Thinking Outside the Library Promotion

- Thank you all for participating and signing up even if you aren't participating today I do appreciate you signing up. It was worth the effort to get all this pulled together because we're reaching a lot of people in a lot of areas, and that is wonderful. I also want to thank Bev for being willing to pull this presentation together. Promotion is a big thing in the library, and if you're not promoting about 150% of the time you're falling behind. So I'm going to turn it over to Bev, because Bev is the promotion person. So I'm glad to have her with us, and I'm letting her have it.

- Okay, welcome everybody. This seems weird doesn't it? I'd much rather be in person, and hugging necks, and fellowshipping, but this is the next best thing. So we're gonna try it and see how it works. Promoting outside the library. What I wanna do today is talk about a few little questions. You can see the first one up here. Few little questions, bust through those requests. And then I wanna talk about activities to get people to come into the library, activities maybe in or outside of your library, library sponsored. And then we wanna talk about how we can maybe possibly ideas for using social media and things like that. So that's kind of the overall plan, we'll see how it goes. Okay, first question I have is what is our most important resource in the library besides books? Cause we know that's important or we wouldn't be here thinking about.

- Okay, go to the chat.

- Yes, if you've got any ideas of what what might be our most important resource in the library we think of displays and bulletin boards, when we're talking about promotion that seems like the good resources, right, the librarian is the most important resource, that's a good one. Users, databases, online resources, people, us, you got it, people, people are our most important resource. Why does the church exist in the first place to reach people, why does the library exist to reach people, we've got to keep our eye on the goal and our most important resources is people. That's our greatest resource, obviously we have to have all the other things and we need each other. But our most important resource is people now let me see if I can get this move here. And then within that, we've got our most important people what's the goal of our promotion what do you think should the goal be the one you first everybody thinks of is more users? What are some other things as far as the goal kind of goes along with the people communication, yes, we wanna connect with people, right, that's the goal of our promotion connect with people and we all know that promotion is important we don't need to talk about that at all but we need to connect with people. So the first question on your handout with the outline, if you have that before you what are some of the reasons why our library might be used we can all think of a lot of them. Here's another goal of promotion, helping disciple groups ministries within the church showcase the library, support ministries, good ideas. What are some of the reasons why our library isn't being used? You might be in a very inconvenient location that's way on the other side of the church that nobody ever passes by. You may have a church that some of the people are not interested in reading maybe people are too busy. Yes, that's a good one, you may not have many readers in your church what about is your library up to date or is it kind of old members don't know there is a library that's exactly why we're promoting we want to let people know there's a library that's a good one, if we're out of date we might not have any money to buy any books and get up and coming. Does your church staff support your library that is a big one. When the staff supports the library you can do a lot more things. We're not open at times convenient for people to browse, that's a very good one, they don't know where it is, yes. So support from staff is important the other thing right now I think sometimes we're not being used like we should be as we've got a lot more competition than we've ever had. We've always had TV there, but now we've got the internet and we've got Amazon and Facebook and all these other things that take people's time, so we got to think about some of our competition but I think that's definitely some of the reasons good, a good over thing about it, but think about promoting, if I've seen a lot of people say people don't know where here I went to a church one time and I was so excited that they were promoting so well any hall that I went down in the church there was something about the library that, like here's our new mission books or have you seen this, or one of them, which I didn't care for was have you returned your overdue books, that's not a good thing to promote but if let people know we're there just like in any advertising situation, they're gonna come. Okay, does that mean necessarily that they're always gonna check out a book, no, but the first goal is to get them into the library to see what you have to let them know you're there. So that's really important. So I know when businesses open, if they don't advertise do you see in some of these strip malls a lot of little businesses that are very, focused on one thing, have you ever seen those come and you don't see anything about them and you don't even know what they're selling possibly. But if they advertise, you're gonna go check it out at some point and you wanna pound, pound, pound and let them know the library's there so that they're gonna come. Because if we don't let them know it's there how can you know, we can't, they can't see what we have. So we've got to advertise and we've got to advertise everywhere. When I was in this church that had things in every hall I was pretty excited about that. And then I went into the bathroom and guess what was in there on the back of the door, in the stall, more library stuff, So advertisers do things like that. and that's one of the things for promoting your library that you can do is watch what other, what other businesses and things do in their advertising and in that advertising. But we'll get to that a little bit later but we want to definitely do that so how can we overcome some of these hindrances if we're in a far off area advertise we've said, but what are some other things that we can do to overcome, open when people are they're open before and after the church times, even if it's just 15 minutes, something so that people can come. And if you can, if you have multiple services if you can get people to work in each serve during each service so that when other people are coming and going, they can stop that's a good thing as well. But I think we have to be very proactive, we can't get the library in perfect shape and sit back and say, okay, we're here, how many users it doesn't work that way we've gotta be proactive, we've got to involve other people we've got to share the vision with them of what we can do and how we can help them involve the community and not just church members but outside of the community involve people. If your library is only for church members, that's fine. But if you can open up to the public, that's even better promote from the pulpit or announcement slides, that's another one that we're gonna talk about as well. Very good idea, advertise in other areas of church, we've talked about that but we have to toot our own horn. You might say, well, I don't wanna brag about my library well, if you don't advertise and let people know you're there and what you can do for them there's no point. So communicate with your church communicate with your community, what you have to offer and also your needs and wants because sometimes that will help you get some of the things that you don't already have. So first things up on a budget, you can do that very easily if, I know a lot of libraries and a lot of churches are starting to spruce things up because things are out of date because styles change and different things become popular. So if we can spruce things up to kind of match some of that stuff to make it more appealing to people, yes, that's a great thing to do. And then communicate with your church staff and Sunday school teachers. But definitely here's one have a library presence on your church website. Very, very important, very, very important to do and then tell them what resources you have available. Alright, losing my train of thought. So, alright, so a lot of things to do so communicate, make sure that the library staff loves well when people come into the church, what do we want, we want them to feel welcomed, don't we have you ever been to a house where the people did not want you there, if you ever were a salesman you've probably have definitely. But on the other hand, have you ever gone to visit someone and they made you feel like a queen when you got there, that's what we need to do in our libraries. Make people know that we're glad they're there love them well once COVID is over we can love them with hugs and all kinds of more things than we've been able to do lately but we can still let them know how much we appreciate them and be as helpful as we can. So a lot of little things that are just common sense, really but sometimes we don't think of them because we are so focused on what all the work we have to do in the library. I know when I first started doing library work on a Wednesday night, I would have I'd be work had been working all day, but I have still lots of work to do because the library and the work never ends kind of like housework in a library. And someone came in and they were talking and I was getting kind of antsy because they're just visiting. And I'm thinking, oh, I'm wasting time, I have to do this, this and this and this. And then the Lord says, Bev why are you here to minister to people? Yes, okay, I've got it, Lord, this other stuff will wait, this is important right now. And that's the thing we gotta do we gotta love people. And then also love your staff. If you are a staff of one, you need more staff and if you have more staff love them well make sure they know they're and thank them because if they're happy where they are and you know this in any job the same thing is true, if they're happy and appreciated and enjoying what they're doing then they're gonna keep doing it you don't wanna lose people, you wanna gain more people so that's some of the things that we can do to overcome some of the hindrances but share the vision, share the vision with other people in the church. You might invite pastors and Sunday school teachers and deacons or elders, youth sponsors, Sunday school class I already said Sunday school classes but have them come into the library individually or as a group and give them eight to 10 things that you can do to help them. So, okay, I'm getting pointed here. So things that connect them to your ministry and things like that. So ask how we can support them, invite newcomers to come to the library, if you have a new members meeting with new members, someone from the, someone should be there from the library to represent the library. So then that way they know there is a library and if they don't have a meeting, get a packet is there a brochure in that packet, out the library inviting him to the library offering to give them something if they come and visit the library so that you can show them around and show them where things are. So there's a lot of things that you can do to overcome some of the hindrances. So what we want, and I'm already talking to them about this what are some things we can do to help increase traffic in the library? So there's a lot of things we can do with that. And here's a very good comment. Jesus always had time to stop and minister to people, Yes, yes, very important thing. I write books in the weekly program, yes, a lot of good ideas there's so many things we can do. And this is what is nice about this chat, because we can talk about all the different things we're thinking about, see them and mention them so that we can get more and more and more ideas, so that's what we need lots of ideas so we can pick and choose which ones we'll need. And that's gonna be the case today you're gonna get a lot of ideas, don't feel overwhelmed you can't do them all try one or two at a time, see how they work, continue using them if they work, stop, if they don't use another one but don't try to do it all at once not too good, but some of the things we can do to increase traffic, have you ever heard an open house Invited people to the library, this would be obviously announced in the whole church because the library is having an open house and you wanna showcase what you have. And within that open household pay food is always good but oh, we can't have food in the library but I would if you choose the right food, cake doesn't work well because it crumbles on the floor and people step on it. And that doesn't work well, if you have carpet. So depending on what your situation is cookies are always good, kind of simple far more easy to clean up something simple like lemonade or water that wouldn't stain if you have carpet so just little snacks or candy bars or something like that. But food always draws traffic. And then when they get there and this could be actually not just at an open house it can be anytime where you are at a meeting and you hand out a survey that asks people why haven't you visited the library, what keeps you from coming into the library, what would you like to see the library do, what would you like to see the library provide for you things like that, an anniversary party that's a good thing when you've been there for awhile and people say I didn't even know we had a library and we're having a 10 year anniversary that tells me I haven't been promoting enough. And then we've already talked about sprucing it up but make an effort to make the library more attractive. Declutter it if you need to, repurpose things rearranged, simplify, organize. I've seen the small libraries that don't have much room for supplies and things. They put cute little, those little totes up at the top of the shelves that let people see or, have it out of the way in a nice way. So, but make it user-friendly if he can change the traffic flow great offer coffee on Sunday mornings. That's a good one, weed older books weeding is a very good thing for promotion because it gets rid of some of the books that haven't been checked out. And especially some of the really, really old ones. So, but just make things comfortable decorate, work as a team and then displays. Now, we're not gonna spend a lot of time talking about displays and bulletin boards because you've always had that. That's what we've learned in the past years as we've gotten together, we've put a lot of concentration on how to do those, and we still need to do them and do them in different parts of the church and things like that. But basically we want to get people involved and we want to get more, get more traffic. So now the best angle to which approach anything or any problem is the triangle, we have to try. If we don't try something new, we haven't gained anything so you have to be willing to try things. Now, this means you're gonna have to change maybe the way you do some things, definitely a choice. It's not automatic and it takes time. It takes lots of time, it takes people to make things happen. So something to consider in within that so we're gonna look at some promotion activities for a little bit. And some of you have already said some good ones offer classes online, resources for members that need help. Lot of, lot of good ideas, very good idea, so here's the important thing in any activity or anything you do in the library is planning. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on it, but prior proper prayerful planning, prevents poor performance. You have to plan in advance no matter what you're gonna do, it takes some time to plan and I've, you've probably heard it said and I don't know the exact statistic but 10 minutes in planning can take save hours in executing if you planned it right and you can delegate a jobs and things like that. So lots of things to do Facebook live from the library yes, we already talked about that. So let's look at some of these activities, now I've listed on your outline, a few activities there's way more activities than these. These are just a few top ones that I thought we could just touch on. You could have a book discussion in your library where you could have people come into the library and pick a book to discuss on so this means, what do we have to do, we've got to get someone to lead it we've got to decide what books you're gonna discuss, we've got to do all of these things in terms of getting it organized. Are we gonna have food, are we not so a lot of planning goes into a book discussion and we're not gonna take time to do all that because obviously we're limited on time. So book fairs, have you ever had a book fairs in your library a book fair can come in a couple of different forms. One would be where you can sell books for them to take home and read like the schools have Scholastic book fairs all the time where the kids buy things and come home and take the books home and read them. Or you could have a book fair where they buy books for the library. Or you could have a book fair online. This would eliminate having to have the books there and work out with the vendor, how you're gonna work the money and all those things like that. The main thing is once you figure out all these details, communicate to the people. What kind of a book for this is you might have wanna have a combination of both where they can get a little discount on the books like they do at the Scholastic fair or something like that. But book fairs are a good idea keep in mind that this doesn't always get people to take library books out, but it gets people into the library. They won't always, they won't always check out a book but they will come into the library. And when they come into the library and they're treated nicely and see things they like and they see some books they're going to hopefully come back and then they might see a display with a book that's just down their alley. So we're wanting to get traffic into the library. Okay, one of the suggestions for the book discussion is let people pick books in the library and come and discuss them with the group. So that would be a where you talk about several different books I think is what you're talking about so that would be another option. Or have you ever had a book sale in the library where you sell books, they could be new books, they could be used books they could be booked you weeded, they could be books someone has donated that you don't need or can't use. And if you have a book sale or have never had a book sale I've heard it said that rather than say like public library will have these 50 cents or a dollar for a book. You could say donations accepted. You don't have to set a price on it and a lot of times you may get just a little bit more if you tell them what you're selling books for that with this is a way of our funding our summer reading club or something like that. So that's another option book sale. Classes have you ever sponsored any classes in your library now, you might say, well, my library is too small I can't have a class but could the library sponsor a class and have it in a Sunday school room or a room that's close to the library or even out in the hall if it's during a weekday night, when nobody's, else's there with classes, some of the things are listed here you've got to pick a topic to kind of get your instructor location, equipment and what kind of classes could we have. Well, we could have computer classes. I know when my mother-in-law went to the public library and took a computer class, she came home so excited and she said they started by showing us how to turn off the computer. And that's what she needed because she didn't know anything about computers. Now that those, they seem like they're gone, but maybe not. And for seniors, we need cell phone classes teach me how to use that cell phone Because a lot of us have trouble. And if you want to face time with your grandkids or for zoom or whatever, that's just a good thing to teach who would be the best to teach the cell phone class. You guessed it, a five to 10 to 15 year old teenagers, especially they can get around on this one very easily so here's one sponsored technology class led by the use. Yes, and in all of this you're promoting books they don't even know that. And if you have a class you could bring in some books that you have. If you're doing, for example, a book on finance or crafts you might have books on finance to show them on display if they come to the class and then or a list to hand out of books you have on finance as well as the availability to check them out have classes, same thing, so anything like that. What about contests moving along from classes? Now, classes are a good thing because one thing I wanted to mention classes does the instructor have to be a trick chamber? No, because even if the instructor has never gone to church what are we doing, we're getting them into a church building and they find out we don't bite and so that way it just, it gets people in. You might wanna vet them just a little bit to make sure their language is good but obviously they're coming through a church they kind of know, but I need to have classes and get people in the libraries doing it. I didn't know we had a library, now you do. What about contest, bookMark contests, poster contest and there's a new one here, mask design contest I hadn't thought about that. Bringing in the mask to design, we'll put them on display for ideas for people, and maybe somebody will buy it and go ahead and market it that way. So another option moving down our list here, characters or mascots to go into Sunday school classes with the kids or to give an announcement from the pulpit. Some libraries do that I know one, one person dressed up as an old lady with white gloves and the whole bit, I think it was really a Kirkland back in the day and whenever she was on the stage, they knew they were gonna hear about the library. And so that was kind of fun at our church we had the local all team bring their mascot to church and you can see the picture there of him greeting or I'll call it a him greeting the children. And even it gets like he didn't say a word. He stood out for awhile in front of the library and kids would be walking by and he just dragged them into the library so they could sign up for the reading club really, really cute, even the shy kids joined and so that was kind of fun. Another idea here, more mascot paused to read reading with Rover, things like that are kind of cute. I don't know that I'd have them in person but some people might. And then what about having an art show or spring craft fair in the library, Marty, you did something similar to this. Do you wanna share a little bit about that.

- I do, I will be glad to. We had an arts and craft fair for our youth age 12 to 20. And the reason we did that is because at the time we did it the first part of this year, we did not have a a classes for the 18 to 25 year olds, the young adults. So we did an art fair. We actually had a registration that was deadlines to register, they had about two weeks to register and then they had an additional two weeks to produce their art or craft. They could have two items in each category so we had in the arts category, we had poetry we had paintings, we had photos, that sort of thing. And then in the crafts we had necklaces and earrings and even woodworking items. And what really made it good was we invited the whole church body to come by the library the two weeks that we had the items on display and they could vote for one item and the art division and one item in the craft division. And we had really good participation there I think we had about 350 people come by and vote which is not that wonderful, considering the size of the size of our church, but we weren't fully back or not everybody was fully back to church at that point. So that was a really good participation on voting. And then we all we had to do was get the ribbons and it's sort of funny we had first, second and third in both art vision and craft division. And we had a tie in the art division so we had to go get another ribbon, but anyway it turned out really well it got a lot of people into the church. I've already been asked by some of the youth if we were going to do it again or when we were gonna do it again. So I am planning on that being a project again I don't know if we'll do it we did this one in February, so I'm not sure if we're white and do it once yearly, probably it's gonna be once yearly, but the kids enjoyed it. And the adults that came by and voted were amazed by the artwork and the photos and the poetry, poetry I think took second place so that was really great. Gave the kids an outlet and felt like the library really was in support of them. So that was just something we tried and it it didn't turn out successful.

- That sounds great. And it shows you what act having activities does people like to show what they do and share with other people and then all those people that participated went and told other people come and see my stuff displayed in the library. And that's what you want. You want to trickle out into the church and into the community and show and a lot of times people don't have a place to showcase what they do so that's a really good idea, really good idea. So then digital digital activity, have you thought of using QR codes you've seen in other places but if you have a book you want, it's kind of like the same thing as the blurb but if you have a book and you have this beside the book directing them to this website, they can pull out their phone and go to that website and read what you want them to read about this book. But QR apps that you can use what you do is you just download the app and then you find the website you want them to go to you put the URL in and it gives you this QR code. And then anybody can just come they can see this sitting on the library and then they can read more about the book. This is one particular book I would have on hand to give away when people are going through troubles "The Red Sea Rules." by Robert Morgan, great book but we're not here for that, but, or you can use the the other thing is digital frames. If you don't have a digital frame, they're easy to get in different sizes and they can go anywhere in the church. They might be on the preschool desk, telling parents some of the things you have to offer for those kids and giving them our door opener when story time is or whatever they can be on the information desk just listing new books you have or letting them meet the staff or telling about certain books. Lot of things you can do with digital flame but not digital frames. And if at the very least if you're not gonna go to the digital frame area you should be on the display screen before and after church or the screens throughout the church if you have them, the library ought to be able to have fun slide in that screen on those screens and it should be changed every two to four weeks probably an updated as they want you to do that. You are code scavenger hunts, that's a good idea. As you're reading some of these comments in the chat good at good ideas, lot of things we can look at. Here's some things, the pictures you could put on it in a digital frame, read to your children 15 minutes a day, read and teach, read and laugh. Things like that. The library might have drama, skits, or puppets if you, we did one year, we were having a reading club and the drama team wrote skit for us which we were able to put on the day of the reading club kickoff. And it was right at the end of the church service as an announcement. And that really up our participation. Giveaway items we don't spend a lot of time on this, but given things away people love to get things free coupons, candy, books, bookmarks, pens, pencils, trinkets, or favors. Here's some pictures of a few favors that we've done. Edible obviously needs to be an individual packages or as you see in that picture with the jar with the M and M's the thing which is out and brings one M and M at a time so you don't have little hands in or big hands in all of that. So lots of good ideas, digital frame with the children that participated in the reading club. That's a good idea. The thing that was frustrating to me after the reading clubs, we always put the pictures of all the kids that completed all reading all the goals we had for them on the bulletin board. And I had one of them all fixed up one year with their names under them and one of the ministers came down and said that bulletin board looks great. But the names have to go so be careful that way cause things are changing these days, handing out water bottle with the library names on it tracks witnessing with witnessing class lot of different things we can do. Here's a few favors that you might use around school time to give away to people. That's a lot of the favors that I have used over the years have been things that I've found cheaply somewhere on sale or dollar stores are great places to get little things you can give away. There's just something as simple as a paperclip that attached to a good book almost anything you get can be tied to reading in library. And it's kind of funny when you start brainstorming what you can do, that everything applies. Then a couple other things. The trinkets are favorites, three meals at a night or a hotel if you have an adult reading club, that's another idea. A lot of businesses will give you things. If we only ask, let your needs be made known. Popcorn, microwave popcorn, bag of microwave popcorn if they check out a DVD, things like that. Now, a couple ideas for marketing on the internet. These are two of my favorites, and you've got at least let's see three different places three different, three handouts that I gave you are for websites that you can use for promotion. The one that has these, these things on them this page is for all areas of library. And I'm sorry if some of these websites are no longer there I try to update them very often. And some of these sites come and go really fast but the five minute librarian.com is on your websites for promotional activities near the bottom of a very good resource there's tabs across the front. And you can look at different things but super library marketing. And then one that I recently found on YouTube the girls name is, oh, I forgot already, Debra Hersh Hersh is her last name but you can see a couple of her pictures. She has less, I think around a hundred, if not more or less a little less five minute YouTube videos five to seven minutes, probably on library marketing now, yes, it's library marketing for schools. However, they're all valuable is she has some on marketing with Facebook, she has some on posters and bookmarks and just all different ones than they're all real nice you can watch them just in a short little blurb and what I like about it is they're short, they're good they're very informative and she's very good at what she does, okay. Now I've added one thing in here after internet, and that is have you heard of makerspaces in libraries lately, this is one of the new things based on we're all born makers from our heads, to our heart, to our hands, okay. So makerspaces because not all people are able to learn from books, we need hands-on opportunities for students to tinker and explore. Now, when I first heard about makerspaces I threw it out because the makerspaces in public libraries include 3D printers which is a little out of my realm for a budget. So I did some research and there are several low tech makers base ideas that we can put in our library. Now, do they all need to be there at the same time again, no, try one or two see how they work things as simple as cardboard straws, Popsicle sticks and close pins there are several things make and take a bookmark you can have just a little area with markers or colored pencils cut out some of these bookmarks. And there's, if you did search for bookmarks to color you'll have more than you can use. Cut them up, let the kids come in and design them or color them the way they want to. Something, I know what our library was used for a lot was a meeting place after Sunday school. The parents were busy visiting the kids get out before the parents, so they met in the library, so the kids came in and if there was something for them to do like Legos or anything like that, then they were entertained. And of course, some of the family members would look at books but the ones that weren't book readers yet, I say yet because they might still become that because they're coming into the library and seeing all these books, things like this are helpful. I liked this Lego binder idea where it just takes up a little spot on the shelf. It's a binder, it has a Lego slat in it and then it has some pouches with Legos in it and they get to come in and build something while they're waiting for parents you may want it to be checked out, I don't know that I would have but I liked the idea of having that there is the teeny little makerspace. One, the area, the next area is on this Pictor bags of Legos and it says, see what you can create. And then if they create whatever they can out of what legos do you have in their little bag and then they can display it in the library with their name on the paper underneath it kind of a fun thing to rotate through. And again, come and see what I did, more people in the library. Checkerboards I've seen, I know Morley's church has a puzzle set up in the libraries that people can come in and add one or two pieces or two or three people can work on it together and visit while you do it. The challenge to make pipe cleaner critters and so there's some ideas for that. I liked this next one, build a hundred pub structure but most of us don't have enough room for a hundred cups like that. I mean, now they don't pick up room but when you build your structure, it's going to but what about digging communion cups and let them build a structure out of the communion cups that wouldn't take but a teeny-weeny basket and not much space and it wouldn't make nearly as much noise when it falls down. Just one idea there, some more Popsicle stick ideas then you could have ideas for them or not. So your choice, a lot of little ideas another idea is just making eraser critters. I had a lot of business things around so we made some critters out of erasers and some tax and things like that from the office supplies store. I don't know if you've ever seen this and I'm not gonna take a lot of time on it but you can take normal APER lunch sacks and make little books out of them. The neat thing is you just connect them on the side and then you can decorate each page and there's even a place here on the open spots to put extra pictures for items that you want them to be able to see. So that's just a fun little thing that you could do I could see this being a craft for Gas, for mother's day, Valentine's day and these sacks come in different colors so a lot of different things you could do for gifts that way there's an example of a drawer with Makerspace supplies in it. Again, we don't have to have that much room. There's some more ideas, but it would be easy for the kids to make some of these welcome, welcome back, read those types of signs with the banner type signs kind of fun and easy I liked it with the three by five cards and the letters on it the pencils in between for school kind of fun. Here's another option, recycled book art gallery search for that online sometime and see some of the amazing creations that you can make. You might have one or two for an example for them to see but let them come up with what they can. So maker space is just a fun little thing that I think will bring people into the library. Then we've got reach out advance cards, homebound, nursing home ministry we might have a team that just goes out and takes a basket to the homebound with copy of the, copy of the sermon or news about who's expecting or who had a baby or whatever we could do, literacy classes we could be open to the public have a magazine or tract ministry, welcome wagon I've already talked about being in the church. So, and then reading clubs we probably better not spend too much time on this but there is a summer slide and what the kids at the end of the summer, where they are in reading if they aren't reading all summer is a lot lower and they kind of have to build back up to better reading skills. And it's just amazing how much the summer slide affects kids. And so if we let people know that maybe with one of these posters or something like that, that's a good thing. I like this, the impact of reading 20 minutes a day I think this would be something great to send to new parents and even just parents of all preschoolers reading 20 minutes a day, look at those statistics of how many more words they're exposed to and how much better normally they'll do on standardized testing. And then another thing for kids liking reading which if they're read to normally they're gonna like reading the more they're read to even in the womb, it's important to read we all know that we're convinced of that but we've got to convince everybody else of that. So a poster I found, which I really like and you've got to have books fit the kids especially as they get older. Is it something they're gonna like is it something that they're interested in, does it fit their needs, is it too hard or too easy you don't want it does it help them, so a lot of different things now where did I find these on the internet by searching or reading statistics. Okay, go back one slide.

- That one.

- Yes, kids who read, beat the summer slide. It was, it's very interesting, low-income kids that read books improve high income kids that read books and have them available, improve but any low-income students or even high income is without books without access to books go down. So very, very interesting how that works. Exercise your mind, read that's what we're trying to do with reading clubs. Now, does anybody happen to have a birthday today, tomorrow or the next day, I would like to give that away. And if you'll just email me at bevleague@gmail.com and give me your address, I'm gonna send that to you. So, and that's what I probably need to do with a lot of my old displays we can share with each other. So let's do that summer reading Bingo this is one of the easiest reading clubs I've, ever did. I think I did it at Christmas, but you develop a bingo card or you can call it library bingo if you prefer where they can read any book or they can read biographies or they can read a red book or a green book or whatever you choose to put on those things. Once they have a bingo they can bring it back to the library and get a prize. If this runs for a month and they finish in a week they can get another cheat and do it again. So again, you can see all these things lots of planning, summer reading challenge bookmarks where they can punch bowls as they read books and bring it in for a prize or you could have just the circles and they can color them. There's another one next to it with books where they color the books as they read them. And again, you can make it any number of books that is the goal for the child or the parent can decide the goal you might have one where they read 10 books, 50 books, a hundred books. It might be that way that it would work something like that. Summer reading bucket list books that I would like to read this summer that I don't have time to read when I'm in school cause I have other things. And then just kind of some ideas of how to show progress, where each person got. They could add a loop to their string show how many books they've read a lot of different things you can do with reading clubs, bookmarks to color again, I like this a hundred book challenge that read there is divided up into 50 different squares and they colored the squares as they read. So if you have a bookmark where two bookmarks they can read 50 or a hundred books, challenging them to read and get to fill out their little things as they do it. There is a website called teachers pay teachers, and that's on one of your website lists that I think you would enjoy. Now, the pay in there is true. Sometimes they charge two to five to $8 for something, but the things that I have gotten off of that website I get searched for free library ideas and that way that they kind of rotate around so that you can try them and see if you like them so when I get them free I download them onto my computer and I have them. The next time I might go to that website that might be $2 just to get what I just got free a couple of weeks ago, so they kind of rotate around so check it off and get some ideas, there's different ways. They do have one set that is every month has a different picture. Like in the summer I'd be a beach ball and in October it might be a pumpkin in November it might be a Turkey and they color them as they read. So that's a good thing too. Then there's Dr. Seuss things to just keep track of how many things they read every day. Here's a couple of little ideas that we did for reading clubs. Very special reading club reading is a ball we had balls everywhere in the library, score with books, we had a summer reading carnival, ticket to fun have the strong man, just kind of fun, fun things. Okay, special events we had a ministry here at our church where every ministry in the church had tables displayed and everybody before and after church could go and look at these displays. And we had a clown walking around with a sandwich board on it. Have you checked out and on her back, it said the library. And then we had a spinner where they could go ahead and spin for a prize, be it a book or a pencil or a toy or candy or something like that that was kind of fun to get them involved. Again, I didn't know you had a library, now we do. We did a section where we had prayed for our troops names of different service men and also handed out a list so they could take it home and pray for them so that was a special thing to other special guests. We had exotic birds, we had clowns and then of course we can have Story time. Then the next question what are some services we could offer? I know at Eve & ALs church, they do Bible repair they offer dye cuts where anybody to use which is really nice, they have a ministry that way. Have you ever sold tickets, if there's any event that they need to sell tickets for and the library is available to be the pickup spot for things that's another way. Again, traffic into the library resources for Sunday school, a card ministry when someone gets sick or has a baby, or has a death the library can send cards to these people as a ministry again. And if you put books in memory of the the person that might've died then they can be the first ones to check it out or if you put books in memory of a child that was born that parent can be the first one to check out that books so a lot of different ideas for something like that. Anything, anything even providing supplies I know Eve & Als does this, she buys supplies for the whole church. So when they need something, she has it so he has a lot of room and again, not all of these things are gonna work for everybody. Now I wanna talk about using social media and if it's okay we'll just go a little bit over here to give you some ideas. Facebook, most of us are familiar with Facebook but if you don't have a library Facebook page, think about that. You connect with users in the library. The goal of our promotion is connecting so if we connect with people and talk back and forth with them, give them information like some of these, if you have a Facebook page it's been said that it takes seven kids. Somebody has to hear about something seven times before they'll actually go check it out. So that means if you have a Facebook page and you put something on it, every two or three or four days with, it's not all about the library it might be something showing about summer slide, it might be something showing about your reading club, it might be something showing about a new book you just got and how they can check it out at the library all kinds of things that you can put in a Facebook page you can have your own Facebook page or you can develop a library Facebook group. There's a picture of Eve & ALs church in Decatur, Alabama and then something I just did for more ideas, consider joining. There's a group on Facebook called Programming Librarian Interest Group. And it's basically a marketing tool for libraries how you can do different programs. And I've gotten on several several sites now and different library sites be at church libraries or public libraries or whatever and just joined the group so that I could get ideas. So when someone puts a bulletin board picture up or anything that they post I'm getting ideas can I use them all, no, but I've got ideas that I can can look at to use that way. And here's one that I think is good to share there is no app to replace your lap, read to your children we need to motivate parents and that's one of the good ways. Of course we have Twitter, Twitter is a social network that requires less characters. Now you're gonna say, can't you show me we could take two hours and I could show you all these different sort of social media ways to reach out. I've got several of them on one of the handouts I gave you with all the the links to the different social media places. We're gonna kind of buzz through them and I haven't chosen them all. However, at the end, I'll show you how you can learn about all of these without us all taking time. Cause I know if we took time which I haven't done before and went into detail to you you've been watching me, show you how to do it. But when you got ready to do it you wouldn't remember a lot of what I showed you so I'm gonna give you some other ideas. Of course, Pinterest, if you haven't discovered Pinterest it finds all kinds of ideas when I want ideas for a certain subject, I search Pinterest obviously recipes and all other kinds of things but you can organize books at patrons might like. And there's also another website called Good Reads I don't know if I have it on here or not but Instagram again like Twitter a short and sweet thing, but it's no words it's just pictures. So if you have Instagram with your hashtag you can share photos of what's going on in the library. And what happens is that people with Facebook especially every time somebody is in your group and they like something, then their friends see it and if they like it, their friends see it so it just multiplies who sees it. So pictures of what's going on and might just get some people in another thing is with with the craft fair team idea you probably have several people in your library who have collections of some sort and they would love to display them in the library for a week or two. And then you can invite people to come to the library to see those collections. Good reads is what I was talking about, people connect through the books they read and they tell why they like to book or not. And sometimes you can go to that website pick and picking your books for the library because it will tell what they liked or didn't like and what's appropriate and not appropriate. And then of course, churchlibrarian.ning.com if you're not a member of that and you can get on it do it's basically a church librarian Facebook you can ask questions, look at this tabs across the top. Here's the page, the tab of photos and videos and you can see pictures people post pictures of what they've been in their library, we've got some videos and I think these webinars are also gonna be on Ning, eventually other resources, MailChimp and that's on your sheet for nonprofits that let you send mass emails, it lets you send them at certain times and just organize this app, so that's kind of fun. Now instruction at the bottom of this sheet with all the websites on it are some things for instruction. And I think this will be your key to how to use social media read and print handouts for computer related classes. It's the Akron Summit County Public Library. And some of the topics include computer basics, Microsoft word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Publisher how to do the internet how to do emails and then other special topics so lots of things available there. Look them up, try some of them, okay. I know I printed out at one point Facebook instructions for how to start a group or how to get on Facebook and how to maneuver and set your limits and all that. And I think it was maybe 10 or 12 pages long. So it's a very detailed it goes basically from the beginning and then freedom to learn for free gcflearn.free. I, here's some of the topics obviously you're not gonna be able to read them but there's Microsoft all kinds of things their basic skills on computers, internet skills which would include social media and email and things like that. Google careers, creativity, core skills all kinds of things there. So it's just a plethora of things you can use. And then another one is social media examiner brand handouts, with steps for computer basics navigating social media websites and more. Here's just a few of the subjects that they have now they do have classes and they do have some programs that you could pay for. But again, just these little articles with 10 ways to grow Instagram presence 10 ways to increase your Facebook engagement all different kinds of things. So another thing you might consider is a YouTube on with a tour of your library so that before someone visits your library, you can, if someone visits the library before they visit it they can look at your YouTube video and see where things are if your library is big most of our libraries are pretty small so that's not as appropriate but if it is do that anything you can do to get people involved in connected. Okay, alright, I think that's it unless you have any other questions

- One question left, there is one question here let me see websites promotional and they were

- Okay, what about it.

- Promotional dates and websites where librarians are both the same handout, okay, Bev is answering that one.

- No website, well, websites for librarians are different, promotional dates is just a list of if you like so it's very easy to decorate for the seasons, right, but in between the seasons, what can we decorate and this is just the list of dates, national book months international children's books day pay it forward day, teen read week, there's all kinds of different things that you can do just ideas of things you can promote so that's why that is in there. So there are three different handouts with websites for you to check out and look at and like I said, promotion takes time. Another idea that I just saw sitting here that I forgot about, we had the Lego thing. I made a thing for our grandchildren at Christmas and let's look here and what it is, it's a packet with ice and markers and then a whole bunch of games different games with the instructions so they can take this, this would be something you can have in the library and so just kind of fun games for one or two or several. So lot of things like that so

- There's another question.

- Okay.

- There's another question about how do we access these handouts? That is you can go to the pinnaclealabama.org Bev has already answered that the webinar itself will be available to you in about a week, you'll get an email with that, but you should be able to get to the handouts through the Al's mom dot org slash libraries and then you can go to events and you should be able to print out those handouts.

- Now, if you can't print a PDF we may have to put them in different forms but we'll see what we need to do if anything.

- Okay.

- So yes, we didn't talk a lot about the handouts but there's a lot of lotta examples of websites for you to visit and look at now, keep in mind they're not all Christian, so some of the things, some of the ideas the idea you can use but you wouldn't use the book that they have displayed or something like that. But I didn't let that stop me because ideas are everywhere. Keep looking, we've got a plethora of different things we can use in the library. So thank you for being here. It's different than having in-person but I know we're reaching out a little farther than we would otherwise with our meetings in Tennessee and Alabama, which this one is sponsored by the Alabama Baptist board of missions.

- We thank you all for taking your time and hope you will enjoy the reply the video that you'll receive in about a week and share those with people with other team members and maybe you can even draw in some new team members because you'll have some ideas that they can work from. So thank you all for attending and that is what do you mean we got some new messages right quick here, let me say thank you, great ideas, thank you all. And that's it I think, yes, here's the link to the handouts don't forget the handouts so here's a link right there.

- Right, right, and we're reaching people, we're reaching people the Lord has provided lots of opportunities through this pandemic I keep thinking about that I think if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't have discovered that we can do this quite as easily and so, thank you all for what you're doing in your ministries.

- Right.

- It's very important, I know I will confess I was not a reader as a child cause my parents did not read to me and I'm becoming more of a reader, but that's why I'm so adamant about reading clubs and getting kids to read.