Amber: without further ado I wanted to turn the presentation over now to Elizabeth
Elizabeth: Thank you amber, my name is Elizabeth Gray, and I am the adult audience strategist at
Elizabeth: Monroe County Public Library and today I'm going to talk a little bit about how
Elizabeth: I connected with our homeless population in Bloomington First I'm going to set up,
Elizabeth: kind of what our area is like, and some of the issues that we've had, and then
Elizabeth: after that Mickey Needham will step in for a few moments and talk about the
Elizabeth: Harwood method that we use to connect with people, and then I'll come back on
Elizabeth: and talk specifically about how I used that method in getting to know patrons who
Elizabeth: are experiencing homelessness. So let me talk first a little bit Monroe County,
Elizabeth: Indiana. We are located in south-central Indiana, we have a population of nearly
Elizabeth: one hundred and forty seven thousand Bloomington which is where the main
Elizabeth: branch of our library is located in the county seat, Elletsville is another town
Elizabeth: that's located in that County as well, and we also have a branch that's
Elizabeth: in Ellettsville. We have lots of fun outdoor stuff,
Elizabeth: this is a picture of Lake lemon here that I took myself, so I'm going to brag
Elizabeth: for a minute. Um, Bloomington which is a city, is a population of nearly 85,000
Elizabeth: and I have the breakdown there so you can see 86.7% white, 4.24%
Elizabeth: African-American, 5.26 % Asian, 0.29% Native American, 0.07% pacific
Elizabeth: islander, 2.01% from two or more races, and then we have 1.1% from other races,
Elizabeth: just labeled as other race, and we have Indiana University in our town as well.
Elizabeth: In fact this picture here was taken from sample gates which is sort of where IU
Elizabeth: starts. This is our main street which is called Kirkwood, and the library
Elizabeth: is right down here. So literally, if you're coming down our Main Street you
Elizabeth: will walk right into Indiana University. We have about 50,000 students at IU, so
Elizabeth: you can imagine, in fact Amber and I were just talking,
Elizabeth: when the students leave for the summer, it makes it a little bit easier to drive
Elizabeth: around, to get into restaurants, and to see movies as well so that makes a big
Elizabeth: difference. The major employers in Bloomington are IU and they employ about
Elizabeth: 8,800 people. Cook which is a medical equipment producer,
Elizabeth: and they employ about 3,500 people, and then we also we have IU Health which is a...
Elizabeth: our hospital is owned by IU Health, but they also have lots of clinics and doctors
Elizabeth: offices, and they employ about 2,250 people, and here is the main branch of
Elizabeth: our library, so Monroe County Public Library, we currently have two branches.
Elizabeth: The picture here is of our main branch, which is in downtown Bloomington again
Elizabeth: it's located on Kirkwood Avenue, which is our main street. We have a really vibrant
Elizabeth: downtown area in Bloomington. We also have another branch in Elletsville, it is
Elizabeth: currently just starting a major renovation. So the branch will have to be
Elizabeth: closed for a short period of time. A few months actually, but and they're doing a
Elizabeth: major renovation there and we're also in the early stages of planning for an
Elizabeth: additional branch, we expect that branch to be in the southwest portion of the
Elizabeth: county, but a place hasn't been determined yet but we are starting
Elizabeth: working on that, with a bookmobile and a van, as well. The bookmobile goes to
Elizabeth: places outside of the city limits, and our van actually goes to assisted living
Elizabeth: facilities, they're able to roll like carts of different books and different
Elizabeth: kinds of materials off, and people who have limited mobility are able to browse
Elizabeth: a smaller collection of the library, and check things out there. Last year we
Elizabeth: served over two million physical items, and we have just over 150 employees so
Elizabeth: we are an incredibly busy library, now to talk a little bit about homelessness in
Elizabeth: Bloomington, and we currently have an average at any one time of 333
Elizabeth: people who are homeless in the city. We have four homeless
Elizabeth: shelters, one is for families and one is low barrier. A low barrier homeless
Elizabeth: shelter means that someone who is drunk, or somebody who is high on drugs
Elizabeth: is still allowed to come into the homeless shelter, most homeless shelters
Elizabeth: are not low barrier, most homeless shelters do not allow
Elizabeth: people who are drunk or high to come in and stay at their facilities. We have a
Elizabeth: winter shelter, which is called our Interfaith winter shelter. It was
Elizabeth: developed, um several years back by a number of churches who banded together
Elizabeth: and wanted to provide a low barrier shelter, that's the shelter that is low
Elizabeth: barrier so that people who are homeless weren't in any kind of danger of
Elizabeth: freezing to death outside in the winter. So it is open in the winter, it moves
Elizabeth: around to different churches, and allows people to sleep there and we have one
Elizabeth: shelter that stays open during the day. That is called Shalom Center, and it's
Elizabeth: sort of the hub of the population who is homeless here in Bloomington. It provides
Elizabeth: lots of services besides just a place to sleep, they also provide showers so that
Elizabeth: people can get clean, they have washers and dryers so that
Elizabeth: people can wash their clothing, and they also have social workers on staff so
Elizabeth: they provide lots and lots of services for people who are homeless. Um, we have one
Elizabeth: emergency shelter for victims of domestic abuse, and then we have two
Elizabeth: locations that serve meals daily. Just one of those serves meals on Sundays, so
Elizabeth: there's only one place on Sundays for people to go to to get food and we do
Elizabeth: have three food banks in Bloomington, so if you think about the shelters that we
Elizabeth: have, Shalom Center has about 40 beds, wheeler mission can house up to 80 men,
Elizabeth: and they only house men, and then we have the New Hope family shelter which can
Elizabeth: house up to six families at a time. When the Interfaith winter shelter is open it
Elizabeth: can house 50 to 60 people, that's far under the three hundred and
Elizabeth: thirty three people that we have who are homeless, so obviously there are a lot of
Elizabeth: people who are not able to find shelter. So although we do have a lot of services
Elizabeth: in Bloomington, and resources, we don't have enough for everybody so that is an
Elizabeth: issue as well. I want to talk for a few minutes about stereotypes about homeless
Elizabeth: people, and the misconceptions that people commonly have about people who are
Elizabeth: homeless, and then the repercussions that these misconceptions can cause. So one
Elizabeth: misconception is that all homeless people are
Elizabeth: criminals. There are some homeless people who have been released from prison and
Elizabeth: they don't have anywhere to go and so they are homeless, but we also have
Elizabeth: people who receive tickets for sleeping in public, they can be arrested
Elizabeth: for loitering, they can be arrested for trespassing, and these are all called
Elizabeth: status crimes, because those only happen to you if you don't have a home, so if
Elizabeth: you don't have a home, and you sleep in an abandoned building and you get
Elizabeth: arrested for trespassing, that's not going to happen to anybody that has a
Elizabeth: place to live or a place to sleep. Another misconception is that all
Elizabeth: homeless people are drug addicts, again only about 50% of the population of
Elizabeth: homeless people are actually addicts, one thing that you might think about with
Elizabeth: addicts, and we'll talk about the mentally ill in a minute, the people who
Elizabeth: you generally notice are people who are addicts, or who are mentally ill because
Elizabeth: their behavior is strange. So there are a lot of people who are walking around
Elizabeth: doing everyday business who are homeless that you don't even realize are homeless,
Elizabeth: but only about 50 % are actually drug addicts, or alcoholics, again a lot
Elizabeth: of people think that almost all homeless people are mentally ill, but in fact only about
Elizabeth: a quarter of those who are homeless have a severe mental illness, some of those
Elizabeth: who do are also addicts, because they're trying to self-medicate, there's also a
Elizabeth: stereotype that all homeless people are lazy, and if you have seen the typical
Elizabeth: day on the homeless person it generally doesn't allow much time for laziness.
Elizabeth: Most of the day is spent seeking shelter, seeking food, getting clean yourself,
Elizabeth: getting your clothes clean, trying to find resources, if you have ever had to
Elizabeth: apply for any kind of benefits, it's not easy, so there's a lot that goes into it,
Elizabeth: and it's not that they're just all lazy, another misconception that people who
Elizabeth: are homeless, it's a result of all of their poor choices. Many homeless people
Elizabeth: do to many different thing,s that could include they became unemployed because
Elizabeth: their job was shipped overseas, it could be that they became ill or they became
Elizabeth: injured, and they could no longer have the same job that they'd had for many,
Elizabeth: years they may become too elderly, and they can't work at their job anymore,
Elizabeth: so it's not that they chose that, but it's just a number of things that happen
Elizabeth: to them. A lot of people who are homeless are actually employed but they're
Elizabeth: underemployed, so being underemployed means that you can't pay for your basic
Elizabeth: living necessities, you can't pay for your food, and a place to live, and
Elizabeth: clothing, and transportation. So some of those people who don't have homes
Elizabeth: actually do work, there's also a misconception that people who are
Elizabeth: homeless, they just want to be homeless, if you think about again just the
Elizabeth: general day-to-day existence of people who are homeless, it's probably not
Elizabeth: something that they would choose, so when you think about all of these
Elizabeth: misconceptions, what do they lead to? Well the main one that they're going to lead
Elizabeth: to is fear, and if you fear people what do you do? You try to avoid them so that
Elizabeth: initially is going to cause us a decrease in interaction between the
Elizabeth: population of people who are homeless and just the general population it also can
Elizabeth: make people reluctant to help. So if you believe that homeless people are
Elizabeth: criminals, or drug addicts, that's probably not going to want to make you
Elizabeth: donate to shelters or to services that can help people get out of the cycle of
Elizabeth: homelessness. It can make it very difficult to add shelters and services.
Elizabeth: Again, if you believe that a bunch of drug addicts and criminals are going to
Elizabeth: move into your neighborhood at the new shelter you're probably going to fight
Elizabeth: against that because you think it's just going to bring a lot of trouble. So once
Elizabeth: again, it's just causing a homelessness cycle to continue, it
Elizabeth: can also make it more difficult for our people who are homeless to find jobs, or
Elizabeth: housing because once again if you think that all people who are homeless are
Elizabeth: criminals, you're not going to want to hire them to work at your job. A lot of
Elizabeth: people say, "why don't they just go to a shelter" and one of the things that I
Elizabeth: just talked about, there just aren't enough beds in Bloomington you know.
Elizabeth: There just aren't enough bed for all people who are homeless to find a
Elizabeth: shelter at night. There also a lot of barriers, probably the main one being
Elizabeth: that you have to be sober if you want to get a bed for the night in a shelter, and
Elizabeth: if you're an addict, or an alcoholic, it's difficult to maintain that to be able to
Elizabeth: find somewhere to sleep. Another barrier that you might
Elizabeth: not think about, pets are generally not allowed in shelters. I have two dogs and
Elizabeth: I can tell you if I was homeless, and they told me my two dogs couldn't come
Elizabeth: in a shelter, I wouldn't go in that shelter either, I would stay with my pets,
Elizabeth: and I do know we have several people who are homeless who are here in downtown
Elizabeth; Bloomington that have dogs, and I know they would not leave their dogs just to have
Elizabeth: shelter for the evening, they're also staying off limits for the
Elizabeth: shelter's, so it might be that you can stay there for one or two weeks, and then
Elizabeth: you have to be gone for 30 days, or some amount of time before you can be able to
Elizabeth: stay in that shelter again. Many homeless people have fears about staying in
Elizabeth: shelters. They fear that they'll contract a disease, or they fear that they'll
Elizabeth: contract parasites if they stay in a shelter. They're also afraid of violence,
Elizabeth: and possibly theft, and if you think about the fact that most people who are
Elizabeth: homeless are carrying everything that they own around with them, that's a great
Elizabeth: fear to have if you think some of those things could be stolen and that's all
Elizabeth: that you have. Another issue could be that the hours of the shelter are not
Elizabeth: compatible with the work schedule, so if you have someone who doesn't have a home,
Elizabeth: and they're working nights there isn't a shelter where they can go to sleep
Elizabeth: during the day. Some people who are homeless have problems with the check-in
Elizabeth: processes, they feel like they're invasive or they feel like they're
Elizabeth: disrespectful to them, and so they just choose not to go through that. Some
Elizabeth: shelters just don't have handicapped accommodation, so if you have someone
Elizabeth: that has a disability, then they're not going to be able to use those
Elizabeth: accommodations, another thing that you might not think about a shelter could
Elizabeth: separate family members, so some shelters only take men, and some shelters only
Elizabeth: take women and children and, they might not want to split up their family
Elizabeth: members. So rather than split up they'll just sleep outside in the tent, or sleep
Elizabeth: in their car. Some shelters are run by really religious organizations, and
Elizabeth: those organizations, sometimes they tell people that if they want to spend the
Elizabeth: night then they have to attend services at that, whatever that religion is, and so
Elizabeth: some people have a problem with that. There's also a great lack of privacy or
Elizabeth: fear of crowds, which can happen as well, and some people fear the loss of control
Elizabeth: if they go to stay in a shelter. So there's lots of
Elizabeth: reasons why they just don't go stay in a shelter, that you may not have
Elizabeth: thought about before. So now I'm going to talk specifically about Bloomington, and
Elizabeth: then we're just gonna call it the 'crisis in Bloomington.' Actually, in our
Elizabeth: newspaper, this was last summer, they had a big headline that said 'Crisis On Kirkwood,'
Elizabeth: and this is a picture of what was going on, and I'll talk more in depth about
Elizabeth: that in a little bit, but I just wanted to give you some background. So this may
Elizabeth: be similar to things that have happened in your towns, so if you look at 2015 we
Elizabeth: had 16 opioid related deaths in Bloomington, in 2016 we had 19 opioid
Elizabeth: related deaths in Bloomington in the first six months of 2017 we had 17
Elizabeth: opioid related deaths, I could not find statistics on the entire year but I'm
Elizabeth: guessing we kept going in about the same direction so we probably ended up around
Elizabeth: you know 30 deaths that were related to opioid abuse so that has basically
Elizabeth: doubled compared to what it used to be in June of 2017 and that's around the
Elizabeth: time home things kind of came to a head in Bloomington there were 27 other doses
Elizabeth: in Bloomington in just one week it was just a barrage of calls for emergency
Elizabeth: services to come and help people, and you think that there were probably a number
Elizabeth: of overdoses that weren't even reported to emergency services, so the spike and
Elizabeth: the drug use was just incredible. We also had a 53 % increase in our jail
Elizabeth: population from 2016 to 2017. The jail estimated that 90% of those who were
Elizabeth: inmates there were there on drug or alcohol-related charges, and then if you
Elizabeth: look at how this affected children so CASA, which is a court-appointed special
Elizabeth: advocate for juveniles, it's a volunteer organization and it's where a person is
Elizabeth: an advocate for a child, so they advocate for what is the best for that child who
Elizabeth: has gone into the court system due to either abuse or neglect, and that's their
Elizabeth: only interest. The volunteers only interest is just what is best for the
Elizabeth: child, to advocate for the child so the need for those volunteers was less than
Elizabeth: 400, and in 2014 it jumps to nearly 700. 2017 and another number that's kind of
Elizabeth: scary. In 2015, the number of newborns born with addiction in Bloomington was
Elizabeth: 23. It was 64 in 2016, and then it was 60 in 2017. We also had an incident in
Elizabeth: December of 2017, Bloomington police responded to a heroin overdose in of a 15
Elizabeth: year old girl, and they said that that was the youngest overdose that they had
Elizabeth: ever attended. As she survives, the police had to give her Narcan which is what
Elizabeth:they used to reverse overdoses, and she came back around and was fine. So it's,
Elizabeth: it's progressively gotten worse. This picture here is on Kirkwood Avenue, which
Elizabeth: is where the library is located. What happened was in July of 2017, the police in
Elizabeth: Bloomington evicted people experiencing homelessness from a popular downtown
Elizabeth: park. It's called People's Park, so that the population of homeless people in
Elizabeth: People's Park had steadily grown. They were sleeping there, there was increased
Elizabeth: drug activity that people were complaining about, and so it finally got
Elizabeth: to the point where the police just went in and evicted everybody from the park.
Elizabeth: So a homeless encampment was then set up on the main downtown streets. Most of it
Elizabeth: was on Kirkwood, which again I showed you that's where our library is located and
Elizabeth: it also runs right into IU. It's about 50 people were set up there, they just set
Elizabeth: camp up there, and this is a picture that was in our newspaper, and it was like the
Elizabeth: one that I showed you before. This in fact, the library is just catty corner to
Elizabeth: where you're seeing this almost encampment here so it was just right
Elizabeth: there, they just were right there on the street, there were lots of complaints to
Elizabeth: the police into the city about aggressive panhandling, there was lots of
Elizabeth: harassment of people walking by, there were reports of people using the
Elizabeth: restroom outside, there were reports of people blocking the sidewalk with their
Elizabeth: belongings, the police and emergency services were called nearly two dozen
Elizabeth: times to the area, to respond to overdoses, and sometimes it was for the
Elizabeth: same person multiple times, so of course the citizens,
Elizabeth: people who own businesses, and visitors were extremely upset and they were
Elizabeth: complaining to the city that you know these people should be moved along. The
Elizabeth: other issue is, right when this happened was when students who were coming newly
Elizabeth: to IU, they were coming with their parents to visit and they're frequently
Elizabeth: they walked downtown right from Bloomington to go eat, and so they were
Elizabeth: kind of faced with what was going on, as well as what I want to point out as well,
Elizabeth: although this was extremely troublesome I want you to think about the fact that
Elizabeth: it was only 50 people, and we have over 300 who are homeless. So once again, it
Elizabeth: was just a small percentage of the entire homeless population that were
Elizabeth: causing the issues, so the respond to this, the city created a downtown safety,
Elizabeth: civility, and justice task force. They increased the police presence downtown.
Elizabeth: Center Stone, which is a mental health provider here in Bloomington, IN.
Elizabeth: Bloomington Parks and Rec, they created a partnership that would employ people who
Elizabeth: were homeless to go around to city parks, and they could pick up trash and weeds.
Elizabeth: and they were paid for that. They were hired as temporary workers, and then
Elizabeth: Shalom Center which again is our main homeless shelter, they expanded their
Elizabeth: hours so they were able to stay open during the daytime hours on Saturdays,
Elizabeth: and Sundays. Which they haven't done in the past, and this was done because a
Elizabeth: group of downtown business owners and the city, they put up money so that this,
Elizabeth: they would be able to fund this, and this helped too because this was a lot of
Elizabeth: times when people who didn't have homes would come to the library, and you know,
Elizabeth: if they were drunk or something like that, they would come in library to find
Elizabeth: a place to stay, and that's what it's sometimes caused issues we also have
Elizabeth: city resource officers, and those officers patrol downtown, but they're not
Elizabeth: dressed in police uniforms, they have on like shorts, and a polo shirt, and their
Elizabeth: purpose isn't to arrest homeless people, but it's actually to connect to them
Elizabeth: with the resources and services that can help them, and can help them break the
Elizabeth: cycle of addiction, and/or homelessness. Whatever they're facing. We have called
Elizabeth: them several times to the library when we've had issues, and then Monroe County
Elizabeth: Public Library started partnering with center stone. So we offered, it was just
Elizabeth: walk in, center stone would come in and be in one of our meeting rooms, and
Elizabeth: people could walk in, didn't have to make an appointment, and
Elizabeth: they would deal with substance abuse, they would help them with life skills
Elizabeth: training, relapse prevention, assistance finding community resources, or applying
Elizabeth: for benefits, or health insurance, and it started out they were just here a couple
Elizabeth: of days to are a couple hours a week but it expanded, and so now they're here on
Elizabeth: Mondays from 9:00 to 12:00, Tuesdays from 9:00 to 4:00, and Friday from 10 to 2. So
Elizabeth: that has been extremely helpful as well, so in the midst of all of this going on,
Elizabeth: Monroe County Public Library started working on a new strategic direction in
Elizabeth: the summer and fall of 2017. So the leadership team, which is our management
Elizabeth: team, were tasked with meeting with community stakeholders, and we were to
Elizabeth: either meet in person with groups, and do focus groups, or we could contact them by
Elizabeth: email, and we could send a link and have people do, see their input through a link,
Elizabeth: however they wanted to do it, we let them choose, and we use the Harwood
Elizabeth: method. When I first heard about the Harwood method, I was a skeptic and I did
Elizabeth: not think that it was going to work very well,
Elizabeth: and I'm going to let Mickey now talk about the Harwood method, and what goes into it.
Mickey: Hello, this is Mickey Needham, and if I break away and break into big coughing events, please ignore it for just a few
Mickey: minutes, I'm suffering from a bit of a cold right now, so the Harwood method, um,
Mickey: some of you probably heard about this, but I attended a workshop in just, I
Mickey: forget when it was October of 2015, in Detroit, it was sponsored
Mickey: by ALA with the Harwood Institute providing training in their method for
Mickey: engaging your community, for turning out, as they say, and what I want you all to
Mickey: think about for just a minute is the situation Elizabeth has been describing
Mickey: for you, had ramifications for the library at all kinds of levels. Um, that she
Mickey: mentioned, you know that it did, we did call the resource officers a lot, but
Mickey: apart from that we were also, we were also in a situation where the homeless
Mickey: people suffering from homelessness, perceptions those misconceptions that
Mickey: Elizabeth talked about created PR problems for the library as well, we
Mickey: were in a place where comments about all the homeless people in our neighborhood
Mickey: were predominating. People were saying they were afraid to come to the library,
Mickey: they were indicating all those things that she talked about. The, the
Mickey: perceptions that people have about what's going onm and how it impacted how
Mickey: people saw the library. So kind of prior to this 2017 period when everything
Mickey: boiled up, some of the library staff had been through the Harwood training which
Mickey: really asks for librarians to think about approaching actionable community needs,
Mickey: library needs in a really different framework instead of saying, okay we
Mickey: are the library and we have this problem, what are we going to do inside to deal?
Mickey: With it, are we gonna make new behavioral rules, which is often what we do, are we
Mickey: gonna count numbers, and talk about how we need to modify services so that this
Mickey: happens instead of this inside our space, or you know we look at numbers, we take
Mickey: apart our processes, we think about the project work we're doing and we don't
Mickey: really work hard to connect it with the community at large or to make sense of
Mickey: it as a social community problem, well obviously with with homelessness you're
Mickey: looking at a large national problem, and especially a community problem in this
Mickey: case, and so the Harwood method which really
Mickey: does say 'stop using all those old tools you used too' views about how to approach
Mickey: library situations to start thinking about how you make meaningful change by
Mickey: looking outward, by becoming engaged with your community, and by really
Mickey: understanding the experiences, and the aches, and the lives of the people you're
Mickey: serving as opposed to assuming you in the library have the picture, and that's
Mickey: all you need. So what this basically is, is the Harwood method, it's just a
Mickey: framework for having community engagement, for relevant community
Mickey: engagement. The Harwood people are trying to get lots of organizations to
Mickey: participate to understand what this is, so that groups can meet and work
Mickey: together to meet goals that they set for their community as expressed by the people who
Mickey: live in it. for people who are in it, so it's a set of tools and ways of talking to
Mickey: people, and to help communities and organizations connect with their people.
Mickey: It's subjective, it's experiential, it's ethnographic, it is not objective,
Mickey: it is not measurements, it's not something that those of you who like
Mickey: numbers are going to feel all that comfortable with, because there aren't
Mickey: any really, you might use those numbers to try to support your work to help you
Mickey: understand what's going on, to do analysis, to think about what you
Mickey: experience in here, but it isn't the framework that you use, you use this
Mickey: search for public knowledge through community conversations, through
Mickey: exercises where you actually leave the library out of it or whatever
Mickey: organization you work with, you leave yourself out of it and you try to figure
Mickey: out what's going on in your community. So in this case the Harwood method seemed
Mickey: to give us some way of approaching how to deal with this, how to how to make a
Mickey: difference in our community for people experiencing homelessness now, the whole
Mickey: picture can be very complicated in lots of different part,s and lots of different
Mickey: tools, and we just focused on a little section of it. We focused on using a tool
Mickey: that's comes from, they have what's called a 'community conversation' and that
Mickey: community conversation is a series of ten questions that if you ask, hopefully
Mickey: you will be coming out at the end with information that you can then use to
Mickey: create an understanding for what what it will take to make meaningful change.
Mickey: These 10 questions I'll show you those really briefly here, but before I move on
Mickey: one of the things is that you set up, you don't do this in the library, you do
Mickey: this, these out in the community, these conversations you have a note-taker and
Mickey: a facilitator who have very well-defined roles that do not impact the discourse,
Mickey: you have a product at the end where you try to really analyze the material
Mickey: you've got to create what they call the web of, a map of concerns, a web of
Mickey: concerns, that highlights where the real nuts of the of the issues are where the
Mickey: real rubber meets the road for these people
Mickey: and it's happening, and the organization then
Mickey: has to figure out who what who they will partner with, what meaningful actions
Mickey: they want to take, how they're gonna move forward, and work to make a.. make it, make
Mickey: meaningful change for the community not just the library. So it yes, it defines
Mickey: library action because we're participating in it, but it is not
Mickey: focused on the library first and foremost. So okay, so the ten questions
Mickey: just, I'm not going to necessarily read them here for you, you can have these
Mickey: from the slideshow as..at the end, but they are all very much asking people
Mickey: what kind of community do you want to live in? What do you, what do you think
Mickey: you've experienced, because of these issues? What have you had happen to you?
Mickey: What would make a difference, who do you trust to make changes, and who you know
Mickey: who...who would make sense to...to be part of the world that makes a difference for
Mickey: you, and so those questions are the basis for it. What we ended up doing, and
Mickey: Elizabeth is gonna talk more about this, is what's called the 'ask exercise' which
Mickey: is a modification of these questions, it's, it really is just for very basic
Mickey: questions. She used these in her conversations with people experiencing
Mickey: homelessness as the basis for what we then chose to do in our strategic plan,
Mickey: and where we added a whole thing about inclusivity and access, and all kinds
Mickey: of different things, but anyway we'll move forward on that, and she will show
Mickey: you exactly what she did based on the Harwood map, here's Elizabeth again.
Elizabeth: OK, so, we went using the Harwood method, and again I told you I was a sceptic. I thought we shouldn't
Elizabeth: ask these huge general questions, were never gonna get anything good out of it,
Elizabeth: but I decided to move forward, and do as I was asked, and I contacted different
Elizabeth: groups, but I'm focusing now on visiting the Shalom Center. So I emailed them, and
Elizabeth: I received a response from the Assistant Director who said that she would like me
Elizabeth: to come and do a focus group at the Shalom Center, and this is just briefly
Elizabeth: what I see, the email that I sent to her, so I went to them, I didn't expect them
Elizabeth: to come to me, but I went to them and I let them choose the date and time that
Elizabeth: worked for them, I also brought pizza and soda, because I thought that might be a
Elizabeth: little more incentive to get people to come and I had 12 attendees, which is
Elizabeth: really good when you're doing a focus group, 10 to 12 is probably a good number.
Elizabeth: If you get more than that, it's really hard to get out of people, to be able to
Elizabeth: talk. You want everybody to be able to give input, and also something I want to
Elizabeth: mention when I ask these questions, and this was kind of hard for me because I'm
Elizabeth: sort of a like, I wear my heart on my sleeve type of person, but you are not
Elizabeth: there to respond to what they say, so even if they said something about the
Elizabeth: library that wasn't the way the library really runs,
Elizabeth: I couldn't respond as I wanted to and jump in and be like no, no, no, that's not
Elizabeth: how the library is. I had to just be basically, you know, I was the person
Elizabeth: there to just get their feedback . So I went there, I had 12 people, they were
Elizabeth: eating pizza, drinking soda, and all of them are people who are currently
Elizabeth: homeless, and so I asked them our questions, we decided to narrow it down
Elizabeth: to four questions, and so the four questions were 'what kind of community do
Elizabeth: you want to live in?' Then, 'what do you believe are the two or three most
Elizabeth: important issues facing our community?' 'What types of services and resources do
Elizabeth: you think I mean Monroe County Public Library should provide to meet our
Elizabeth: community's needs?' And 'thinking of our community in five to ten years,
Elizabeth: what would the ideal MCPL be like?' So I'm going to talk to you about the
Elizabeth: responses that I received from the clients at Shalom Center, and then I'll
Elizabeth: tell you how those compared to the overall responses that we got from the
Elizabeth: community at large. So the first question "what kind of community do you want to
Elizabeth: live in?" and what I heard most often at Shalom Center was kind and understanding,
Elizabeth: a compassionate community, a non-judgmental community, a safe
Elizabeth: community, and non-discriminatory community, and interestingly enough the
Elizabeth: top community responses overall were, we we lumped in, "welcoming/ accepting,"
Elizabeth: inclusive and open minded fell in one, safe and then caring, kind, helpful, and
Elizabeth: compassionate, so they were basically the exact same responses that we received
Elizabeth: about from clients of Shalom Center, our people
Elizabeth: who don't have anywhere to live, and the community as a whole, so the second one
Elizabeth: 'what do you believe are the two or three most important issues facing our
Elizabeth: community?' Responses from Shalom Center clients
Elizabeth: 'homelessness, addiction, a lack of mental health resources, a lack of affordable'
Elizabeth: 'housing, racism, economic disparity, and crime, and our tough community responses'
Elizabeth: were 'affordable housing, opioids and addiction, and homelessness'. So once again,
Elizabeth: we had quite a bit of overlap between the community at large, and the
Elizabeth: clients of shalom said "I feel like the most important things facing our
Elizabeth: community?" and "what types of services and resources do you think MCPL should
Elizabeth: provide to meet our community's needs?? This wasn't my favorite answer, somebody
Elizabeth: said "I think you should have more branches, I think anywhere I go in town
Elizabeth: you should just have a branch there" and I was like "find the money yourself for that."
Elizabeth: They just wanted us to have libraries everywhere, they mentioned job training,
Elizabeth: computer classes, they mentioned finding ways to bring all people together, which
Elizabeth: I thought was very interesting, and they also mentioned assistance with rehab and
Elizabeth: recovery, and our top community responses, life skills, job and career resources,
Elizabeth: serving at-risk populations, and continued materials in programming. And
Elizabeth: then the last question "thinking of our community in five to ten years, what
Elizabeth: would the ideal MCPL be like?" and Shalom residents, or I'm sorry Shalom clients
Elizabeth: said the same but with even more services the library should just come
Elizabeth: directly to us, more branches, more technology and work, more with the
Elizabeth: community, and by that they meant the other organizations, for us to partner
Elizabeth: more with other organizations. So the community responses were up to date
Elizabeth: technology tech help, and computers, more branch locations, and again books
Elizabeth: materials and e-content, so as you see there were lots of overlap between the
Elizabeth: ideas, and the thoughts that the folks that Shalom Center had, and the people
Elizabeth: that Bloomington at large have, I might mention something on this the
Elizabeth: response to this final question as well, we had a lot of responses from people
Elizabeth: who replied through our link, and they, you could, you could say anything you
Elizabeth: wanted, so it was just a big block where you could write in any text that you
Elizabeth: wanted, and so lots of people wrote things that they thought were wrong
Elizabeth: with the library, and interestingly enough one of the top concerns that came up was
Elizabeth: that homelessness, and issue concerned with safety at the library
Elizabeth: we're in our top three issues as barriers to service at the library, so we
Elizabeth: needed to make sure that we thought about that as well.
Elizabeth: I just also wanted to mention some additional comments that I got, I would
Elizabeth: not have gotten these comments had we asked very specific questions like, "you
Elizabeth: know what kind of programming do you think the library should have?" Probably
Elizabeth: the one that I found the most fascinating was a man said, "it's Cook, IU,
Elizabeth: and the library, those are the big three in Bloomington. You should use your
Elizabeth: voice more in the community, so I just found it fascinating that he literally
Elizabeth: felt like that was sort of the status of the library, and somebody else said "well
Elizabeth: we don't mean to come in drunk and cause problems," and then a woman who was there
Elizabeth: looked at him and said "you all need to get some act right" which I thought was
Elizabeth: was very humorous too. They also said we know which librarians
Elizabeth: are nice to us, and we wait for them when we need something, and so that was a little
Elizabeth: bit disheartening because whether people are generally just the way they come off,
Elizabeth: it doesn't seem as friendly, or if they just really are uncomfortable you know
Elizabeth: dealing with people who are homeless, it's definitely something that we need
Elizabeth: to be aware of, and so out of all of this information from the community we got
Elizabeth: four goals for strategic direction and the one that we chose to focus on as the
Elizabeth: adult core is the adult core group we decided to focus on promote a climate of
Elizabeth: civility inclusiveness and compassion so we took that and as we worked with staff
Elizabeth: members on their work plans we wanted to try and have everybody address it in
Elizabeth: some way in their work plans we wanted to think about programming in ways that
Elizabeth: we could do this through our programming and then since I am responsible for the
Elizabeth: adult core group I had to prepare an action plan that told different ways
Elizabeth: that we were going to address the strategic direction goal and how we
Elizabeth: would you know somehow address this so some of the things that the library
Elizabeth: is doing to respond to this we started having computer classes at Crawford
Elizabeth: apartments Crawford apartments were apartments that were built for people
Elizabeth: who have experienced homelessness long time along with their apartment they got
Elizabeth: computers they got laptops so we went with some volunteers from what used to
Elizabeth: be Celeste but now it's the School of Computing and informatics, there are
Elizabeth: volunteers who do tech help and they went with some of our staff members to
Elizabeth: the Crawford apartments and they are doing computer training so it's
Elizabeth: everything from like very basic how to just use the computer you know up to
Elizabeth: like how to try and and find a job online and things like that I mentioned
Elizabeth: that we increase the hours force understand being at the library to offer
Elizabeth: help for people we created a program that was called coffee and conversations
Elizabeth: and so what that is is we have different groups within the community come in and
Elizabeth: talk a little bit about what their group does and then community members can ask
Elizabeth: them any kind of questions that they want to ask them, and we just started
Elizabeth: doing that and we've had Bloomington City Council come, and we also have had the
Elizabeth: Bloomington refugee support network here i'm hopeful that maybe we'll be able to
Elizabeth: have a representative from the Shalom Center at some point come in and do that
Elizabeth: as well and we created a vital team so our VITAL (volunteers in tutoring
Elizabeth: adult learners) and so we created a team to look at maybe areas where we're not
Elizabeth: addressing the needs of the people who use vital services and so one thing that
Elizabeth: we wanted to do is start a job search assistance drop-in time so people can
Elizabeth: just come in while we're going to set times we don't started it yet but
Elizabeth: they're gearing up we're going to set times when there will be staff available
Elizabeth: and people can just drop in and use their computers and to look for jobs
Elizabeth: they can be shown how to find jobs online how to fill them out online
Elizabeth: applications as well as how to create resumes and things like that in October
Elizabeth: we are going to do a human library project, if you're not familiar with that
Elizabeth: the human library organization started it, it's where you have people who
Elizabeth: represent different groups in the community who may be there are you know
Elizabeth: things that people don't understand about them and they're they're booked
Elizabeth: for the day and patron can come in and check them out
Elizabeth: and then they can sit down and have a one-on-one conversation we're hoping to
Elizabeth: have somebody who either is currently experiencing homelessness or has in the
Elizabeth: past being one of our books and then someone can sit down because it's a
Elizabeth: whole lot different if you sit down and chat with somebody face-to-face and
Elizabeth: understand what they have gone through and dealing with homelessness and if you
Elizabeth: just walk past them on the street and you can ignore them so we're hoping that
Elizabeth: that'll bring about and some changes as well we're also partnering with the city
Elizabeth: they are doing a mental health 101 training and they have allowed us two
Elizabeth: days to have our staff trained with the mental health 101 so hopefully that will
Elizabeth: help us deal better with people who are experiencing mental health issues and be
Elizabeth: more compassionate when we do deal with them the outcomes that we're looking for
Elizabeth: when we're doing these things we want patrons to discuss different ideas
Elizabeth: attitudes and beliefs with compassion we want patrons to learn about those who
Elizabeth: are different from themselves and we want patrons to interact with community
Elizabeth: members different from themselves as well we want our community to embrace
Elizabeth: differences and we would like marginalized community groups to become
Elizabeth: integrated with the mainstream community community that's definitely something
Elizabeth: that we want to look at when we're talking about people who have been
Elizabeth: experiencing homelessness the last slide here gives you some resources the first
Elizabeth: is a book that was published by ALA, "Librarians guide to homelessness: an
Elizabeth: empathy driven approach to solving problems preventing conflict and serving
Elizabeth: everyone it's a fantastic book I read it very recently and it just sort of gives
Elizabeth: you a different take on homelessness makes you think about things from a
Elizabeth: perspective that you may not have considered before I also put links to
Elizabeth: the safety civility and justice initiative that the city of Bloomington
Elizabeth: has done it explains it really well in there a link to the Harvard Institute
Elizabeth: which McKee talked about and then a link to the human library organization in
Elizabeth: case you're not familiar with it that can show you what that is I know our
Elizabeth: emails are available so you can ask us questions there but I did want to leave
Elizabeth: a few minutes here at the end if there were any questions we can answer those
Elizabeth: as well
Amber: hi Mickey and Elizabeth have also offered us PowerPoint slides which you
Amber: can also download today we're gonna keep this window up until read him so you
Amber: I have some time to download vote and see that evening come on mention that Ryan
Amber: Dowd has an excellent newsletter so if you go to his website you should be able
Amber: to subscribe to that and now I'm gonna turn it back for questions to Mickey:
Mickey:I see here there's a question about circulation policies regarding individuals
Mickey: experience in homelessness that is something that I can address this
Mickey: briefly here we do allow for modifications to our existing
circulation rules and regulations mostly concerning regular addresses the address
need is a you know we put a when we issue new cards everyone does have to
provide proof of a an address in Monroe County and this does create challenges
for people experiencing homelessness so what we worked out was an agreement that
with the shalom center and the other shelters in the community that they can
provide if they can send a letter in and say that they will accept mail for this
patron at that place we will go ahead and make sure your card goes on so
that's the one real barrier we got around with that
dancing homelessness it's just that address verification that did that
barrier for us yeah does anybody else have any other questions for myself or
Mickey we're happy to answer anything at all
I will add on this to what Mickey said and we do not have we don't limit people
more homeless from checking up they have the same checkout rules as everything
else so they can check out anything just like everybody else code
so somebody else will have customer service training specifically dealing
with marginalized populations such as the homeless or methods to encourage for
their professional development in that regard when we had staff day most
recently yes we did have a session that specifically dealt with it was actually
the people from center stone who come here and provide services and they came
and specifically talk to us about issues that you might have in dealing with
people who are homeless or people who are expensed experiencing mental health
issues they did talk a little bit about how to deal with exactly what the next
question is dealing with aggression or delusions or things like that so they
did explain some of that previously we had one and I will tell you the best
thing that I ever learned in dealing with somebody who's having a delusion is
just to not feed into the delusion which is literally asking with something very
simple like what did you have for lunch today and I've used that on more than
one occasion and it actually works it snaps them out
of their delusion and it just brings them back to where they are the guy that
did that training I think he was from center stone too he said it will be a
relief to them because it just like forces them to like come back into where
we're at today and it actually and worked really well let me give it I
think Mickey wanted to say something let me let her talk for a second we have
definitely that focus is going to be forth ongoing in our training because
this mental health where sessions we're doing in the coming months will be
focused on on problem behaviors things that with strategies for working with
people who are experiencing problem problems it is we do have problems with
behavor in the library like every library and we do have a policy this is
was a question someone asked about sleeping in the library it's one of
those behavioral policy pieces that people feel very strongly about one way
or the and you know we talk at various points
about modifying but we do have one that says you're not allowed to sleep while
you're in the library and we do enforce it and we do have security that does
that so it isn't much the staff themselves don't often interact with
people on that basis but security does do that for us I hope that answered that
question I've kind of lost track of where we are here I'm not sure silver so
no seis understand understand sorry yeah center stone is the group you're in
Mickey: Bloomington I don't know if they travel elsewhere let me let Elizabeth talk
about that. Elizabeth: actually I think center stone is located in other places, I'm not sure
Elizabeth: if it's called center stone but I know that that they're located in other
Elizabeth: places as well but the other question also asked if we have people complain
Elizabeth: about the homeless population and we do we get lots of complaints about that I
Elizabeth: have had people complain to me literally in person and I had somebody tell me
Elizabeth: that the man who was homeless was not really a person and so I let them know
Elizabeth: that in fact he was a person and that everybody who was using the library
Elizabeth: appropriately is welcome to use the library in the same way and it does not
Elizabeth: matter where you live or what you do for a living
Elizabeth: but we do get complaints and we had on one of complains I'd say five to seven
Elizabeth: years ago we had a big big problem with behaviors prone behaviors in library and
Elizabeth: we were having lots and lots of complaints and we had there really shore
Elizabeth: up our behavioral policies and we had to really shore up enforcing those it went
Elizabeth: so what it took some time but we were really cognizant about doing it
Elizabeth: appropriately and it went so well that when our Transportation Department built
Elizabeth: a new bus station, they came to us, and that's for us to do the same training
Elizabeth: that we had done it takes time though because previously we did not have very
Elizabeth: specific behavior rules we just be like don't bother other people which isn't
Elizabeth: really a rule so we had a spell those are very specific
Elizabeth: you know you can't if you're drunker under the influence of anything campaign
Elizabeth: the library and things like that so we had to have some very specific rules
Elizabeth: that we could point to and deal with those problem behaviors and that did
Elizabeth: help turn it around that did help turn it around quite a bit
Elizabeth: did you show the results of your community conversations back with the
Elizabeth: community or just internally we shared them internally and we shared them with
Elizabeth: the Board of Directors which of course then that's always available to the
Elizabeth: public believe in and specifically share them with the public we did reach out
Elizabeth: back to each of the groups that we contacted and tell them that if they
Elizabeth: were interested that we went forward those results onto them I know the
Elizabeth: people that I worked with nobody responded and said that they wanted to
Elizabeth: see the results but it'll come out when we put out our in your report think you
Elizabeth: can but the annual report it'll have it'll have a with Zenith you know what
Elizabeth: we've planned for our new strategic plan for the ongoing few years did you do
Elizabeth: specific planning and training with the local police force are you in agreement
Elizabeth: about how to handle issues for people experiencing homelessness so the only
Elizabeth: training that the police have done with us actually came in and did an active
Elizabeth: shooter training actually that was that my request was because I felt like you
Elizabeth: know if you're prepared for everything then a year you're better able to handle
Elizabeth: it so I just felt like we should be prepared I'm so they haven't done any
Elizabeth: training with us but they're really good whenever we call the police force is
Elizabeth: very close the actual office is very close to where the library is it's just
Elizabeth: a few blocks away but when we call they're really good about coming lots of
Elizabeth: times we call in just ask if they'll send their resource officer because we
Elizabeth: just know that somebody needs they need assistance or they need you know we can
Elizabeth: tell that they're having mental health issues or we had a guy who he was having
Elizabeth: trouble getting together all of his bus fare and so we just call the resource
Elizabeth: officer because they're really good about finding ways they're not
Elizabeth: intimidating that they can help people like that so it's actually been a pretty
Elizabeth: good relationship that we've had with them and they've had coffee
Elizabeth: conversations that's right we have had we have had coffee with a cop we called
Elizabeth: it actually had pizza with a couple times too so we would have like coffee and
Elizabeth: doughnuts or we would order pizza and then the the resource officers would
Elizabeth: come in and they would just chat with staff and
Elizabeth: it kind of gave us you know a chance to get to know each other and to talk to
Elizabeth: each other a lot of issues for having and things like that the police do
Elizabeth: sometimes just come in here on their patrols and again it's the resource
Elizabeth: officers usually, and they'll just kind of stroll through the library you know,
Elizabeth: just to kind of make sure that everything is okay, so we have a good
Elizabeth: relationship with the police. Okay, you have any other questions I think we're
Elizabeth: just about out of time
Elizabeth: thank you all, yeah Emily, I really appreciated your time and I hope this
Elizabeth: was useful information for you so thank you here's Amber.
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