Interview with Ann Tripp, Director, Salem Public Library

[00:08:10] 

Matt: Hello?

Ann: Hi, this is Annie Tripp calling.

Matt: Hello Director Tripp!

Ann: Hi, how are you? (laughs)

Matt: We’re delighted you made it! (laughs)

Ann: Yeah, well you know I pulled it up, like seriously, at one o’clock today I pulled it up; I had my iPad charging and I had it all ready to go.  I got all signed in and everything; and had been waiting for the Join button to come up and it never did that.  So I refreshed the page and it gave me the errors that it wouldn’t work on an iPad and stuff like that so I had to download the app…

Matt: Ohhh…

Ann: so I’m sorry, I don’t know I did, it should be quite so complicated. But I’m here; I’m using so many devices right now it’s amazing!  Modern technology.  (laughs)

Matt: We’re delighted to have you.  We’re particularly delighted that you’re willing to take our call, uh, our interview. So, I’m glad you were able to make it all work.  I’ll let everybody introduce themselves but just to summarize real quick: we’re students at the University of Kentucky MLIS program and one of the things we’re supposed to do this semester of course is to interview someone to develop, you know: both learn how to work together in teams, to manage things, and to develop a strategic plan.  So Alex nominated you, and we asked and you were kind enough to say “Yes”; so.. we’re… the semester is divided up into four parts so each of us gets to take a turn at being the leader and I am nominated for the first one because I stuck my hand up first.  After that, we’ll be transitioning to Alex and the like as we develop the plan overall.  

I’m Matt Coblentz, I actually live in California, which is where I’m at now.  And my daughter actually goes to Kentucky; she’s the one who talked me into this, so I’m actually delighted to do the whole thing.  So that’s me.  

Ann: Oh, that’s wonderful.  

Matt: Thank you.  Alex, do you want to go next?  

Alex: All right.  I trust I don’t need much of an introduction.  

Ann: Hi, Alex!

Alex: Hey, Ann. 

Matt: Leah, I know you’re on, you may be on mute because of the background… Leah has a bit of a schedule conflict because somebody didn’t show up to relieve her at work, so she’s on mute.  Leah, do you want to take a quick introduction? 

Leah: Yeah, my name is Leah and I live in Lexington, Kentucky.  This is second semester in the MLIS program and I’m happy to be here.  

Ann: Well, excellent.  

Matt: and last is Taryn.

Taryn: Hello, I’m Taryn.  I live in Northern Kentucky but I’m originally from the Lexington area.  And this is also my second semester in the program.  

Ann: Well, great.  So this is a Library Management class, is that right?  

Matt: correct.  

Ann: Okay.  So y’all are looking to go into management at some level?

Matt: It’s a required core course for the curriculum overall.  So, I can’t speak for the others, I actually a job in High Tech and my job is focused on competitive intelligence and big data; I work for Dell.  So as you might imagine, we have a lot of data so we try to figure out, you know, what do customers want to do, what do competitors want to do, what is the market trending and all that; and my job is managing the various data sources that drive all that.  I thought, a library science degree would be more appropriate in terms of the ethics and privacy and things like that; rather than just learning how to write code.  

Ann: Yeah, that’s great. 

Alex: Yeah, I don’t really see myself in any sort of, um, getting into any sort of leadership position at the library.  I’m more of a, I see myself as a [inaudible] services type of job, like a cataloging or even something like a digital archiving.  

Ann: Gotcha.  Okay. 

Matt: So the way I thought we would do this – I don’t know if you have a hard stop at five; I don’t.  Some of the folks… I don’t think anyone on our team actually has a hard, hard stop.  We can run a little long if we choose.  The way I thought we’d do this is, first off, I think I pointed out that we’re supposed to provide a transcript.  After I get done with this I’ll be busy transcribing all of this.  You are welcome to any of the artifacts that we produce.   If you want, just let me know.  But I thought, you know, in terms of the authors… you know, we all got together and built our list of questions; it’s generally organized in an author order so we don’t have too much of a hand-off issue.  Alex has got the first set.  So we thought we’d just go through and interview in author order and just see where it takes us.  If that proves acceptable to you?  

Ann: Oh sure.  that sounds great to me.  Um, I don’t know if you care… Matthew, I can see you; I can’t see anybody else.  I do have the capability to do video if that’s helpful… um to put a face to the person who talking.  I had it running I think for a minute but I don’t know if it was working.  It just said sending but I didn’t see anything, so if you want me to try that, that’s great.  if not, then that’s fine too.  

Matt: it was working.  It’s up to you.  

Ann: I’ll turn it on because I feel weird, just… okay

Matt: It’s up to you.  

Ann: I don’t have any…  Hi, everybody!  Okay.  (laughs)

Matt: Alex, you’re up first.

Ann: And, I can go past five, a little bit too.  So that’s fine, in case we need to past it.  

Matt: Okay

Alex: All right.  So, my first question would have been, “So how will the upcoming building renovation affect patrons and staff?”

Ann: Oh, sure. So, we’re getting a new roof.  Currently, our roof is extremely leaky.  It’s really awful.  It causes a lot of issues with [inaudible – patrons?] being able to use certain parts of the library, like our bathrooms are shutdown a lot of the time, when there’s rain, so that makes it real hard because we have two sets of bathrooms.  Luckily this doesn’t block patrons from using the handicapped one but it’s still a real issue.  So the building renovation is…um… as far as I know, the renovations that we have planned; we’re getting a new roof, I don’t know if, it should include um, their replacing the ceiling where the ceiling has gotten wet.  but I’m not a hundred percent sure if that’s actually in the plan.  So, we’re hopeful but I think it depends on the cost of the actual roof itself and no one’s given me a firm, um… you know, yes or no if to whether we’re going to repair the water damage.  we have a, our ceiling where the water damage is, is um, is a wooden ceiling.  It’s very pretty but the places where it’s gotten wet, I’m sure there’s mold; it’s started falling down in places, and so that’s real yucky.  We’re hoping that they will fix that issue on the [inaudible] side, but I’m not sure if they will.  

Alex: Okay, so…

Ann: So, the building renovations on the outside, they don’t think… don’t think they’re going to have to close the library.  They may have to close parts of the library from time to time, like in the Children’s area they are going to have to go in and put in a new drain pipe so it’ll drain differently than it does now.  Which is great but again, I don’t know how much… how involved a process that is.  I don’t know if they building new columns inside or if they’re putting it up against the walls or something like that.  So, I think that will require flexibility for us.  But not necessarily, if people are willing to come in, like if they are going to have jackhammers on the roof, so if people are willing to come in when there’s a jackhammer on the roof, I’m not going to close the library just because its loud.  That would require… I guess we could have staff working in the middle near close but if people want come in and get something while it’s kind of loud, that’s totally fine with us.  In certain place too, if they are working extensively on the roof, we might just close that for safety in case somebody breaks through the ceiling or something.  We hope that that won’t happen.  So we don’t think it will require any time for the library to close or if there is, it will be very minimal.  And the job is estimated to take about four months.  

Alex: Okay.  So it’s not going to be as extensive a renovation as what is going on at the Williamson branch or any of the other ones that have undergone a renovation.

Ann: No.  No, we’re not getting, we’re not getting a real renovation, it’s more fixing a problem.  We will, well, it’s not in the budget, well, I’m not sure if it’s in the budget or not.  I guess again it depends on how much it costs to actually get the roof done.  I’m hoping to have the carpet cleaned and the ducts cleaned, so that might require us to be closed for a little bit.  

Alex: All right. Thank you.  My next question is, “What has proven to be the most difficult demographic to reach out to?  For library programming and that kind of thing”?

Ann: For us, I think it’s our teenagers.  For us, it’s kind of a multi-level problem because we’re a pretty small library but we’re in a downtown.  And we do have a lot of, well, by teenagers I guess I mean teenagers like in high school but I mainly mean like the middle-schoolers.  Because once they get to a certain point, they’re super interested in coming, they have jobs and cards and stuff.  But we don’t have anywhere, when they come to the library, we don’t have anywhere for them to go.  Our footprint is pretty set in stone for right now at least.  We don’t have a teen room; we don’t have anywhere to make a teen room.  So it’s somewhat hard to encourage them to come to the library when there isn’t anywhere for them to enjoy being here.  And that’s a problem for all ages, our children’s area is set off a little bit so that’s nice for them, they can run around and it’s not too big an issue; but when we have groups of adults come, I mean you can’t just, I mean we do have people come and sit and chat and stuff like that, but if it’s more than few people, and its gets so that there’s you know, laughing or something but kind of loud it’s not like we’re real big shushers or anything but it, it gets, the sound really carries just based on how our building is laid out and design.  So it makes it difficult for them to be able to use the library but I would really like for them to be able to and that’s one of the things that we would really like to remedy if we had money for a renovation.  We have a mezzanine area that is only stairs, there is no way to put in an elevator, without costing way more than the city’s willing to spend on it.  If we were able to add a second floor, a true second story onto the library, with an elevator, we could put one up there.  We talked about enclosing, there’s a patio area in front of the library and we’ve talked about adding onto and enclosing that.  So that’s a possibility.  I think that’s the hardest group that we have to reach out to right now.  

Alex: Okay.  Yeah, I guess I mean that is kind of an awkward age between all the various children’s programs we have as well as the adult stuff.  

Matt: is the library close to the school?  When I was a middle schooler, I used to have to go home past the library, at in one direction, I’m sure it didn’t work for the other kids, but, is it near the school?  is that a possibility that it could be a destination for homework and stuff like that?  

Ann: it’s near the school and there’s a Salem tradition for the middle schoolers, I mean it’s not always been like this way but the [inaudible] in the past ten or seven years would on Fridays when they leave the middle school they would come downtown.  And it’s pretty close to downtown so that’s a good thing that they want to come downtown.  They tend to be really rowdy and screaming and running around.  which is what they do but it sort of makes it difficult for them to receive warm welcomes in many of the businesses.  I mean, they’ll get like shopping carts and slam each other into buildings, or at the Farmer’s Market, when the lights are up on the Christmas Tree at the Farmer’s market, they pull up some of the lights and stuff like that.  I mean, they’re being kids which I mean not in a very good way but so they kind of make it difficult on themselves to receive like, a great place to go in the afternoons.  But we do get, I don’t even know how many, I mean at least a hundred, probably more kids who come to downtown.  And we would love to be able to host them for programs and things like that.  They really seem to enjoy walking around the downtown.  And a lot of them are great; they’ll go get like coffee at the coffee shop and different stuff like that.  There’s also a sort of a not so great part too.  (laughs).  

Matt: Right

Leah: I’m terribly sorry, but I think I’m going to have to get off.  I think my boss is trying to contact me right now.  So…

Matt: Okay, Leah, if you want just come back when you’re ready.  If you can.

Leah: Can I do that, just like call back in? 

Matt: yep, you sure can.  

Leah: Okay.  Thank you.  I’ll get back to you in a minute.

Matt: Okay.  

[Leah drops off].  

Matt: Go ahead, Alex.

Alex: Okay, the third question was, “What are some current projects/organizational goals that you have for the library that are being limited by budget concerns”?

Ann: Definitely the renovations.  There’s a lot that we could do for our community but we’re really restricted by the size.  We’d love to get new carpet because our carpet has been rained on for, 27 years, or something like that.  It’s been pretty bad.  Ever since the renovation it’s been repaired a little bit then it gets worse and stuff, so that’s, that would be really nice.  I have a quote for that but it would be $30,000 and I certainly don’t have $30,000 in my budget for anything like that.  so that makes it kind of hard.  And then programming, we’d love… I’m pretty heavy on the programming; I think that’s really important for the community to engage people and teach and all of that but we’re limited in many ways by the budget.  First and foremost, for supplies for the programming, we’re limited with staffing.  We’ve got the budget but we don’t have the money for full-time or part-time more people to come and do programming.  And we’re also limited space-wise with that too, which is back again to the renovations or expansions that we might want to do.  We don’t have the money to have more staff and then we don’t have the money to pay for them too.  

Matt: A follow-up question on that one then – the budget just always comes through the City government and Friends of the Library kind of thing? Or are there other alternative sources, and is that part of the City 5-year plan, that kind of stuff.  

Ann: We receive the majority of the money, we spend it all, well, the money we get from the state, we spend primarily on materials, like books and DVDs and databases and things like that.  And then the majority of the money we get from the locality we receive for staff and for building maintenance and things like that.  So that’s sort of how that’s divided up.  We do get little, well a relatively small amount for materials but it does come close to what we get from the state.  And we do get money from the Friends of the Library too; you can request money, or you can use part your state funds and bridging for full-time degreed librarianship.  But we don’t do that right now.  

Matt: I’m not sure that I, for staff that have the full-time library degree?  or for people who want to pursue it?  I’m not sure I take your point.  

Ann:  We can use state funds to pay a full-time, I think it’s just a full-time librarian, a degreed librarian to work for the city.  

Matt: Got it.  Got it.  So most of the state funds then are earmarked for certain things, and you can only spend them on certain budget areas, like books.

Ann: We have a slew of things that you can use [inaudible] for, but you have to budget and you have to document and things like that.  and we don’t receive enough on the city side to use it for other things.  If that makes sense.  And we can use it for programming or we can use it, um… you can’t use it on the building.  So like you can’t use, at least in Virginia, you can’t use state funds for like wired in technology like computer for the public.  We can use it on the laptops because they are mobile; but you can’t use it on new carpet or an addition or anything like that.  

Matt: right.  city improvements.  

Ann: [inaudible].  umm hmm.  

Matt: Okay, okay.  Cool.  Thank you. 

Alex: All right.  Our next question was, “Any foreseeable issues that may arise when certain staff retire?  Will their jobs be replaced or will existing staff pick up their work”?

Ann: There is currently not a hiring freeze in Salem, which is wonderful.  A lot of localities or [inaudible] that, where they’ve frozen some positions or just frozen and lost then entirely.  At least at this point my understanding is that we’re not under any kind of hiring freeze so we’d be fine with rehiring if like when our reference librarian retires.  That would be a position we’d be able to replace.  I think that we’d probably reorganize a little bit when that happens, which a lot of organizations do.  Just in terms of updating job descriptions and things like that.  At this time I don’t think it would be a problem to rehire.  Which is really great.  That’s really fantastic.  We don’t have to go in and fight with anybody about getting this positions filled; it’s just, at least as it stands right now.  I have to do that qualifier.  As it stands right now.  

Alex: Okay, yeah.  Because that was my main concern regarding Nancy.  Because I know reference librarians in general are going through a sort of reorganization of their jobs and I was wondering if, someone like reference librarian or more like a computer technology-oriented person would pick up that job when she retires.  

Ann: Yeah, I think there, I mean, we’ve talked about different ways to kind of change that position. but even since she’s been in that job, I don’t know how many times her position name, her title has changed.  sort of changes every time HR decides to revamp things or when you go through a training as an organization and sort of restructure things.  So I’m sure that will be some of that at least when she retires.  Hopefully that will be a long time from now.  

Alex: All right.  yeah, hopefully.  Moving on, the next question was, “In what ways does Salem collaborate with the other branches in the system in order to, as the five-year plan states, ‘find out what they offer and to see if there are gaps that can be filled by library programming’”.

Ann: Sure.  I looked through the 5-year plan because I didn’t remember that specifically and what I think we were referencing [inaudible] was like, I think what we were referencing was in the 5-year plan was coordinating with other organizations in the valley like goodwill and other organizations that offer those same kinds of resources like public resources and seeing in what kinds of ways we can bolster those up with our programming.  Like Good Will of the Valley, offers computer classes and so if we don’t offer something here we can send people down to Good Will for their classes if they are willing to drive down there.  We’re in the county library offer computer classes but they offer things that we don’t because they charge what is kind of a lot for their classes and so they offer Photoshop and they offer other things that we don’t offer because we’re limited on what we can offer.  Because we do all of our… all of our programs are free.  And so places like county which do charge or… or …are able to charge $15 an hour something like that, so they offer a little bit different… like, if…

[00:30:35] 

Alex: Okay and so they are just being referred [inaudible] so they are just being referred to other place if we don’t offer something? 

Ann: Yeah, well if they do offer something that we can’t then we refer them there but we look at what they offer at Roanoke County, Roanoke City and Good Will and the community college to see what they’re offering to see if we can replicate it here or if theirs seems better, especially if it’s free; we have a lot of people that want to take our classes and I think that some things that people appreciate about Nancy and David, who are the two staff members that teach the computer classes, they go a lot slower than some of the other places so their classes are a little bit higher in demand by especially seniors who want and took a class on their new smartphone at the county and they paid $30. and they didn’t understand any of it and now it’s over and there’s nobody to help with that and Nancy and David go slower on when they have more seniors in the class and I think that really helps.  I think that different library systems emphasize different things.  We’re in a county that emphasizes classes that are… not intense – I won’t say that – but are a little more faster paced and I think they have more of a … they try to attract businesses to their Excel classes and they’ll try to have some company send 10 people to an Excel class; which is great and we would do that for people too but our goal is to teach people how to really understand it.  So I think it’s a little bit different.  

Matt: so a follow-up on that, if … you mentioned that one of the groups might teach a photoshop class or something like that.  Can that group come and.. this goes to one of my questions later on, can the group come and use one of those rooms and have a for-pay class in a free room?  or somehow work something out with the city?

Ann: No, we don’t allow anyone to use our meeting rooms and charge for anything.  so you have to be a non-profit or just community group to use our meeting rooms, so we wouldn’t have … so we’re part of consortium with 3 other library systems.  But we don’t share staff or anything; it’s a totally different system except for our library catalog, which is shared, and a lot of our policies are the same, so we wouldn’t have staff from Roanoke County come here to teach a class and we certainly wouldn’t have anyone come in and charge for a class.  I could see maybe doing that at some point for something that really way valuable for people but I can’t imagine… I can’t think of a real way that we would ever do that.  Because a lot of what we emphasize is that it is free and that we try to educate our community.  

[00:33:31] 

Matt: Right.  Okay.  

Alex: All Right.  How do you and staff determine whether or not a program was a success?  Like what metrics are you using to determine that?  

Ann: Very, very loose-y goose-y metrics.  We don’t have anything, there’s not like anything, it’s not like we have to have this many people in order to continue something, it’s not like that.  I think that everyone who works in libraries and does programming is used to really getting a feel for, getting a feel for… having reasonable expectations for a program.  So, if we have 3 kids come into a story time on Monday afternoon.  Ohh, that’s not really what we would anticipate, especially if there’s other story time programs where we have 15 or 20.  So that’s probably not the best use of our Children’s LIbrarian’s time and resources.  So, and that’s recently what happened, and we talk about this later with one of the other questions you ask but and we did a survey and we wanted to find out she’s relatively new so she did a survey and we wanted to find out what our patrons wanted from their children’s program in terms of timing and different things that they wanted to see offered that weren’t currently offered.  And she goes, a large number of people said they wanted an afternoon story time.  Emily had never offered that because [inaudible] usually kids take a nap or they’re tired from preschool.  So she never offered that before but she had a lot of people request it, so she said, “well, I’ll try it.  That sounds great”.  And she had, like nobody come.  It hasn’t been… the people who responded on this survey definitely weren’t coming to the program so she’s stopping it.  I think this Monday is her last one; she’s going to stop after that because it’s just not a success.  So I think if you… that’s what we do anyway, we try to gauge it in comparison to other programs that we’ve had.  But if we had, you know, like the middle school writing club and if we got 5 kids to that, I would be ecstatic!  We don’t have anything like that right now but if we were to have something like that, well, that would be fantastic.  Just based on how difficult it is to get kids to come and be interested and then… that’s kind of like homework, so if they came and they really enjoyed it, that would be just fantastic for us.  So, that’s how we gauge it, sort of by how difficult it is to get them to come in the first place and comparing it to what other things we might offer and then also is that the best use of that staff person’s time.  or pay a full-time librarian however many dollars an hour to sit in a room with two people who really aren’t very interested in it; at the end of the day, that’s not… that’s how we do it.  And conversely, sometimes we offer programs that are very successful that we don’t realize will be that way; and so we know there’s a potential there for really great responses to tap kind of into that is for us trying to hit on something that people are really excited about and that they are really interested in.  We’re always really delighted when that happens but like we’ve had finger knitting out [inaudible].  We all went finger knitting crazy but we had three finger knitting programs last winter and we had like over 150 people came to all of them or something like that, over the three different programs.  That was a crazy response; we were really excited about that.  We had a Star Wars Wednesday where we had, I mean, I think there was like 200 people came to that on Wednesday and we thought that if 40 people came, we’d be delighted.  I mean, so many people, it was just insane! You know the potential’s there and if it’s not, it doesn’t seem like it’s a good fit for our community, then we don’t try to force it. because we can try something else and that might be a better fit.  

Matt: Is there, so on a corollary to that, if you try something and it is or isn’t a success, how do you know if you’re missing something then?  I mean, how do you know to try something?

Ann: We have a pretty good, I’d say, just based on places that I’ve worked, our staff have a really good relationship with their patrons and so I think our staff, um… our patrons know that our staff is very responsive and so if we’re not hitting on something then we’ll ask other people who, “we know you check out books on beekeeping or gardening or something, okay?  So we offered this gardening class through the extension office and you didn’t come; we only had 8 people.  Would there be a better time, or were you not interested in it, did it… would you be interested in something else; would there be something better for you. so we try to maintain pretty open communication with our patrons so that we find out what it is that they want, when they can come, what they find interesting and again, some things just … like, we had… last year we had several really great programs that… several beekeeping programs that were really, really popular.  I’m trying to remember… there were several things like that.  There was Gardening and Beekeeping and Outdoor-sy kinds of stuff; that went really well.  Then in Fall we had two that just tanked.  We had one on composting and one on freezing and drying herbs.  People just weren’t interested in it.  It’s not something that you necessarily think of as a big heavy hitter.  People here at least seem to really like stuff that is on trends and in the news and if it’s on Pinterest, or if it’s like Chicken keeping; so we’re doing to do chicken keeping next month.  I kind of think we’ll get a huge response for that because people in Salem just recently gained the right to have chickens.  They were previously outlawed in Salem so just in the past few years its gotten more publicity and so I think when we offer that it’s going to be pretty popular.  At least I hope so.  We try to offer programs at a variety of times, and the two that we offered that bombed earlier, in the Fall, were in the evening.  So we think that’s not a great time, at least for that demographic maybe; so we’re going to offer the chicken keeping on a Saturday; and it’s going to be at noon and we’re going to have Chick-Fil-A so it will be really fun, so…

Matt: (laughs loudly)

Ann: Yeah, isn’t that funny?  Yeah.  (laughs)

Matt: Wow.  So, on a follow-up to that, you pointed out that the staff has a good relationship with patrons but they might say, “You know, I’ve noticed that you always gardening books and stuff like that.  Do patrons worry about that also as a – I’m going to go into the privacy question – I’m tracking your history so i know what you do and stuff like that.  do people ever worry about the privacy aspects or anything like that?  Which is another course for us UK guys.  

Ann: Oh sure.  Yeah, no no.  There’s a good point. I think that we would never say that about something that could be construed as a snooping or watching or anything like that.  I think if its Gardening… and this is also people who were already pretty chatty at the desk; we have a lot of people that like to come in and chat; and you’re like, “I don’t even know you but yeah let’s talk about your history, I want to hear all about it, they want to talk with you and get your opinion these books and titles; “do you know anything else?  Do you have any good books on knitting?” or whatever.  So they’re really… they`re pretty… a lot of them for the most part are really engaging like that.  Which is rather fantastic.  Also several of our… the folks who are at the front desk and also our reference librarian Nancy, can… they just have a real knack for talking with people.  So it wouldn’t be like… for example, “so I noticed that you’re checking out a lot of books on divorce recently and we offered a program on how to get your divorce but you didn’t come; is there a reason you didn’t come?” – we would never ask anything like that.  but if there were something kind of positive; say, they had expressed an interest in a chicken keeping program before and then it didn’t work out or they couldn’t come; I don’t think they would think it was amiss if we said, “You know we talked about this before; you know we chatted about it… were you interested in this program?  Because we’re having one on Saturday the 18th of March”.  And they’ll say, “Oh I have to work that day” or “I’ll be out of town that day” or whatever.  Or, “Saturdays” don’t work for me at all” or there is a standing program at or a standing meeting for chicken keepers anonymous, so they can’t come to this because they are already somewhere else.  We try to talk to people about it and get a feel for it like that.

Matt: Okay.  Well.  Alex, did you have any follow-ups? 

Alex: No, I’m think I’m good, thank you.  

Matt: Okay, well then.  As you might expect the next set of questions are mine.  I have zero experience with libraries, other than the fact that I like to go to them; but I have no experience with them on the backside.  So when I was looking through the plan, I was a little struck by the very first thing which was you wanted to make the library a hub for downtown Salem and I wanted to figure out how the objectives would like up with that.  So of course the first thing it goes into is, “We have to fix this place”.  I didn’t have an appreciation for the state of everything.  And I get the Friday things coming down.  So my question is do you feel like the objectives really capture the desire to be part of that hub, do they line up the way you want them to, or…?

Ann: Um hmm.  We were trying to… the full thing is a hub for discovery in downtown Salem.  So we were trying to make it so that people, even though they are in Salem, which is a relatively tiny city, I mean it barely just qualifies as a city, that they can still access everything that is available all over the world.  Through technology, like our computer were crazy old and crazy slow, our laptops that we taught computer classes on, it was like they essentially didn’t work and we tried to teach what we could but it really didn’t work very well in some cases.  If you can’t get stuff to load you can’t teach people how to use email, or YouTube.  that makes it really complicated.  So then the other technology piece, that was… it’s sort of like, you can’t really discover much if you don’t have the very basics and our basics of technology were just hopelessly outdated.  That was the basic stuff, that was at least a foot in the door in helping people to find ways to engage with the outside world other than just here in Salem or here in Roanoke valley.  That’s sort of where that came from.  

[00:45:08] 

Matt: So further build on that, one of the previous course I took – I was making the point that all of these databases and information sets are like islands of data in an ocean and people don’t know how to navigate.  do you see the library as a function of, wow, we don’t offer courses or we don’t even have books on chicken keeping, but if you go to Chicken Keepers Anonymous and you can find them over here – does the library think of itself as a data source reference, go here, find more ?

Ann: That’s one of our big goals, if we don’t have the book and can’t get the resource in print or the internet or something, we’re happy to refer people wherever it is that they can find the information that they need.  And within that too, we don’t want to just have a book on something, we want to be able to help you learn about it as well.  

Matt analysis: this sounds to me like a good Opportunity item for the SWOT.

A good example of that is rain barrels.  We had two rain barrel workshops last Fall, I think or last year.  We partnered with our engineering department and Nancy, our reference librarian and I went to a Train the Trainers workshop that was offered through the Roanoke City that was offered through the – I can’t remember which department it was – so we went to that and we learned… we built our own rain barrels, we learned about water management and storm water management and clean waterways and things like that.  And one of the thing about going to this class was that you used this as an opportunity to teach people to make rain barrels but also teach them that, “you know, [when] you wash your car, it does not go to the water treatment plant, it runs straight into the drain and runs straight into the creek and it runs straight into the river and goes out into the Chesapeake Bay.  I didn’t realize that; most of the people in the workshop didn’t realize that; so I know the public doesn’t realize that.  That was something that – and we’re the only ones who went to the Train the Trainer courses; we’ve done it twice and we’ve another one planned for April – we really like to learn what we can and to disseminate and teach that information to improve everything that we can for our patrons and our community.  I don’t know if that answers your question.  

Matt: It does.  Let me take it a step back – would you say that one of the goals – maybe even in the strategic plan; of course we have to write one – one of the goals might be, ” the library intends to be a reference point and if it is not a reference point it is a referral point”?

Ann: Yes, definitely.  I think that’s a really great point.  We can’t know everything, we can’t offer everything, we’re a government entity.  One example of this too is, to your point, we have a lot of people who come in who, you know, they need food.  They don’t have food.  They want to know where in Salem is there a food pantry?  They want to know, their kid doesn’t have shoes for winter for school, where can they go to get shoes for their kids that’s free?  Is there a church nearby or anything like that?  A couple of months ago I went through and contacted a bunch of organizations and did a bunch of research and came up with a map and a list of all the organizations in Salem, all of the food pantries, there’s a clothes closet, one thing that people ask – not a lot but a question that’s been brought up frequently – is there anywhere free to stay?  is there a shelter?  if there is not a shelter, is there… there is a church that does temporary housing for families but not one for single adult males in Salem, so those things, when people ask us so at least we know and we can refer them and help them; rather than just say, “There’s nothing in Salem” or, “I don’t know, go up the street to social services”.  I don’t like just referring someone to something else who might not know anyway.  So we like to have that information as much as possible, so we can refer people just like you say.  

Matt: Do you think that the town perceives the library as that kind of a reference point?  

Ann: I think so.  I think that, at least to me, that’s what public libraries are becoming more of, as we’re sort of that community resource, it’s not just where you go to get a book; it’s where you go to find information.  it’s not just checking out the book on that.  I think that is happening in Salem.  Which is great.  We’re very happy about that and we want to be that resource.  I think when we are able to give people that information, they pass that along.  So part of the stuff we’re trying to do is… I really want people to feel like they are trained in that information and they’ll be able to help people.  If they don’t know like, I’m not super big on genealogy but I know Carolyn who works here really is.  So we can refer to them.  if one of our pages doesn’t know where to send someone who needs food from a food pantry, we have that information written down and hopefully they’ll feel comfortable asking co-workers if there’s any information about that too.  So that we’re relatively trained on what we have.  

Matt: Great.  I know that we’re coming up on the top of the hour and we’re a little behind schedule, so I’ll move along.  The Board of – I take there is a Board of Directors for the library, I didn’t know?  

Ann: We don’t.

Matt: Don’t, okay.  Do you think that City or the City Council agrees with the vision for the library, how it fits into downtown, etc.  Did that have to be socialized as part of the plan?  

Ann: Soooo, no.  

[00:51:21] 

Matt: (Laughs)

Ann: in Salem, it’s a… how do I say this?  I think that nobody really knows that much about the library at least in upper administration; so I think that under our previous Directory – who’s wonderful – I think it was sort of a low profile sort of a thing.  I love it we’re in downtown, I think it’s amazing we’re right in downtown and we have a really big downtown plan initiative that’s going on right now.  I’m psyched.  

Matt analysis: a strength item to be incorporated.

I think that’s great.  So I’m trying to do a lot of programming and involvement and engagement that highlights that we’re in downtown and the benefits that are in downtown.  If that makes sense, we’re showing them what we can do.  They are like, “Oh wow, that’s fantastic.  I had no idea that libraries did that”.  Which is something that I’ve heard a lot since I came here.  

Matt analysis: Aha! Another strength item. Also an opportunity item. Do more of this, get more support from inside the city and outside (patronage)

Matt: oh, that’s great.

Ann: They’re happy to support… I mean it’s not like they’re giving any [grant?] or anything like that but I think they’re happy to support us and they’re glad that we’re [inaudible] support to the city.  

Matt: Do you have an overt program or do you sit down with them once a month, or anything like that?

Ann: I wish we did but that’s not how they work, so no.  

Matt: Okay.  The next one: the library is part of city staff.  I came across the one where you wanted to include a packet about library capabilities to HR, and I thought, “wow, that just makes the library a resource for everybody.  do you think that you could expand that you could work with say, the traffic department on a study on ‘where do I put the traffic lights?’ ; I mean, do you try to partner that way?  

Ann: Yeah.  Yeah.  Definitely.  I think that’s really important and I think that the more people who know about us the more they support the library, so I think that’s really great.  That’s one of our goals is to get a packet in with HR when their new hires, … at least last time I checked, which has been a few months, there was some turnover with the person who does the new hire orientation so there kind of used to be that you’d get a little packet, a little folder, when I started there was but then that person left.  Then there was a big period when there wasn’t a person who did that and there wasn’t a packet; they have a new person who’s doing it sometimes and the old person who was doing it in the interim (who didn’t have the packet) is sometimes doing it so they’re waiting for that to get ironed out.  So I feel like once the new person is trained and has a new hire packet then we can stick that in there.  It’s relatively… it’s… we get information piecemeal – which I think is unfortunate – I want to get a library folder or something; have even a paper slipped in there, have something that is given to each new employee who comes to Salem because I think that would be really helpful.  Also, I’ve had multiple conversations… we have a wellness program in Salem and part of that includes a clinic for city employees and then there’s a list of classes that they offer about health and different things, like depression or anxiety or work-life balance or could be whatever they offer.  I think it would be great if they offered computer classes for our patrons.  They did that in Roanoke County when I worked there and… to me part of the problem, the issue with that has been getting the other directors onboard.  A lot of people don’t realize the need for continuing education and they don’t understand that a) we can do that and b) they just don’t realize that that is even possible or even necessary.  Apparently, a relatively large number of people who are functionally illiterate, who work for the City of Salem, but no one sees that as an issue, nobody wants to help with that, nobody want to increase the knowledge for them and improve their education for that.  Even just basic computer usage.  I think everybody who uses technology who’s in charge of things, thinks at least everybody knows how to use it and if they don’t, then why would they teach it, that’s not our job to teach them but I’d like to offer a lunch time courses on using the internet or on using email or like a lot of those departments are going to [Windows] 10 and we can teach classes on Windows 10.  I’ve asked IT and I’ve asked HR and I’ve asked the wellness people.  And sort of, tactfully agrees that it’s a good idea but when it really down to it, it’s like, “Oh I talked to somebody and they didn’t think it was necessary”, or IT says, “Well, everyone knows how to use Windows 10 already” but when i ask employees, they don’t know anything.  I think there is a disconnect and I’m trying to work on that with HR and other departments to at least try it and see if people are willing to come.  

Matt: Wow, great.  I have to admit, the next question I don’t actually recognize.  Leah, is …

Alex: Ah, that is one that I wrote as a follow-up question.  I’m not actually sure if there would be any way to know this, but the mention about the library applications for new city employees; and I wanted to know if there is a decent return rate on those applications coming back?  

[00:57:22] 

Ann: Yeah, since we haven’t started that, I don’t know.  I don’t know if there would be a good return rate on that.  I would hope so; especially if they could fill it out and stick it in our library box.  It would be really easy, I mean they could just verify that they’re city employees, they don’t have to show their id; they could just go ahead and get one.  I would hope that that would work out pretty well.  I’ll guess we’ll see.  (laughs)

Alex: Um.  yeah.

Matt: Could make it part of the package!  

Ann: Yes.  (chuckles)

Matt: As part of that, um… I’m still in the idea of serving the need.  How do you know what you need to do first?  Not surprisingly, class actually has a scenario where a new library director comes on board, what does she need to do first, because the old guy was great and he was around for 25 years, but some of the staff are … well, this, that, and the other thing.  I was just thinking, “you know, the setup in the scenario doesn’t tell me anything about, ‘Gee, where does she fit in with the City or the people who pay the budget or what her annual review looks like in terms of what their expectations are for anybody’, so how do you know what you’re supposed to do; how are you goaled, how is the library goaled, you know, and what are the mechanisms and techniques you use for that?  

Ann: Mm hmm.  When I started… well, I have the added benefit that I came from Roanoke County, which is part of the Library consortium, so I worked in Roanoke County for 7 years, and I also worked in Roanoke City prior to that for a year.  I was familiar with the consortium, pretty well, and i knew several people who worked here.  It was also nice that when I started, or even before I started, staff here were very vocal about what they thought needed to happen.  Janice, the previous library director, she worked 2 weeks shy of 40 years.  So she’d been here forever and she’d been through the renovation back in 1991.  And so she’d been here for a very long time.  She’s great, I love Janice.  She comes in all the time, still checks out books and everything. So that’s wonderful.  I’m really programming heavy and she was not.  That to me is really important.  And so that was like the very first thing we started doing.  Luckily, the staff here, they were all onboard.  Like they’ve been completely onboard for everything; which is great.  They’re very knowledgeable, they’re very energetic, they’re very interested in engaging; it’s been great.  

Matt analysis: This yellow section above – I think that’s a Strength.

It would have been a lot harder if the staff hadn’t been interested in any of this.  They all wanted to [inaudible], we sort of matched up well because what I thought was important they thought was important as well.  So that’s been really nice.  From forming the 5-year plan, and figuring out our goals and things like that, we read a lot of 5-year plans from other libraries and tried to format ours; the previous 5-year plans were really bare bones.  It was just, “Get a new library, get a new library, get a new library”.  It was very one-sentence kinds of things.  It wasn’t like goals and objectives kinds of things; it was just a list.  I mean, it wasn’t that, it was just a different way of doing it.  We really wanted to flesh out and use that as a springboard what are we trying to do and how do we achieve that.  I wouldn’t say that any of this comes from anyone above me; in terms of ‘we want the library model to do outreach’ or ‘we want the library to do whatever’; they’ve just not been involved in that way.  They are pretty hands off.  That has its benefits but… um.. I think the library was kind of under the radar, as I said before.  They’re just kind of low to the ground, it wasn’t a really taxing department, you know we’re not like Parks and Rec where we have a multi-million-dollar budget and so, we kind of small potatoes to them.  I think they’ve been really surprised that the … um.. positive experiences that people have here and also how vocal they are about telling everybody about it.  We do get a lot of feedback and City Council has received a lot of feedback and our City Manager has and… that’s been really great.  It’s made the paper; a bunch of our programs have been in the paper and stuff.  That’s worked out really well.  I think they’ve been pleased with that.  Does that answer your question at all?  

Matt: Yeah, it pretty much does.  I was trying to get a sense of how you knew what to do and if there were, you know sometimes you get molded into the… the boss or the board’s vision, “you know you’re going to do this” and you get channeled into something.  

Ann: No, there was no channeling from people above me.  It was mainly … it was a really organic process – it came from our staff and it came from our patrons.  Which I think is better.  Because the people who sit on the council don’t necessarily know what we should be offering.  maybe they’ve see stuff from other places and they think you should do it too; and it’s not like that here.  If we have patrons who say, “you know, you really should offer classes on Excel”; well, awesome.  Let’s do that.  If they said, “You know, we really think you have this or that or whatever”; we want to be responsive to that in any we can.  We’ll try – well, not that we’ll try anything – but we’ll try programs just to see if they work. You know, if you can have a handful of people who say, “you should really have this”; well, we’ll try it.  It’s great that we’re just one library and we don’t have multiple branches.  So we do have the opportunity to schedule programming and just see how it goes and there’s no approval process, there’s no, it doesn’t have to be planned six months in advance for anything.  We’ll just try it and see how it goes.  and if goes really great then we’ll try some more.  and if it doesn’t, then we’re like, well, we tried that one, it didn’t go so great.  Let’s try something else next time. 

Matt: Got it.  Next question but this sort of dovetails into that.  Do you find that… I guess inter-library collaboration was not high on the other director’s priorities but there areas where you think some programs should overlap a different library or another area?  It was talking about the overlap question in the strategic plan, but I was wondering if there are areas where you think programs should overlap?  

Ann: I think it would be nice if we had the opportunity to be a little more cohesive in our programming but that’s not possible.  Well, the only thing standing in the… the different localities especially one of them is very rigid in their offerings and so it not something that works out very well, unfortunately.  The was a Roanoke Valley Reads group – and they still do it – but we don’t do a valley-wide library initiative; we don’t share summer reading signups or… we don’t have anything like that.  For a multitude of reasons.  I think it would be nice to do that.  

Matt: So going into demographics, how many patrons, is it growing, are there some demographics that use it more, are there some demographics (other than the teenagers – we got them)?  

Ann: This won’t sound great.  Our building’s old, and our people encountered are as old as the building.  They’re crazy old.  We’ve had a huge increase in program attendance, since it started, which is wonderful.  But somehow our people counts have gone down, which I don’t think really jives, the circulation has gone down a little bit but circulation has been going down across the state – except in different pockets.  Part of the problem for us is that in Roanoke County they have three brand new libraries, Roanoke City has renovated all of their libraries, to be really, really swanky.  So we have… we’re surrounded by brand new buildings with brand new collections and tons of seed money for programming.  That does tend to draw people away because it kind of flashy and there’s parking.  

Matt analysis: The purple section above strikes me as a Threat.

Parking is a real issue for us here, so the parking issue doesn’t really lend itself to encouraging people to come here.  But I have faith.  If not weekly then at least every other week, I have someone say, they come to our library specifically they drive in from Blue Ridge or from half an hour or 45 minutes away, passing other libraries to get to our library because they like our staff and because they like what we offer here and the feeling that they get when they come here.  As opposed to going to one of the brand new libraries where it’s like going to the mall.  

Matt analysis: Wow, if this isn’t a strength, I don’t know what is.

And there’s no personal relationship with the people that they work with when they come in.  And they’re just here to check things out, it not like they stay all day long.  I think that our vibe is a little bit different, which I think is very nice.  It’s hard to combat the newness of the other libraries but I think where it counts is the engagement and I think that the engagement we have is going up.  

Matt analysis: Definitely a strength to build on. We should incorporate this.

Matt: Okay. Do you work the city to try and help… I talked about bus services, right if there is no bus stop right next to the library it can be difficult…

Ann: We have a bus stop.  I’m working with the city to try and get, well, there are lot of things that are getting ready to happen downtown and the library has been a really big part of it.  I think it’s been a really big part of it, anyway.  So I think we need to get more bike racks, we just have one bike rack and it’s just almost – well not almost always full but there’s just 4 or 5 slots for it and they’re all falling over and stuff, so that doesn’t make it really a very bike-able downtown.  People chain their bike to signs and stuff but I think that’s the only bike rack in town, that’s right in front of our library.  And that’s not helpful.  I keep saying that as part of the renovations for downtown, not for the library, but downtown is going to be renovated, a lot of new streetscaping and things like that.  I think that trying to make downtown easier for people to get to and having alternatives other than just driving your own car, I think that will help us too.  

Matt analysis: I think the green section represents an opportunity.

Matt: Sure.  Do you see the library teaming with the businesses downtown?  i mean, the merchants association or anything?  

Ann: We don’t have a merchant’s association.  I think that will come back.  There used to be one but downtown businesses are somewhat interested in increasing downtown businesses and getting more shops and more restaurants.  Some of them, like the ones that have been here a while, they are really happy with it the way it is, they don’t really want more people to come down, they don’t really want to partner with anybody, they don’t want more events, they just kind of want to coast.  And that’s sort of the majority I would say of what we have here right now.  Like last year, I tried to get to businesses to get involved in the summer reading program and see if they would partner with us and put their logo on everything if they would just give us a gift card or something as one of the prizes for the adult summer reading program, you know, shop local and whatever.  And I only got one person who responded and said she would do it and she’s on city council.  And she was lovely about it and nobody else even called me back.  so that was disappointing.  We do have one business that we talked about doing a downtown runway – we have a great lawn area out front of our library – it’s become a desirable location to have an event, which is nice, so i talked with her about partnering with us so she can do something like that.  And that would be really cool.  I hope that the more things happen like that, that we will get more interest, but I think we’ll be getting more businesses in downtown before that will happen.  

[01:10:45] 

Matt: All right.  We have come the end of my questions.  Leah, are these yours?  

Ann: Can I just say one more thing?  

Matt: Of course.  

Ann: this isn’t about teaming with the businesses downtown.  This is separate thing, but we did a series, and we’re going to do more this year, where we had two event called Parkway Downtown, where – I did it because it was our property – I think there is a brewery Salem Parkway Brewery, I just wanted to have a Books and Brews kind of event but I was kind of having trouble because I didn’t think some of our patrons would take to it very well.  But they approached the city and wanted to have an event downtown and Parks and Recreation Department – they’re big in a lot of these events – and they were not real keen on the idea but I said I would help partner with them and we had it out on the lawn.  The first one we had like 1200 people, the second one we had over 800 people.  It was on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and so it was the Black Friday edition.  it was really fun – no turkey involved and we had live music and there was a … there’s a church right next door and has a really great playground and it is right next door to the library so they allowed the kids who came to the event to come over and they actually had some activities for them while it was going on.  So that was really cool.  And it was like a huge gigantic hit.  

Matt analysis: So this is an example of a strength. Fortunately, it’s not just the event and willingness to partner (another strength) but the location with grass and trees and the nearby Church that is willing to work with the Library.

Normally when they have events like that it’s over at the Farmers market, which is really nice but it’s just pavement.  Over here we have trees and we have grass, and it’s really conducive to that kind of event.  So that was a really great partnership that had been very positive and brought a lot of people to downtown that wouldn’t normally have come to … a sister event offered by Parks and Recreation.  So that was something that was good.  That was a good partnership that we offered.  

Matt: Excellent example, thank you.  Go ahead Leah

Leah: I actually do have to go so I’ll try to keep these questions short.  of the goals listed on the 2015-2016 calendar, how many do you think the library has accomplished?  

Ann: We accomplished most of them.  We need to revamp the collection about policy [?], I kind of edited that briefly but we need to have a real project to work on that.  The library website hasn’t been redone yet, but it’s coming out next month.  IT is working on that.  So that’s been a huge project of changing everything and updating the verbiage and everything like that.  We went through the partnership with HR and the new hires; we haven’t started participating in New Hire yet; we changed over catalogers and that’s just not been a priority.  I think that’s pretty much it; there might be some other things.  

Leah: Okay, I think that answers the second part of the question which was, “Do you feel that there are any that still need work”?

Ann: Okay, yeah, um, yeah the next one, if any proved unworkable, so the ones that we still have to do, we’ll do, but the ones that were unworkable we didn’t participate in that outside the line initiative, we just didn’t have time.  And there are a few other things.  Like, we never made a “Welcome to Salem” brochure because another department is working on that.  

Matt: do you tweak the strategic plan every year?  

Ann: yes.  so the library of Virginia, we have to submit bibliostats, which is all of our statistics, and part of that too is, there is documentation we have to provide among those is a 5-year plan.  So every 5 years – there are different ways different people do it – so do like a full-fledged plan every 5 years but then in between you kind of go through tweak it a little bit to make it fit what maybe has evolved in the past year, so you’re not stuck with it.  And we certainly do things all the time that are not in the 5-year plan, and so, I’ll go back in and say, ‘continue to do this’ or highlight the fact that we… whatever.  We’ll adapt it there to also show what we did, and what was supplemental to the 5-year plan.  

Matt: Got it.  

Leah: I think it also kind of ties into the next question of, “Technology advances quickly and do you feel that the 5-year plan is flexible enough to incorporate new technology if the chance arises to obtain it”?

Ann: Yeah.  yeah, we’ll just go ahead and jump on if we can.  We haven’t put in the collection yet but we have a 3D, not that’s not right, help me out Alex, what’s the word … 3D photo you watch on your smart phone…

Leah: Oh, you mean virtual reality?  

Ann: Yeah!  Virtual reality!  Thank you, yes.  

Leah: Okay.  

Ann: So we got one of those so people can experience it.  People can make their own YouTube videos of their grandma on a roller coaster or whatever.  

Leah: Okay.  That was cute.  How does the library or how has the library reached out to local artists and vendors in order to plan festivals?  

Ann: We don’t have like really big festivals.  We have a small city so speaking of local artists we have a program in the spring that is out on the front lawn called, “Library on the Lawn” that is every Saturday morning that is for kids.  We are in touch with a artist studio right across the parking lot from us who we are going to ask to do some [fine air?] teachings and lead something like that.  if they want to paint too, so it’s like a led-class so they can come and paint flowers and trees and things like that.  So they can try their hand at that and have a nice atmosphere.  We’ve some things like that.  And the thing with parkway kind of evolved because they wanted to do downtown.  

Leah: Okay. What measures have been taken to gauge public interest in events the library hosts?  In other words, how do you decide to do certain events? (through survey, conversation with patrons, etc.)

Ann: We mainly rely on conversations with patrons.  We do have a comment box so people can use that.  Normally they just say negative things in it; the positive stuff or the stuff they are interested in they will say to our face.  But if they are mad because they can’t park, they will write it down over and over.  Mainly just talking with people, and finding out when they do come to programs.  Like if some programs… like the rain barrel thing was really popular, so we’re going to offer that again.  And then we read about some libraries are going to do rain barrel painting festivals, so we’re going to have one of those a couple of months after the rain barrel workshop.  So people can bring in their rain barrels that they made here or bought somewhere else – and one day we’ll sand and prime and the next day we’ll get together and have a party and do it outside on the lawn.  if it’s something that people seem interested in, then we’ll try to build on that.  

Leah: Okay

Matt: Wow, great.  Well, that does bring us to the end of the questions.  At least the formal ones.  We did a lot of diving around and the like.  I have to express my deep thanks for you taking the time – we went deep extra over and I really want to tell you thank you for spending the time with us.  there might be a lot of other things in your day but this was wonderful for us.  Thank you, I actually learned a lot.  

Ann: Oh good, I’m really glad.  And thank you so much.  If you think of something later, just feel free to call me or email or whatever.  and I’m happy to help in any way I can.  I think it’s great y’all are going to be in library science and that fantastic.  Even though you are not going to be a librarian Matthew, I think that’s great. (laughs)

Matt: I am a different kind of librarian, let’s put it that way.  

Ann: that’s true.

Matt: Thank you very much.  that brings everything to a close and again Ms. Tripp, thank you.  And if you have any interest in seeing the transcript or what we come up with for a plan, just let us know, maybe it will spark an idea.  

Ann: Oh yeah.  I would love to see your plan with you are finished with it, that would be great.  Thank you.

Matt: Thank you so much.

[good byes]