Building Literacy: Public Library Construction
Building Literacy: Public Library Construction
Curating Services in Intentional Spaces at New Canaan Library
We are joined by Lisa Oldham, the President and CEO of New Canaan Library, and Miki Porta, the Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Coordinator for the New Canaan Library for this second episode of a two-part series focusing on their new library, which opened in February 2023. We discuss the impact of their decisions for both the building and the library’s service model as it relates to the community they serve. We will hear about everything from unexpected connections to a learning framework meant to enhance each part of the library experience for all ages.
Thank you for tuning into Building
Literacy:Public Library Construction. My name is Andrea Bono-Bunker and together with my colleague Lauren Stara, we administer the Massachusetts Public Library Construction Program for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. While most of the content on this podcast has a Massachusetts focus, there is something for every stakeholder in a public library construction project. To ask us follow up questions or suggest episode ideas, please contact me at andrea.bunker@mass.gov We hope you find this episode inspiring and informative. Again on this episode, we are veering from our norm and focusing on a library outside of Massachusetts. This is the second episode of a two part series featuring Lisa Oldham, the CEO and President of New Canaan library, and Miki Porta, the Environmental Social Governance Coordinator for the New Canaan Library as well in New Canaan, Connecticut. In our first episode with Lisa and Miki, we discussed their design process, their pilot project with Grace Farms, which focused on the Design for Freedom initiative, their robust fundraising efforts, and the reaction of the community to their new library. On this episode, we delve more into how their building is functioning and their curation of the services and programming they offer within the library's intentional spaces. Hi, Lisa. Hi, Miki. If you wouldn't mind, please introduce yourselves, so our listeners will know whom they hear speaking.
Lisa Oldham:I'm Lisa Oldham.
Miki Porta:And I'm Miki Porta.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:So, thank you again for joining us. I'm wondering if you could give a brief recap of your project.
Lisa Oldham:Sure, we opened our building on February 14 of this year, and we were not quite finished with all of the building. We had construction teams still finishing up for another couple of months. And they've continued to be on site because the green is still under construction. It's due to be finished by the end of October. All of this was the culmination of over 10 years of work. So in 2012, the library had decided after many false starts that it was time to actually embark on a new project. And Centerbrook Architects from centerbrook, Connecticut had been engaged and had started the work of community consultation with the library about what the community's needs and interests in a new library were. That happened in 2012. 2013, we undertook a feasibility study on fundraising. And then we were stalled for a bit because we had to acquire a neighboring property. We actually had money in the bank to do that. We had had a request that was going to enable us to do that. However, the owner of the property was not interested in selling at that moment, so we had to wait a few years. In the meantime, we really focused on working on the products and services inside the library. Knowing, hoping that we would eventually get the new library, we really focused on making sure that everything we did inside the library was worthy of the investment of all of the townspeople who we were going to ask to reach into their pockets and donate to make it happen, because this was 75% philanthropically funded. And so we felt it was very, very important that we really get our house in order in regards to what we did inside. So we talked a bit last episode about the collections and really being very thoughtful, strategic, and intentional both with selection and, super importantly, with deselection, as well as arrangement and display- maximizing those selections, making them more dynamic, but also really making sure that they were attractive browsable and available for the community to use. We similarly looked at programming, and, to the extent possible, the very substandard spaces that we had, trying to maximize their utility for the community by really thinking about the use of furniture within those spaces, how we set the tone for expected behavior through the use of furniture when we didn't have the spaces that we really needed. Then eventually we bought that remaining piece of property. And we started fundraising in 2018. And then we started construction in in November of 21.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:So it is a long road to getting to a completed building, and I think all of our listeners and I know we have experienced that, too. A library can be decades in the making. And all of that hard work, and all of the sweat and tears, all of the emotions that go into a building project, because none of them are smooth, no matter what. It's all worth it because of what you can actually provide an offer to your community at the end of it. The result is worth it. I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit more about how your service model has changed given this new building? Previously, there might have been obstacles or barriers to certain service models, and how have you embraced the opportunity with this new building?
Lisa Oldham:Oh, that's a lot to unpack. So I think for the better part of 10 years before we moved in, we really tried to live into a mantra that it was about being transformative and not transactional. And if we are to truly be the community's platform for learning, then those interactions with the library should be transformative for people coming in, whatever that means and whatever type of learning. And so we tried to focus our resource along those lines using that thinking, and making sure that we had more staff, qualified staff, helping people with reference and instruction. We created a maker lab area in the back end of one of the spaces that we had. We correspondingly reduced the number of people working on circulation, because that's, of course, by its nature transactional, and really just shifted as much as we could, the resource, toward the future that we wanted. But yes, it was very hard in a building that wasn't designed for thinking that way. So now that we're in the new building, we don't have great big desks anywhere. We have desks that are probably less than three feet across, and they're standing desks, standing height, so that all interactions are happening at eye level between our team and the people who come in. The team are usually standing, which means they're much more poised to come around the front of the desk and go to the collections with a borrower or to show a person to a room or a space. So small things like that. But also big things like having a maker lab where our educator actually can have all of the equipment and materials that she may need for all of her programming easily accessible and ready to use. And a space that says this is really important work. The learning by doing is really important, just like learning by reading or learning by listening and all the other ways that learning happens here. And so the maker lab is a great example of how this space is now. We get so much more engagement in our maker lab, just by having a purpose built space instead of a cobbled together group of tables with some equipment on it. We talked about the collections last time. We thought a lot about how much space we needed for the collections and how we would do that. And then our program space. So in addition to our auditorium, which can be divided up into different spaces, we have three program room spaces for our families team. So in the children's library, we have one large open space that can be divided into two that's got a vinyl flooring, so it can be washed so that it's not too precious, and whatever sort of learning activities happen, we can clean up with ease. And then we have a warm, sunny, carpeted floor space for storytime room. We have the teaching kitchen, and we have the maker lab. And then we have nine study rooms, meeting rooms of different sizes that range from four person rooms to 35 person rooms. All of it enables us to provide the kinds of spaces, and I loved last time you said space equals service. And we really see it that way. I just wrote the narrative for our 990, and one needs to list out the three most important or the three top services within the full program. And what we list is collections, programs, spaces as our three main services. And so now we have such highly functional and also beautiful spaces that are designed to interrelate to each other in ways that make sense. One space and I didn't mention, the co-working space or the remote working space. We designed this before COVID, and now post COVID It's even more wildly popular than we could have ever imagined. We always had some people working remotely in the library but more like writers, authors, researchers. Now of course we have people from every profession working all day every day in our remote working area.
Miki Porta:I think there were spaces we didn't realize that we were going to use in the ways that we actually have used them. And one example of that is we have a gallery. In the old building, we had an art gallery that was devoted to showing work by local artists. And that was done by a volunteer committee. And in this new building, we have a gallery, which we intentionally have called a gallery and not an art gallery, because what we're doing is we're doing about two shows a year, so longer runs of six months each. And we're trying to partner with organizations and institutions locally, who can bring some kind of exhibition that links up with learning outcomes that our librarians here really care about and want to program off of. So the gallery is full of opportunity and richness. But then what happened to people from the past who wanted to come in and do something quick, something like,"Oh, well, you know, our group wants to do like a four week long kind of mini exhibit about, let's say, Juneteenth, but the gallery is taken, and it's taken for six months, and it's taken by a large nonprofit partner." So we literally walked around the building, identifying places where we could create a pop up. And we intentionally said, you know, we don't want to just tick off a box and tell this organization, "Yeah, sure you can do a pop up here." We wanted to really make it visible and allow for traffic, you know, for people to really see it and engage with it without our having to take them over to it. And so we've done a couple of those already since February, and we're working on a third. And that was really a surprise to us. I don't think that we could foresee that. But, again, it came out of this commitment to serving the community where people came to us with some really worthy ideas and with a question, and we always try to come from a place of yes, so it was like, "Okay, yes, let me get out from behind my perch here, and let's walk. Let's walk together, and see what we can do."
Andrea Bono-Bunker:And that lends itself to the flexibility of your spaces, and your ability to be innovative consistently and constantly as new needs arise or needs that may have been there that were not vocalized prior come to the forefront. That's wonderful.
Miki Porta:Yeah.
Lisa Oldham:I think, yeah, it's that and we should mention bookshelves on wheels at this point, because that's an enabler. Not all of our stacks are on wheels. Our big main collections are not, but in our main concourse on the lower level, which is where we have all of our new books and our multiple copy books and things like that. We have about half of those shelves on wheels, and about half of the entire children's room is on wheels. That gives us even more flexibility. When Miki says, you know, I think this next one coming up is Constitution Week?
Miki Porta:Yup, for Constitution Week.
Lisa Oldham:The local Daughters of the Revolution group wanted to do an exhibition on Constitution Week. And we said,"Well, how about this space, where we worked with the local Asian community to do a didactic set of panels exhibition on the problem of Asian hate earlier in the year?" And we can just move the shelves back a foot and create this lovely little mini gallery space right up in the front of the library.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:And it allows those spaces to grow and shrink as you need them to. For all sorts of things. I know that in
Lisa Oldham:That's right. my particular library, where I was director, we did a lot of shelving on casters in the children's room to create a flexible programming space outside of the children's storytime craft room so that you're able to utilize the space in whatever way you need to at different times. So that's great that you've been able to carve out and create those spaces. And I'll also mention shelving on casters is great, too, if we ever find ourselves in a situation like the beginning of the pandemic where you had to really reconfigure spaces so that people had distancing. And it can create natural corridors or pathways. So it has several functions. It's great to hear how well you're using them in your new building.
Lauren Stara:I just wanted to go back for just a moment to when you were talking about your service desk, because I love the idea of very small, flexible service desks. But I know in my experience, there is a lot of staff pushback against that kind of service model and I'd like to hear what kind of input your staff has had both before these were implemented and after. And also, crucially, do you have a time limit for on desk shifts? Because I know that being on a desk like that for more than an hour or 90 minutes can be very draining for staff. And I'm just curious what your process is.
Lisa Oldham:The most comprehensive answer is that we did buy high stools for the desk in the first week for those people for whom standing at the desk was not as comfortable as it was for others.
Miki Porta:So they're smaller than the old model. Like in our old building, it was very much that 1960s 70s library feel with a desk almost, yeah, almost snaked around almost like the perimeter of that space. It created a very big barrier. It was almost like a beachfront. You know, the desk was almost like a beachfront, and it accommodated 10 people behind that desk. So I would say that these desks are definitely smaller by comparison. I wouldn't say they're small. I still think you could stand like two or three people behind them.
Lisa Oldham:If I had had my entire way, they would have been even smaller.
Miki Porta:I know you would have made them even smaller. But they're smaller, but they're not that small.
Lauren Stara:I thought that one of you said that they were about three feet wide, which is incredibly small. And would, did I not hear that correctly? And Whoa, did I not hear that correctly,
Miki Porta:I would say more like five feet. You can put two people behind it, well, like two computers, you can have two computer terminals.
Lisa Oldham:To be ADA compliant, they have a return and the return is at seated height. So the desk itself is only about three, but then you've got the return with two coming the other way. So the main standing desk, well, maybe it's a little bit more than three, but the other two feet are actually the seated desk side, which is to make sure that anybody who comes in needing to sit or in a wheelchair can also get served. For efficiency both on desk and off desk, we try to schedule a minimum of two hours on desk so that people can have at least two hours off desk to get a good run at whatever their other work is. We just find that anything less than that is not really super efficient. And I think we've worked for a long time on the idea of what is our role here. And it is around that transformational activity, not the transactional. So what is the purpose of the des. We don't have things behind there, we're making library cards at the main desk, we're doing reference, but both of those things only require a laptop. So there's no obvious need for a larger desk, I don't know what we would do with more space, apart from its adding to this sense of being a barrier.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Speaking of service desks, your staff spaces. I know before you had talked about in the previous episode a little bit about what the staff spaces were like in the former library. And in your new building, how are those staff spaces designed to be conducive to the services that you're offering?
Lisa Oldham:One really big effect is that our team are all in one space. So in a combination of office spaces, enclosed office spaces that go around the perimeter of the space, and then a big open area in the middle that was designed during the COVID period when we were designing that space. And so it's open in that it's very easy for people to see and be near each other, but enclosed enough that people feel that they have their own space, that they're not sort of in a fishbowl, but that they can easily communicate with others, and it encourages people to hop up and walk around to speak with others who are in different teams. The old situation meant that there were people literally that worked on one floor of the building, who may go for an entire week without speaking to one of their colleagues in a different part of the building. And that's not great, ultimately, for what we're delivering in the way of services because we're not getting the benefit of all of the wonderful intersections of people from different departments, and the brainstorming and the excitement that can be generated when people start sharing ideas. And we also have a really lovely, beautifully well-lit lots of natural light lunch room, which is right within our space as well where people from all the different departments intersect over lunch each day. And again, you get the wonderful synergies and joyful moments of children's librarians intersecting with the fundraising team intersecting with the collections team or the accountant and everything. We've never had any of that before. So that's been a really big net positive, both for the team importantly for us, but I believe it has an absolute flow through into the way we are able to serve our community.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Does all staff have their own desks, or are they hotelling or sharing any spaces for off desk time?
Lisa Oldham:Pretty much everyone who works full time and quite a number of our part time staff have their own desks. Then our more part time customer service team who are doing front welcome desk, so general directional help and making library cards and shelving books. There is a hot desking table. Also in our AMH automated materials handling room, we have a few desks in there. This is working out differently than what we had anticipated. We had imagined they would do more of their off desk work in the main work room on the hot desk table. But a lot more of it is actually happening at the desks in the AMH room where they may finish a shift on the welcome desk and go and do some shelving. And then if they're going to work on for example, interlibrary loans, they'll just stay at the desks in that space and work. So we have enough space for every single employee. But for those very part time, people, it may be a desk they share in the AMH room or the high table with the hot desks.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:And I remember from our pre-meeting, I believe Miki it was you who stated this, but from your involvement with Design for Freedom with Grace Farms, there was emphasis put on the working conditions of library staff within the building. And how did that process impact the way that you decided to move forward with those staff spaces?
Miki Porta:It wasn't just a matter of the staff spaces, the staff spaces, it was like a well known fact and well documented that they were insufficient for staff needs, they actually felt disrespectful. So that was something that we already knew about. I think what Design for Freedom moved us to interrogate was we're really concerned about the labor practices of people who are very far away and being exploited for materials that are all around us, but how are we taking care of each other? How are we looking after each other? And like, for instance, Lisa is super insistent on everybody taking their vacation time, and she increased vacation time. Our executive director of Sheryl Capitani, you know, would remind people "Hey, guys, you know, there's this great benefit that you all have, whether you're full time, whether you're part time, this is just something the library has contracted for where you can get free mental health care, you can get free support on legal contracts, you can get free books, you can get all kinds of great services." You know, so really just thinking a little bit more I mean, and this all by the way, in addition to work that was already happening on our EDI committee, where we were looking at, where are we recruiting from? Who are we reaching out to when we try to fill positions, you know. How are we thinking about onboarding people? What kinds of training are we providing for our team and learning opportunities? So, you know, it wasn't so much the physical space because that was so appalling in the old building, that it almost didn't go without saying. The more aha moment was, oh, okay, so we care about child labor, or people being dropped into mines to get precious metals for our buildings, but what about our own staff that have to either cross the street in the dark when it's cold out, and it feels dangerous?
Andrea Bono-Bunker:So really taking the staff needs into consideration. And I also think when you talk about, you know, the spaces feeling disrespectful or being disrespectful, it reminds me of this phrase that I heard at Core Forum last October, and it was the Skokie, Illinois public library. And I believe it was Andrew Berman, who said design with dignity. So when you think about spaces, think about the dignity of the people who will be inhabiting them. And how do you imbue that into the spaces so that people feel respected and feel fully human? And it extends to everything. We often talk about it with bathrooms. You know, how would you like to use this bathroom that you see that opens out into a direct seating area? You know, like, they're things to think about, like how much would you want to use those spaces? Because how would that make you feel if you had to use that space?
Lisa Oldham:Yeah. So on bathrooms, we weren't able to do it again, you know, trade offs between cost and other issues. But on our upper floor, we have four unisex bathrooms they are self contained, so toilet and basin in a room all by itself. And they're unisex, and there are four of them. On our ground floor to get enough toilets for the size of the building and the expected use, etc.. we have bathrooms with six stalls for women and maybe a similar number for men. But it was really important to me, to us to have those unisex bathrooms. And having worked in some collaborative work with the compulsory education sector in a previous part of my career, I know that there is a movement in some places globally in schools to go completely away from the style of bathroom that has the top and the bottom all open to having independent units where there is a toilet and maybe a basin and you can close the door and the wall goes to the ceiling and to the floor, and you actually have privacy.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:A very European model. We see that a lot in Europe. And we're seeing that more I have to say in our projects, because we have one library and they've gotten the code okay to have a multi-stall, gender neutral bathroom near their program room.
Lisa Oldham:Maybe more important than ever to have those dividers go to the ceiling and the floor. When we think about designing with dignity. I think that that's a really bit of low hanging fruit to do better with bathrooms.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Exactly, yes.
Lisa Oldham:But also our children's spaces, right? Because I think again, we librarians, I hope all of us are real champions for children. But I think children's spaces sometimes, and we went looking at a lot of libraries in the years that we were working on hours. And a lot of children's spaces seem to be after thoughts or not really designed thinking about the dignity of children or the importance of children to the whole. They seem sometimes to be lesser than the other spaces even in a lovely library.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Can you talk more about that? So in terms of your design choices for the services that you offer in the children's room, what were some considerations there?
Lisa Oldham:Size, first, we added a special space for tweens because we felt that they really are a distinct group. So that's sort of, you know, 9, 10,11, 12 ish, that they have their own space. We tripled the size of our program room. So that was the first thing. We created the really lovely space that Miki talked about earlier, which is in the corner of our building, which is bright and sunny, and it's wrapped around with our children's garden for our toddlers. So we have really distinct- it all flows together, it's distinct in our own minds, and you would see it if you walked in- but we've got our toddlers and babies furthest from the door in this beautiful, sunny corner with glass all around. And then it moves into the picture books and our early readers. And then it moves as you move closer to the center of the building and the exit from the Children's Library, to the older readers. And then the tween area is where we have all of our junior fiction. So we really spent a lot of time working with the architect on thinking through the spaces for all of our youngest borrowers/members, because I think we all really believe that there's such important constituents from every point of view, right? We're serving whole families by helping with that journey to literacy and language development. But it's also existential for libraries, right? Because if children have wonderful memories of the library, and the library feels like a place that valued them, and made them feel good, and where they treasure, you know, the memory of that, then they're the future library users and, in our case, library donors. So it seemed to me both the right thing, but also sort of an existential issue that we would prioritize spaces for young people.
Miki Porta:They make up fully 50% of our programming and our circulation activity. So this is also, it's a need to have, it's not a nice to have, and I think the view many, many years back was you know, where teens especially were concerned was you know that they should be seen and not heard. That the library was a place where they had to be quiet. And certainly, you know, there are quiet areas in our library. But one of the really neat things and very different things in this new space is that even though the children's and family section has these discrete areas for everything from tweens in their tween cave, which is totally cool, and babies and toddlers and everything in between, the teens are now out. The teens are on the upper floor with the nonfiction collection, the reference desk, the business center, so like where the big people are, you know, where the serious stuff happens. But they're in their own room. And it's a soundproof, glass room so you can see them, they can see you, you can't hear them, and they can't hear you.
Lisa Oldham:And it's beautiful. And it's got windows all around both the two sides that look out onto the new green. And so it says to the teens, "You are important. We think you are valuable members of our community, and you're really important. And this beautiful space is for you." And also they're not restricted to that area. They also use our study rooms and the nonfiction collections and other places as well. But they can retreat, and they do, to the teen space, particularly, as well.
Miki Porta:And one thing I love about that team space, and I enforce it, maybe not everybody always enforces it. But I don't mind being the bad guy. It says that that is for use by teens at all times. So even if school is in session, and there's not a lot of teens around, that room is still for teens at all times. So you can't come, you know, and do your remote work with your coffee and your laptop because that's for teens. And I really enforced that. It means a lot to me, especially now that we have proper workspaces for adults and for our staff and for everybody. There's no reason for them to encroach on the teen space, so I like that boundary. And I like that that sign is like front and center. And it actually says there's a little chart that's like how to figure out if you belong in this room. It's like a rubric. It's great.
Lisa Oldham:If you're over 18.
Miki Porta:Right.
Lisa Oldham:So yeah, I mean, I think maybe part of all of our interest in making sure the teens have great spaces is 10 years ago, we didn't see many teens in the library. The space wasn't welcoming, it wasn't nice, and it wasn't discreet and separate. And so, even when we put in place a full time teen librarian, the library's open twice as many hours a week as one person could work, so there was a lot of time when members of the community who may be not so friendly towards teens would be telling them off or trying to shush them or push them out of the way or whatever. And so we weren't able to run interference for them all the time. And so I think we all feel very protective of our teens. And by having the beautiful space and a team of library staff that believes they are valuable members of the community and that they shouldn't be here, we're now seeing teens in huge numbers. It's new for us.
Miki Porta:I mean, it's alarming. It's alarming. When we first opened. Was that you telling that story about the stampede?
Lisa Oldham:Oh, yeah.
Miki Porta:It was.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:I don't think we've heard this. What is this story?
Miki Porta:Oh my gosh.
Lisa Oldham:So the day we opened, it was a weekday. And we opened in the morning. And later that afternoon, around three, I'd been out on the floor most of the day, and I had come back into the work room. And I was walking through the workroom, and I suddenly heard this noise. And I thought, oh my god, something's happening to the building. Like it sounded like, I don't know, like something bad was happening to the building. And I ran back out. It was about 100 teenagers racing up the stairs. They were so excited to go and see the library and the new teen space. It was literally 100 teenagers like a herd of elephants going up the stairs, which are on the back wall from where I was standing. And that was the noise.
Miki Porta:It was a literal stampede. And it just didn't stop for weeks.
Lisa Oldham:It went on for a good hour that day. And then every afternoon after that we would hear it through the wall, if we weren't out on the floor, this stampede of teenagers racing to get to the teen library.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:As a former teen librarian that just warms my heart. I love hearing that.
Miki Porta:Isn't that great?
Lisa Oldham:It is it's terrific.
Andrea Bunker:So you've given them a space where they can be, you've given them that service of a space for them to feel comfortable, welcome, included in their public library. And you mentioned that in the children's room, you're seeing 50% of the programming and 50% of the circulation coming out of that particular service area. What has been the change from your former building to your current building in terms of usage, overall, your visits those statistics. Can you share those with our listeners?
Lisa Oldham:Just sheer door traffic is about double right now. And we opened in mid February. Our year finishes June 30. So we've been trying to extrapolate the four and a half month data to get an understanding of what it's looking like at this early date. But, for example, circulation, so we're comparing to FY 19, so the year that ended June 19, because then we had two heavily affected by COVID years. And then as we were coming out of COVID, we were a construction site. So when we look at extrapolating all of these numbers with four and a half months worth of data, trying to get our best idea of what it would look like if that was a whole year, and comparing it to the last real year that we have good data for, the circulation is not quite back to the pre COVID level. But again, I don't know how confident we can be on that number. I think it will bounce back, it's certainly higher than it was, for example, in year 21 or 22, so it's rebounded from the COVID years. But the extrapolated data suggests it's not quite back to the full level of circulation before COVID.
Andrea Bunker:Lisa, can I ask you if that is physical collections circulation, or does that include ebook?
Lisa Oldham:Sorry, that's physical materials. And then when we look at children's physical circulation as a subset of the total, that is much closer to our previous high in 2019, although still trailing slightly. Visitor numbers, though, I need to do the math on this to just tell you what it is as a percentage, but it's almost double what it was before for a whole year, say probably about 60% higher using the extrapolated data. But on a day to day basis, we're seeing numbers that are double the old door traffic. Things like Wi Fi sessions are back to previous highs already in only four months. So attendance for adults is tracking. We really didn't ramp up until April, so we only had sort of three months to go on. And then we were slow over summer. And so this coming year will be the year where we really get a picture of how the new building is performing in terms of you know, all of these metrics. But the big one, children's programming attendance of children and families at children's programs is 1.5 times higher than it was in our old space. And that's a direct consequence of having good spaces, more spaces, spaces that enable our incredible children's librarians to do all of the things that they are capable of doing, which is extraordinary in itself. But by having multiple spaces, rather than one small, super cold, unpleasant children's program space, which is what we had before. And now we have the three different program spaces, they use the auditorium as well, the community room, they use other spaces in the building as well. In the four months between opening and the end of the year, we had 15,000 children participate in programs. Extrapolated out for a year, it's 31,000, children participating.
Andrea Bunker:For a community of 20,000. That's amazing. I have a question for you. There are lots of projects that are in those stages of trying to get approval from their communities. And you always have that one person who stands up and says,"Why do I need a library when I have a smartphone?" And I'm presuming that in New Canaan, given your socioeconomics, most of your community members can afford their own devices? What advice would you give to those librarians who face that comment and have to respond to it?
Lisa Oldham:Yeah, it's hard because the person that says that is pretty entrenched in their viewpoint, anyway, right? Because the kind of person who makes that comment often is somebody who's the kind of person that likes being the one to make the point or whatever point, we have talked for a long time about the library as a place of learning, rather than talking about it as a place of books. And I always feel that when I get that kind of comment, if I try to unpack it a little bit with the person, you know,"Why do you think that?" Because you're right in this community, not only just probably almost everyone have a device, but they could order whatever book they want from Amazon and have it by tomorrow.
Miki Porta:I'll tell you what, though. They might have a device, they might have multiple devices, but at some point, they're going to come here, and they're going to ask one of our reference librarians how to use it, because it's going to malfunction. It just is. And so then they come and they say, "My phone or my iPad, or my laptop is doing X, Y or Z, can you help me?", or "I have this amazing laptop. I don't own a printer. How can I print something?", or"I need to fax something because it's an official document.", or"I need to scan something and I can't do it from a phone.", or whatever it is. I think that it's not about using the public computers. Sometimes public Wi Fi. I mean, look, libraries are resilience centers. And I don't know, I'm pretty sure in Massachusetts, it's the same as it is here where we're seeing hurricanes in September, we're seeing incredible heat waves. It rains and the lights go out. And where do people go, they come here, they come here to get hot to get cool to get energy to get information. So yeah, your smartphone is great. But it's not everything.
Lisa Oldham:But also our general philosophy is that our learning programs are co equal to collections in terms of what we offer in this place of learning. And so developing, designing, delivering learning programs in a really intentional, cohesive thought through way, means that, you know, our programming offering for both children and adults is really robust. And I guess one of the things I would say is, you know, you can watch all the TED talks you want on your phone, it's really not quite as great as being able to be in the room with the expert and ask questions and talk to them and, you know, have a glass of juice and stand chatting with your neighbors, while you're either on your way in or your way out to learn. Last night, it was spotted lantern flies, and the night before it was an Argentinian classical guitarist. We really do work hard with our curricula of learning to make sure that we're covering sort of the breadth of human knowledge with our learning programs, not just with our collections. And so that would somehow form my answer to the person who says,"Why do we need a library?" And the other is the importance of community well being and community connection. We really see that the library is the one place in town that's non commercial, you can come in and you intersect with other people. And sometimes it's a glancing blow, you're just walking past and you see somebody you know, getting a book, but through our programming, particularly, and some of the other things that happen, we can facilitate more meaningful engagement and intersection between people in the community. And we know from research that the more people feel connected to their community, the more resilient they are. So when the hurricane invariably comes, and the town is without power for two weeks, and whatever else, as a community, the community has more resilience when they know they are in a place where A. they can go to the library to get cool or charge their device, but also that because of all the connections formed here, that there's a supportive community around them, and they're not alone in this. Recently, Father's Day weekend, we had a program with a local brewery that was beer tasting. And strangely, more than one family gave Dad a registration to beer tasting at the library as their Father's Day present. And so it was six o'clock on a Friday night, and the place was filling up with people who had registered, and a man came and he was blindfolded with his wife and children. And they brought him through the doors, and they took off the blindfold. And he said, "So this is my father's day present? You brought me to the library?" And the kid said,"No, daddy, it's a special class just for you." And they took him through to the kitchen where the beer tasting was happening, and he sat down. And no sooner had his family left, then another family exactly same situation. Dad has the blindfold on. And they come through the doors in a very similar interaction. And the first guy who had been brought in blindfolded has never met the second guy, but he stands up and he's like, "Hey, how are you? That just happened to me, too." And they end up sitting next to each other. And the librarians observed that by the end of the night, a connection had formed between these two guys who are not our typical library users. In both cases, neither of them had been here before. They came to the library through a family connection, they made a new connection, and potentially, you know, a new friendship between these two families through the active learning program that was happening by design at the library.
Andrea Bunker:That's amazing. And I'll follow that up with today, actually, I brought my mother for a neurology exam for early stages of dementia, and the neurologist said, it is key to have social interaction and a feeling of community to slow the progress of dementia. So not only that community resilience, but also that personal resilience and how important that is for all facets of the community to have that ability to go and gather for free without spending money in these ways that provide experiences that you may not otherwise have. And I think those are true benefits.
Lisa Oldham:Two quick corollaries to that when we were fundraising, we spoke to an older woman whose husband was considerably older than her. And we were showing her the plans for the library, which include a living room. We have a living room space, that is set up with just comfortable chairs in small groupings, where people can be by themselves or with others. They can grab a book collections are nearby, but not right there. And we have newspapers and magazines there. But it's a place where a person can just be. Anyway, we showed this woman that space, and she said, "Oh, my goodness, how soon will it be done?" She said, "My husband, he doesn't get out very much. He's pretty infirm, but he likes to get out. But we can't just go for lunch every day. He doesn't want to, he's not interested in going to restaurants, he certainly doesn't want to go shopping. What we need is exactly this, a place where he can just sit and read if he wants to, or just be around other people without having to buy something or do something where nothing is expected of him." That's the first story.
Andrea Bunker:Can I just say how transformational that is, rather than transactional? Just your philosophy.
Lisa Oldham:Absolutely. And he could talk to us or anyone if he wants to, but he doesn't have to, he could just be. The other thing I was going to say is my GP when she discovered what my job was and where I worked. She said, "Oh, I get your newsletter, and I follow all the interesting programs that you do." She said, "I actually prescribe attending your programs to my elderly patients who are alone."
Andrea Bunker:Yes. And that's essentially what the neurologist was doing today, too.
Miki Porta:You know, there's a very strong mental health and wellbeing component to it. I like to think that this is also community building, and in some ways, like civic organizing through the back door, because a lot of these people would not come into contact with each other, as you said, if these opportunities weren't made. There was a great program we did a long time ago, and it was small. The bread and butter, I think of library programming is pretty small, you know, 15 people, 20 people in a room week after week after week. And this was one of those smaller programs that was a discussion. It was a panel that was riffing off of an exhibit that we had had. And the panel was about the marginalization of women in health care. And the speaker was a physician herself. And it was being moderated by our then manager of adult programs. And the participants in the room ranged from a woman who seemed to perhaps be experiencing homelessness at the time, to a woman who was wearing a French silk scarf and really turned out and was herself a physician. And during the course of the discussion, they both shared personal experiences of being marginalized, you know, in this system. One as a patient, and the other one who was shunted aside by a fellow physician who did not know that she herself was also a doctor. He just saw her as like a woman, you know, in expensive clothes, or whatever. And it was so incredible to watch the energy, the dynamic of this group, this conversation, you know, and there were all kinds of other people in between. But I think with all of these interactions, it kind of redefines for people what the role of the modern library is in the community. And certainly for those two dads who had never been to the library and were introduced via a beer tasting activity where they learned something, you know, that was eye opening for them. For these two women from completely different walks of life, it was like, "Oh, yeah, that happened to me, too." You know, they locked eyes and they locked experiences. The Universality. So I feel like now more than ever, this is actually the space where you're not siloed, it's everybody in the pool.
Lisa Oldham:And it speaks to going back to what you said earlier, Andrea, about space as service. We designed very intentionally a lot of space for people. As we got closer to finishing the project, we sent out a little pamphlet to the whole community with images of what it was going to look like. And we did hear some of "Well, you know, why are you building that big building if it's not all full of books." And of course, obvious to all of us, because we're actually building for people. We're not building for books. And so it's been very interesting that that sort of chatter about us not having stacks in every square inch of the space disappeared almost instantly when we opened the doors.
Miki Porta:Instantly.
Lisa Oldham:Because I think people didn't realize what they were missing in the way of comfortable, well designed space to just be.
Miki Porta:Yeah, there was one person who said, "Oh, you know, my kid, he's not a reader, he doesn't go to the library." I said, "Not liking to read is no reason to not come to the library." And when we opened our new building, she got it. You know, the kids are here, because they're doing a lot of other things besides reading.
Lisa Oldham:Including vaping yesterday.
Miki Porta:Oh, my goodness.
Andrea Bunker:Speaking of taking the bad with the good and unintentional uses of spaces that you've designed, is there anything that you would change?
Lisa Oldham:Not much, but a couple of things have come to light, this first one is on us and our architects and everybody involved. We hadn't designed in a lactation space for staff. And we hired somebody within months of opening, who was about to have a baby and came back to work after her time away, and needed lactation space. And we have cobbled something together. We've made it as comfortable, pleasant as it could be. But it's still a closet. So that was just a complete miss on our part.
Andrea Bunker:And I think something that's starting to have a movement now, where before it may not have been as prevalent, but we're seeing a lot of what they call comfort rooms, which can be utilized for lactation, they can be utilized as a non stimulating space for those who need to get away from the noise or an overly stimulating environment. And we're recommending that sinks go into them like you have a sink, if it's going to be used as a lactation room. So I think that is something just like we saw makerspaces take off, this is another space that is in its kind of very nascent era.
Lauren Stara:Can I ask, do you have lactation space for the public? Or not?
Lisa Oldham:No, we chose some chairs in the children's room that are designed in a way that they can be turned away from anybody else and are wide and comfortable where somebody could- I mean, there's really not anyone pumping in the library that would be with a child. So we see plenty of breastfeeding happening in the library all the time. And to my knowledge, nobody's been looking for a space that's more enclosed than what we can provide with the spaces we've got.
Miki Porta:Yeag, it's really our employee who is pumping.
Lisa Oldham:Yeah.
Miki Porta:And not nursing.
Lisa Oldham:Yeah.
Lauren Stara:Yeah.
Lisa Oldham:But I think that's right, the idea of a space that could be used for more than one thing, because and not to defend, because it's indefensible, how we missed this, but we hadn't had a lactating employee before. And so it just was not on anyone's mind. And we have all been there. So how it wasn't, I don't know, there was another thing that we thought of the other day,
Miki Porta:Oh, this is something, it's sort of related to the lactation room for people who really want privacy for pumping. And it's more of just having a room that isn't transparent.
Lisa Oldham:Particularly if we need to have a hard conversation with a staff member, or a...
Miki Porta:Or a program where people want to feel enclosed. You know, there are some sensitive topics that people want to come together to learn about or share about. And they really may not want other people to know that they're there. I mean, it can be like anything from like an AA type situation to, you know, anything else. And the layer of transparency in our building is just magnificent. It's gorgeous. But it really did dawn on us that there is no space where...
Lisa Oldham:And sort of by design, right? Because we have 42,000 square feet of space. But we have the same team that operated in 26,000 square feet in the old building.
Miki Porta:Yeah, so we got to know what people are up to.
Lisa Oldham:So, the idea of having a public space that didn't have a window or door was entirely by design.
Miki Porta:Oh, and especially with the number of children and teens that we have here. I mean, that's definitely
Lisa Oldham:Sure. So but maybe what we could do is having at least one of our offices, either my office or assistant director's office, where we put a blind on the glass door so that in case of me, we can actually have a conversation that's not only inaudible, which we can do today, but also where a person should they be in emotional distress could also not be seen by their colleagues. We could do a similar thing maybe in one of the meeting rooms.
Miki Porta:Right to facilitate that.
Lisa Oldham:Where we could put a blind that could come down over a door.
Andrea Bunker:We always recommend shades for or administrative offices. Also having a space for sensory programming, because sometimes that transparency brings in too much stimulation, not being able to block that out. So there are all these interesting things that I think we're studying more.
Lauren Stara:Can I just also chime in? I was just in a library doing a post occupancy Report, and they have a study room in their children's area with a big window. And that space, in the two years they've been open has evolved to what they call a family space. They put up a shade for the window. One of their employees uses it for pumping, so you can have a visual barrier there. And they also use it for overstimulated children. So in addition to it being a small collaborative study room for children, they have these other two functions with the simple addition of a shade on the window.
Lisa Oldham:Yeah, okay, great.
Andrea Bunker:And it makes me think about what you were saying in the first episode. Lisa, I think you said it, where, when you were designing the building, you wanted to make sure that every space was in use for whatever activity was called for at the time.
Lisa Oldham:That's exactly right. The idea that every part of the asset is working hard for us all the time. And that every room, every space earns its place here. If we were doing this, again, thinking of a lactation room, we would definitely be thinking, okay, how can it do double duty? Because if this is the first time in 10 years we've needed that space, we can possibly assume that in another two years, we might not need it again for a while. So how can we design it to be appropriate for that one use but also appropriate for many other uses, which sounds like what Lauren was just talking about, as well, and design it in from the beginning. I think that's probably about the only thing, the two things. And that's in seven months. I feel like there's really nothing else our children's storytime is actually not big enough. We're actually doing our storytimes in our community room, which is 100 person room, and we clear it out of tables and chairs, and librarians do storytime in the community room instead, because we're just trying to accommodate all the families. And I don't know if we could have predicted that or not. We certainly didn't predict that it still gets used, gets used for lots of other things. But it isn't being used yet for actual storytime, because we just try not to turn any kids away, any families away. And so we're just using much bigger spaces for storytime.
Andrea Bunker:But that makes sense, too. Because when you think about the timeframe of storytime, it's typically during the day. You might have evening ones, if you want it to be more accessible to working caregivers. But when you think about it, you're putting that community room to good use by holding those programs in there. And it truly does become a community room because it's servicing all of the different age groups of your community. So that's great.
Lisa Oldham:The Community Room is a lovely space as well. It's got windows down two sides, and it's carpeted. And the dividing wall that separates it from the rest of the auditorium is all upholstered. So it's got really lovely acoustics, even with 50 Odd babies, crawlers in this space with their caregivers. It's not too noisy. It's just lovely. So it
Miki Porta:Well, it goes back to the flexibility. That's what's nice is that, you know, because it was flexible by design, even some of the things that we thought we were going to use one way and we've ended up using another as you said, it's kind of a nice problem to have. And it's not really a fail. It's fun. It's like when you move into a new place, you know that rule about don't do anything for a year and live with it and see what happens, see what the corners tell you and how you feel in them. So
Andrea Bunker:So bridging off of that, as you look toward the future, do you have any plans or hopes for the building, or for how you might foresee it changing? or adapting?
Lisa Oldham:I feel as though, if you think about the concept of potential energy and potential growth, I keep thinking of the analogy of somebody on a diving board who has just approached the end of the diving board and has just jumped with both feet and landed on the end of the board and is that that lowest point on the springboard and all the future potential is still waiting to be released in that spring. I feel like that's where we are right now. We've moved in. The spaces are incredible. They're doing all the things we hoped they would do. We've been in for six and a bit months and we're getting used to the spaces. The community is loving us, loving everything about the library. And now we need to focus on okay, how do we keep growing this? How do we keep growing the services, the programs, keeping the collections fresh and relevant, making sure the spaces are available to everyone all the time? And how do we fund it all? And I just feel like the future is so so bright here right now, because we've got just incredible momentum, both in terms of the community's reaction, staff enthusiasm, the team's enthusiasm and excitement and the entrepreneurial thinking that is going into some of the design of new services and programs. So I feel like we're just at that moment where there's so much potential energy still to be released. And the more we can focus on the values, you know, that we all believe in our commitment to sustainability, in every single thing we do, our commitment to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion. And the base concept that we are a platform for community lifelong learning. Like with all of those things, is context. I feel like we're at the starting line for what can be even more.
Miki Porta:I hope that it can be a model for other people, of not just what's possible in libraries, but you know, libraries can actually heal the world. You know, these are spaces that uplift people, nourish people, welcome people. I mean, you name it, it is the last non commercial, radically inclusive space that we have. And it's a starting point. It's not everything to everyone, but it is something for everyone. And so I'm hoping that in a world with so much potential, but also so much brokenness, that the library can serve as a starting point for that healing, for that rebuilding that needs to take place.
Lisa Oldham:I love the word nourish. It's so exactly the right word for what I hope we're doing. I think it would be very easy to say, well, you know, you had this very affluent community, who was able to do this special thing, that's really not the full story. I think it's not untrue, we have had great good fortune to be able to tell our story to people that believe in this story, and had the means to help us do this. But they didn't have to, they did because they believe in the power of libraries. They believe in what Miki just said. And I think there is a next piece to this, which is the idea of being the model is that I hope that anyone who would come here and see this from another community would start to expect more from their municipality, wherever they live, and say, "We expect more from our town, to make sure that our library is also an excellent place for all of us to be, to read, to learn." And that maybe that is the really big enduring value here. If that happens, if people say,"It's not good enough to have a shabby library where the carpets are fraying, and it's leaking," which is things we used to have,"It's not good enough, we deserve more." Everyone does. Every human being deserves to have such a lovely space for learning, dedicated to learning and community building. And I hope that's what the big legacy is.
Andrea Bunker:I think these are beautiful sentiments to end on and really poignant ideas to be thinking about. You know, as we talk about all of these elements of sustainability in your building, I hope that these are things that our listeners can hold on to to sustain themselves through the process, because it can be an arduous one, but one that's well worth it. And we can't thank you enough for sharing all that you've shared, for being so candid, and really teaching us about your process and your building and your service model, and hopefully raising awareness about other elements of sustainability that we may not have encountered before. So thank you both for sharing.
Lisa Oldham:Well, thank you so much for inviting us. And I think I speak for us both. We're easy to find on our website, if there is somebody working on whether it's sustainability, or the work that we're doing in ESG, or a new building. And if there's something that we might be able to share from our experience that someone could find valuable. I don't answer the phone because I don't have one but I'm always on the end of an email.
Miki Porta:Yeah, me too.
Lisa Oldham:Thank you so much for inviting us!
Miki Porta:This was really great. This is really, really great.
Andrea Bono-Bunker:Thank you. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Until next time,