the questions we had is hopefully you can provide us with the links to those sources. >> I can't do it right this minute but I will make sure to get them to you, absolutely. >> We will include it with the fliers or the slides or something like that. That would be wonderful. Then we had a question and I see there is a lot of great answers in the chat already >> Of course! >> Do you have any ideas for team programming with the adventure theme? >> That could be another whole keynote, of c

ourse. So our teenagers, you know as well as I do, that they come in waves into our libraries and they are off the an hard group to hold on to. Unless you have strong teen advisory committee. But you will want to survey those teens. Find out what kind of adventures they want to have. A hiking club. Geo caching, climbing walls. Adventures in the community. Paddling, water sports. Adventures in mysteries. Adventure can be in anything, right? They might be teens who want adventures in new art forms

. So really survey those teens so that you find out what kind of adventures they want to have and then make sure you are trying to find ways you can help serve them in that way. I hope that helps. >> That's great. And then the other really interesting question was posed about the length of summer programming. And some people think of summer programming or their summer program being when you actually track the reading, allow people to get incentives for tracking reading. So maybe you start that e

arlier and end that later versus the events and programs you hold and how long that takes it. Do you have any thoughts about coordinating those two aspects of summer programming? >> So I think you would have to be really clear how you describe that. So if you want the reading to continue and maybe you do have touch -- you touch base with your patron in August but the main trunk of your big summer reading programming happens in those six weeks. I find that in August families are turning their att

ention into a different direction. School starts early. Their attention is going towards getting ready for school. School sports start earlier every year. So those things are going to take some of your younger or teen patrons away from programming. You could have the tracking be the entire summer and maybe end that mid-August or even late August but please make sure that you communicate well to your patrons that is how your summer reading program will work. That programming is going to be from J

une 15th to August 1, we are going to be reading all summer long and we are not going to be tallying and giving out prizes. Then maybe final event -- though I would caution this, but your time event might be a week after your last major program or even later if you want to give those prizes out at that point. I guess you will have to determine how you want to do that in terms of tracking for the summer. As long as you communicate well to your patrons how that's going to work and you communicate

it even more than nine times, I think they will understand how they will do that >> Great answer. Thank you so much. We really want to give Jen a wonderful round of applause for a wonderful inspirational keynote. And I hope everyone is reading through all of the chat ideas because there is tons of great ideas that Jen has inspired conversation around this. Reminder that we have a 30 minute break and our next session will be all about manual highlights so I'm assuming we will have many more great

programming ideas shared during that session. So that will start at 12:45 eastern. 45 after the hour wherever you may be. So if you need to sign off, you can exit the meeting and come back in, or you can just leave it running, but we hope to see you back in half an hour. Thank you so much, everybody. We will see you at the next session.