Episode 802: Hosting Virtual Events

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Welcome back to Season Eight of Linking Our Libraries! We are so happy to have you with us this season!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work!

Everyone is still working to provide the best service possible during a pandemic, and we are all still learning different strategies to do that. Virtual programming is a key to success here!

The Basics:

Even after we get back to some semblance of normalcy with our current pandemic, the push to provide online programming that can be accessible to more people will be popular. All the skills we learn now will continue to be helpful. And it is still going to be awhile before we get to any sort of end of pandemic precautions. So we can all keep building skills to provide the best service possible to everyone!

Libraries have been providing different kinds of virtual programming for communities all along. The new part for us is that we needed to assemble them so fast, without prep time, and in the middle of all sorts of other outside pressures that came along with living through a global pandemic. 

Some places jumped on this as an opportunity to provide all kinds of new services. We did this for our members! Every single day our school buildings were closed, we provided a daily page of activities for kids of all ages. You can still find our archives, along with our currently weekly virtual activities, on our website. The program is called What Are We Doing Today?

And some libraries really struggled to provide services in a distant format. There are a lot of reasons for this, including that the issues with the digital divide became very apparent during this time. Teachers, students, parents, and everyone else struggled to stay connected, or even just to have the physical hardware necessary to be online.

One very important lesson every library, including every school library, should have learned is: You Need A Website. It does not have to be fancy, it does not have to be extensive. It can be one page on your parent organization’s site: a school, a district, a city, a university – whoever. You could even fall back on having a Facebook page, or another social media presence. Ideally, those are just supplements to your website content; but something is better than nothing. Every library needs tools to connect resources with the community you serve; and when our physical buildings are closed, we need to move online.

What if you are completely new to website design, or working with social media? We are here to help with that too! Episode 508 Website Design for total Newbies and Episode 709: Social Media are available to help you to create useful information channels for your community.

Programs you watch

There were so many of these being created during the quarantine early in 2020! While it took some time and effort to start getting materials up and running in a virtual format, it seemed like everyone was doing this. Now that we are past those early days, when everyone was scrambling to get adjusted, a lot of those programs have gone away or are now charging people to use them.

But, as we continue to work with the pandemic, there are plenty of virtual programs that you can share with your community. While this was hard for a lot of organizations, others found out that they could really expand their audience by going virtual – so there are a surprising number of organizations providing good programs!

These are the easiest type of virtual programs to offer. You do not need to do any other work – just share these links on your website or other online resource. Make it look readable, draw people’s attention to this material – and let them go from here! We are going to share a few ideas here, and have many more in our show notes.

With so many people inside, the need for physical activity is apparent – for both mental and physical health. Fortunately, there continue to be a wide variety of resources you can use to share with your community members. There are virtual classes available through gyms, videos to watch while on a treadmill, a bike, or just while walking in place.

One of our favorite resources here was P.E. With Joe, from The Body Coach YouTube channel. Joe Wicks has created over 250 free workout videos, for people at all levels of fitness and for all ages. For his series P.E. With Joe, he did a few minutes of exercise each Monday through Friday – all in his living room. Sometimes his wife joined him, as did his toddler and baby. He makes exercise fun, and is so positive and encouraging that it will help everyone get up off the couch to enjoy a few minutes of activity.

And of course, there are so many museums around the world that have virtual tours! Travel is not a safe option right now, and even when we can safely go anywhere – it will be impossible to visit every cool museum. So this is a wonderful opportunity to share things with your community members, to give them the chance to be a tourist while they stay home.

Google Arts and Culture has collected a variety of different museums and interesting places you can virtually tour. Here are a few:

  • Canopy Walk Lekki Conservation Center In Abjua Nigeria
  • Kenilworth Castle, the Great Tower United Kingdom
  • Appenzeller Noble Memorial Museum Seoul , South Korea
  • Temple of Heracles, Italy
  • Main Garden, Minato City Japan
  • Saint Louis Zoo St. Louis, MO, United States

Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Cooking School has all sorts of cooking classes, many available at no cost. Want to make flatbreads? Or feel confident cooking without a recipe? Or making some tasty desserts? All of these, and many more, are available!

And of course, animal cameras are always going to be popular. You can check out the Explore.org site, to get all kinds of different cameras, animals, and views.

There are hundreds more options for setting up virtual programs that cover other kinds of interests – whatever you and your community members might enjoy. Experiment with putting up different types of programs, changing the links on a regular basis, and asking for suggestions from the community.

Programs you create

These are programs that have the potential to be more fun for you, and more personalized toward your patrons and their interests. But, of course – whatever you do in this direction will mean more work for you. So, consider making some in-house programming yourself, and add in more content from other creators. That will give your patrons the best range of experience, without draining all of your resources.

One very popular virtual program, especially while school buildings are closed, has been recording storytimes for kids. Yes, this seems great – exactly what a library should be doing. BUT! And this is a big issue: the publisher owns the copyright to the story, and needs to give permission for it to be read. 

During the early stages of the pandemic quarantine, a lot of publishers did give this permission to schools and libraries – and that was great. But for the most part, that is over now. Does your library still have videos of happy library staff reading books on your YouTube channel? Go check this. Do you have permission from the publisher to do this? If not, take that down ASAP.

You do not want to count on the kindness of publishers in these cases. Be safe, and do not post material that is covered by copyright. A book talk is fine, where you hold the book, refer to pages, and even read a paragraph or two. These would be really good things to put up But you don’t want a video of you reading the entire thing.

You can partner with teachers to do some live programming that will fit the needs of a class. Is a science class looking for an experiment to do? There are all kinds of STEM projects you could find to show on your camera. Does a math class need a visual display of number theory? Crocheting or knitting might be useful. Do students want to keep up on the life of a library or a classroom pet? Setting up a live cam can be a challenge, but may be fun if the animal is lively. Or you could make short videos to put up on a regular basis, along with short updates on a blog or social media outlet. And if you have your own pets, those would be great to show too!

Think about things that only you can offer. If someone else is already doing a cool thing – great; just use their content. But you can use this opportunity to really show off your library! 

This is a great time to do some book talks on a few of your favorite books. Pick a couple of random favorites, or grab a collection of books to share. You can announce the theme of your books, or make it a secret that people can guess. You could reveal the connection at the end of the video, or let people email in to guess.

What kinds of online displays could you assemble on your website? If you are still going into your library, take some pictures of book shelves with cute things on them. Assemble a collection of materials from around the library, and display them.

Take a video tour of your library, showing off all the good parts so everyone can see! If you have other locations, get videos of them. Are you located inside a parent organization? Walk around the hallways to let people know what other neat things are available at your location! These don’t have to be fancy or highly polished, though of course if you do have some video editing skills that is great.

Hosting a regular Zoom office hour or study hall, where people can come to ask questions about classes or other topics in an unscheduled way, may be helpful. You can let teachers know about the days and times, so they can encourage students to attend as needed.

Programs taking place off-line

And of course, you can also create programs that can happen off-line. There are all kinds of STEM projects, art to create, scavenger hunts, and many other program materials you can find online to share. The point here is to get people to try some new things, or to learn some new skills, without the computer. 

One activity that can be fun for adults, kids, or both together, is cooking. Provide a couple of recipes you found online, or share something you like to make. Find some craft projects people can do on their own – or this could be something you do in a group Zoom session. 

With any of the off-line programs, just keep in mind that people – especially kids – may not have access to a lot of supplies, and may not have money to go buy things. Do what you can to keep most of your programming needs to minimal things they may have around the house. 

We set up a few scavenger hunts for members to share with their communities, and it is very easy! Plus, there is the added bonus that the things they find are right there in the house, or a yard, or a nearby park. To make your hunt even easier for people to do, consider just having them write in the items they need to find or to spot. That will also open up a lot of possibilities for clues. While they can’t bring home a clue of “clouds” they can write down that they saw a frog shape in a cloud outside.

Bingo cards, word searches, and crossword puzzles are all easily created online, and can be shared for people to print out at home, or to distribute in a kit people could pick up at the library, or could be mailed in a packet. Simple games that multiple kids, or kids and adults, could play together may be good for helping parents to keep kids busy and entertained. Games adults can play on their own will also be helpful to your community.

We have shared a lot of different ideas with you. And of course, you probably have a lot of things you have tried in your library. With programming of any sort, including virtual programs, the key is just to keep going. Keep trying more things. Keep offering new programs – things that can be done independently or things that can be done as a group online. Some of them will be successful, some will flop. The work you do in offering them is more important than making them perfect – so just keep going!

Resources for you to consult:

Books Read

And now we have one of our favorite parts of each episode: sharing books! Each of us will share a book we are reading. Links to each book will be on our show notes page, with a link to Amazon.com. If you buy a nice book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits. Thanks in advance!!

Conclusion

Thanks to you for joining us this week! It’s always better when you are here with us!

Here are a few quick takeaways from today’s discussion:

  • It may be more true during a pandemic that libraries need virtual events, but it is true all the time. This is a good opportunity to think about the ways you can be serving your community no matter where they are.
  • Virtual programs can be live and everyone participating at once, or they can be designed to be done individually as people are interested. Either way is fine; having both is best.
  • Keep things simple for your patrons. Remember that not everyone will have books at home, or art supplies, or even reliable internet. Practice your event on different devices, so you are sure it will be fun for everyone.

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Check back in with us next week for another library skill!