Episode 42: Kim Hewitt (Director of the Watertown Free Public Library)

Meet Kim Hewitt! She's the Director of the Watertown Free Public Library. In this conversation we chat about her early experiences with books and libraries, her career journey from leading oral history projects to helping people search for unique news stories from the late 1800s, some behind the scenes on how the library processes materials and thinks about larger values such as access to information, privacy, and censorship, then we finish with some updates such as what's going on with the cafe, One Book One Watertown, and the patron survey that's wrapping up at the end of January.

(Click here to listen on streaming apps)

Take the library survey that ends in January!
Visit the library website

Come out to the next Creative Chats event on February 28th with featured guest Jamie Kallestad

—————

Sign up for the Little Local Conversations email newsletter to know when new episodes are out and keep up on everything Little Local Conversations.

Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at https://watertownbusinesscoalition.com/.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Transcript

Matt: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Kim Hewitt, who is the director at the Watertown Free Public Library. So I'll let her introduce herself and we'll get into the conversation.

Kim: 0:26

Hi, I'm Kim Hewitt. I'm the director of the Watertown Free Public Library.

Matt: 0:29

Great. So you love books and the library, we know. Let's go back in time. Where did that love of books and the library and that start for you?

Kim: 0:38

Sure. So we moved around a lot as a kid. I think my first four years of school I was in six different schools and libraries gave me an opportunity to access materials and books and stories that other kids were reading and gave me an opportunity to relate to them. That always felt really important because we didn't grow up with a lot of means and so we didn't have access to that stuff otherwise and so they felt like a really special place because you could just go and anything that's there you can take and borrow for free. And that always just felt really special because that wasn't the case in other places. If you go into a store as a kid, you're getting told no all the time, and at the library it's always yes.

Matt: 1:18

Right. What kind of books were you getting into that got you started?

Kim: 1:21

Yeah. So I really loved Goosebumps. I was definitely staying up late reading about ventriloquist dummies that come to life and scaring myself and having to, you know, get up early before the bus to finish the story and find out how things ended. So those were really big for me. I also really loved Anne of Green Gables. I think I really related a lot as an outsider, you know, like curly red hair and the interest in being outside and the natural curiosity. It just felt very similar to who I was as a person. And so those really were formative books, probably in my elementary years. And then I think as I got into middle school and high school I started reading more dystopian fiction, like 1984 or a book called the Power of One that always really stuck with me. That was about apartheid South Africa. I think those are related things because I always just had an interest in how the political is personal. That has guided a lot of my reading since, I think.

Matt: 2:20

And do you have an early experience at a library that was particularly powerful, or just, you know, the experience of being there?

Kim: 2:28

Yeah, I don't remember like the first time walking into a library. I remember the feeling of the experience, the feeling of just amazement at all the things that are there. I get to take home as many books as I want. That just felt really special. I think that is part of the wonder of it now for any kid walking in is the toys, the puzzles. It's all there for you and you don't need to give us money for it, it's just free.

Matt: 2:53

Yeah. Cool, so let's continue with your journey then. So you obviously loved books growing up, but how did that turn into your career path?

Kim: 3:00

So my mom was a single mom and she went back to school when I was maybe in eighth grade and got her master's in library sciences and we had spent a lot of time in libraries over the years, of course, but that was probably what really cemented for me that it was a career path. I grew up sort of knowing that I did not want to be in a corporate environment and I wanted something that had variety and made an impact in people's lives. And I took my time in college figuring out what I wanted to do and ended up doing American Studies, because that is a really good preparation for a master's in librarianship. Because you're getting breadth, not depth. You know you've got a little bit of knowledge about a lot of things and that's a really good starting point for helping people do research on whatever project they come and ask you about. You might have some passing knowledge to start with.

Kim: 3:51

From there I went to Simmons and I actually did archives as my concentration during my master's. And at that point I knew I wanted to be in a public library and I thought I could kind of square those by being a special collections librarian and clearly my career path took a different turn, but that is sort of how I came to the field. I felt like it just really aligned with my core values, like the access to information and you know, it just doesn't matter who you are walking into the building, you have the same access as everybody else. And that doesn't exist anywhere, especially now, but even 15 years ago or so that was still uncommon. There aren't many places like that anymore and I think the cornerstone of democracy is that freedom of access, and it's not just to books, it's to information and knowledge and self-growth and that just really speaks to me.

Matt: 4:39

Yeah, we'll get more into some of that later on, but let's continue your journey a little bit. So, once you get out of school, take us through your early journey in the library world.

Kim: 4:47

Sure, I was lucky enough to get a part-time job at the Newton Free Library in circulation before starting my program and that was really beneficial because in school you're talking a lot about the theoretical and it's nice to have the application, like to see some of that in practice and how that might be different at times. Once I finished my master's I was still in circulation there but I had been running an oral history project for the city called Newton Talks and that was in collaboration with the historical society, with the senior center, with the high school, and that gave me a lot of opportunity to see that I really liked managing a project or kind of being a leader. That people looked to me to be the leader even though they had years of professional experience on me or were way higher up in the hierarchy of the municipality. And I think that really helped me figure out that maybe I also liked the management side of things. And I was waiting for a reference librarian position to open up at Newton because there were people retiring slowly and when one of those openings came up I was able to take it.

Kim: 5:51

It was helping the accessibility librarian with homebound deliveries, with accessibility tools and things like that. So I really appreciated getting that knowledge. I think that's extremely important in libraries for us to be as accessible as possible. And then, shortly after, the person who was doing special collections retired and I was asked to take that role and that felt perfect for me at the time because I had the archives background and I wanted to be in the public library and I was like, great, this is it forever. There's a lot of independence to it, a lot of fun helping people find things that just aren't as easy to find as a book on the shelf in the regular collection.

Matt: 6:28

What's the craziest thing someone was looking for, or the coolest thing?

Kim: 6:31

We would get a lot of requests to go back for newspaper articles. There was something that the police department actually wanted to find because they were trying to honor someone who had passed in the line of duty, and I was able to find some articles about his death, which had been like in the late 1800s or something where he had tried to move a downed electrical wire and perished. Yeah, that was one of the more interesting ones. A lot of it is about houses, and genealogy has just been really huge, especially since the advent of like ancestry. So people would come in for things like that too. But tracking something down like that was just really fascinating. And also collecting the oral histories for Newton Talks was really fascinating, because we were talking to people who had served in World War II. That was a really incredible experience. And then we were talking to immigrants about their experience, and all of that was just very interesting and powerful. So I really felt like that is where I was going to stay.

Kim: 7:26

And then I was asked to step into an acting assistant supervisor role for a department of 40 people. That totally changed my career trajectory. I have a lot of leadership qualities that people kind of notice, I guess. So when I was asked to take that over, it was a great opportunity to see if I liked it and I really did like a lot of it. But by the time it was available as a permanent opportunity I had already moved to Waltham because I found a department head position as the head of circulation there and really was loving that.

Kim: 8:01

I think there in particular the head of circulation was tasked with quite a lot. It's different at every library but basically there I was able to be sort of the director on the floor, like I was who people came to when there were issues with patron behavior that we needed to handle or to help kind of coach them through having hard conversations with people about what we can and can't do for them. That really cemented for me that I wanted to continue to move up in leadership roles.

Matt: 8:28

Yeah, so, like you know what comes up a lot in this is, I think people think of library, they think like books and information, but a lot of it is dealing with people. So how did you learn how to deal with people from all the different perspectives of your roles?

Kim: 8:44

So I think a lot of things about dealing with people come to me kind of naturally, like my instinct is to talk it out when I see something that I think is unfair or unjust. That's just kind of my personality, and I can be assertive and direct. That's probably just also a part of not being neurotypical. And over the years what I really had to learn was more about the technique of how to handle people in certain situations, really adopting the benefits of, I guess, embracing the gray areas, I would say. Like I always want staff to feel empowered to make the best decision that they can, knowing our mission and values and our policies and working within those to figure out what can we get to yes on.

Kim: 9:30

For me, I felt the freedom to do that in Waltham and that was a really big learning opportunity for me. And that when you get something wrong, you know, you just have a conversation about how you might do it better and you learn from each other and you learn from watching your coworkers interact. I think when I started in libraries I was very strict about the rules. Like if you had a fine, I might be the person saying like, yeah, but it says it was checked in at this time, and so you were late. And then started to really just watch other people and see, like, oh, I actually don't have to enforce this all the time. It's okay to just give the benefit of the doubt. And I think that, coupled with my interest in having hard conversations and not letting things kind of become amplified by not speaking about them, made me a good candidate for leadership, I guess I would say.

Matt: 10:16

So we'll get into Watertown eventually, but I like this, like getting into the weeds a little bit here. So what is the governing principles of libraries then if it's not these rules, what's above that that goes down?

Kim: 10:26

Sure. So we have a lot of professional values. If you look at the American Library Association, they have a whole library bill of rights. And the main functions, I think, or the main pieces of that that really appeal to me, are intellectual freedom, privacy, and just access. Providing access, and it's not just to books, it's to knowledge, to, you know, we have our library of things now, so of course it's expanded in terms of material that we offer. But it's also access to people who can help you find what you need, even if we're not the expert on that thing. And those are really the guiding values and I think they align with some customer service values too.

Kim: 11:06

But each library is different and you might find that some are more strict about their policies, and you know policies are there for a reason. But I always say there are sometimes where an exception is appropriate and as long as the patron kind of understands, I can help you with this today. Next time we just need you to bring X, Y, or Z. We don't need to focus on enforcing the rule over enforcing our cultural and professional values. I like us to be able to find that area where we can get to yes as much as possible.

Matt: 11:37

Right. All right, so let's take it to Watertown. What brought you to Watertown? Where's that path?

Kim: 11:47

So I was at Needham as a director for just about two years and we had done a lot there. We had just finished strategic planning. We had just finished a space planning study, the designs of which are now going into play, which is really amazing to see. I got to do a lot there. I was very happy there, but then I saw this opening at Watertown. I live in Waltham and so I've been familiar with Watertown maybe more than I would have been familiar with Needham before and just been aware of what they had done over the years, like having Hatchmaker Space that was one of the first in the area. And when we started ours in Newton or when I started ours in Waltham, it was sort of looking at some of the templates that were around, and Watertown was one of those. And I think Watertown is more the type of community that I wanted to be serving long term. I really loved being in Waltham where you're serving people that really need your services but also a lot of people that don't. They just believe in the value of libraries and they want to support it and so they come and get some books there sometimes and that type of thing. And Needham was really great. Patrons were wonderful, but most of them had everything they needed at home and it didn't feel as impactful, I guess. And Watertown is this nice mix as well, where some people are just here because they just love a library, and that's great. Other people are here because resources aren't available for them elsewhere. And while I do believe that's not the library's issue to solve, I think we are part of a solution. And I really love that there are people that are here all day, every day, as well as those that are just running in to pick up a hold or come to a story time or a program. So it's a nice mix of that and that felt really appealing to me. In a way that was different from how Needham was where people just sort of had what they needed. We didn't have people that were hanging out most of the day. I don't think I ever had to talk to a patron about a behavior issue or anything, and it's not that I love doing that, but I want to be in a place where you're serving people that are coming from different backgrounds, and that was really appealing. So I decided to just throw my hat in the ring and see what happened and was fortunate enough to be picked and have been really happy with the decision.

Kim: 13:50

I feel like our staff are really compassionate and caring. I'm someone who always believes, no matter how good you are, you can be better. So while we have great customer service, like, I still want to work on certain things and, you know, I think that's also just part of why I fell into leadership is that I'm always thinking about what we could do better or different and how to serve people's needs in a new way. And I feel like Watertown is open to that and the community like really loves the library and are very vocal about it, and that's really special too. I think most communities probably would say they love their library, but it feels particularly vocal in Watertown. And we're just connected to a lot and we have some positions in the library that are rare for most of the libraries around us that make it so much smoother to do certain projects or meet people where they are. Like having a communications and design position, having an outreach position.

Kim: 14:44

A lot of times you'll see at libraries they have a reference librarian position that has sort of a focus on outreach, but it's not like one person's thing. And a lot of things should never be one person's job right, like we are all responsible for outreach and making connections in the community. But it is really nice to have that position to fall back on and to help strategize across the organization so that we're not all reaching out to the same parties and things like that. So I think there were just some special things about Watertown that were really attractive and made me feel like, oh, let me just see what happens. Yeah.

Matt: 15:18

Yeah, so what year was it that you came on board?

Kim: 15:20

It was last year. Well, not last year anymore. It was 2023, September of 2023. So it's been a bit over a year now.

Matt: 15:29

Yeah, and what have been the things that you've gotten rolling or seen get started since you've been here?

Kim: 15:35

There's been quite a lot. They've had some really great ongoing programs like One Book, One Watertown. They had Celeste Ng last year. This year on March 18th we'll have Ross Gay come virtually. So they've had like some of these existing programs and those have been really great to support and find funding for and make sure can continue to happen. But then we've also been really looking at our internal architecture, I guess I would say.

Kim: 15:57

So some of it isn't as visible to the community and some of it is. Like we did the You Belong campaign. We're still sort of doing that because I want people to feel welcome and like they belong as part of our community, whether you take that as the Watertown community or the library community. I think it's just the messaging we wanted. And if I didn't have the position of the communication and design person, Jamie, you know we wouldn't have been able to do that effectively. So that was a really big, fun initiative for us. It's still ongoing but it led us to doing a language access plan to kind of identify issues that we are aware of or ways that we are inaccessible to people who maybe don't speak English or are deaf or blind and to think about how to become more accessible. That's a long-term plan. There's some of it that's things we can do instantly. Some of it is going to take a lot of time, but it really helped us focus on our priorities for that. And then I think one of the things I'm most proud of is getting an assistant supervisor position.

Kim: 17:01

We have a department called access services, which is our circulation department, but also acts as a technical services department, which is the department that's usually responsible for, like, processing all the materials that come in, taking them out of the box, checking the invoices, putting on the covers, putting on the stickers, all the things putting it into the catalog. It is unheard of, to me, to not have that as a department, and we only had one person here who was processing stuff. And that seemed like a problem because we're one of the highest circulating libraries in the state and you can increase your turnover of materials if you're getting them out faster, right. There's just a lot of efficiencies that are able to be put into play with more people. And instead of creating a new department head position and going that route, which I think may have been easier in some ways to have like a totally separate technical services department that's responsible for a bunch of things that are being spread out amongst our librarians and that one person. What I decided to do instead was to create an assistant supervisor position within that department so that we could move someone up internally and they could sort of focus on the circulation type of tasks, like the scheduling of the desk and those types of things. That gave us opportunity to hire someone as the supervisor who could really take on the technical services responsibilities and really start creating those efficiencies. Because we have reference librarians that are spending hours cataloging material when that should be one person's job. And so we got a part-time cataloger position as well. We're about to post for that, actually, because we had a turnover in our supervisor position and so we were sort of waiting for that person to get on board a little bit before we move forward with then getting a cataloger that will then report to that person. So that's one of the things I'm most excited about I think that I directly did,

Kim: 18:45

But I think our staff just have really great ideas and it's been really awesome to be a part of helping shape them and find ways to make them happen and support that. Yeah, I'm just really pleased we have just so much great stuff happening here and it's all thanks to the wonderful people who work here. So it's been really cool to just come in and observe that for the year, see what's working, what's not working, what areas can be sort of given more structure or more strategy put into, and what's working fine as is. And I think we're in a really fortunate position where people really love us and I think it's just only going to get better because we're going to be able to offer more with some of these different strategies and play in the back end.

Matt: 19:31

Yeah, yeah, I mean that makes a lot of sense. It's one of those things, as a patron, we have no idea about that. I mean I've never experienced any slowdown because of that, but that seems like it makes sense to do that. Are there any other behind the scenes things that people might not know about?

Kim: 19:47

I think that one of the biggest misconceptions about libraries is that we're just about books. And I know that that's probably talked about a lot more, so I'm not going to focus on it as much. But we do have so much more to offer. I often hear people asking like well, who can people go to to help find resources for housing or food or whatever? And there are meetings that the library is part of and it's like the library does that, like we do that. That's the reference librarian's role. Right, it's to help you find resources and connect you to things.

Kim: 20:18

But I think what I really think there's a misconception about is privacy in the library. There's actually state law that speaks to your intellectual freedom, or freedom of your intellectual pursuits in a library. We're a government agency and I think that might lead some people to believe that we share information and we don't. So it doesn't matter if you have residency, if you have a green card, if you have no documentation status. We don't know that, we don't care about it, we're not going to tell anybody if we do know, we just really respect patron privacy and we don't share information out. Like we can't even tell you what book you had out three months ago.

Kim: 21:00

If you returned it, it's now off your record. And that's in large part because intellectual freedom is such a big core part of librarianship that when the Patriot Act was put into play, there was a group of librarians in Connecticut that were really subversive about how to let people know that the FBI had been behind to request records and things. And I think then you saw a lot of libraries saying maybe we just don't need to keep those records either, because then there's nothing to provide if asked. So patrons can go online on their account and they can click a box to record their reading history. But if you don't do that, I couldn't tell you what you had out. I can only tell you what's on your account now. We see that a lot where people are like, did I already read this one? And you're like I'm so sorry, I don't know, but it's for a reason.

Matt: 21:40

I feel like I used to be able, I used to see it automatically. So when was that change?

Kim: 21:49

I'm not sure about here, but I think in general in the profession it was after the Patriot Act. Because there was a big effort to find out what people were checking out and what they were looking at and what their intellectual pursuits are. And the whole point of the library is you are free to pursue whatever information you would like and there's no judgment on that generally, like, as long as it's legal, we're not making judgments on your intellectual curiosities. And so you might want to take out Anarchist Cookbook because you've heard about it and you just want to see it, but that would probably get you on some kind of list if we were sharing that information with police or FBI or something, particularly in the years right after 911. It felt like that had sort of calmed down.

Kim: 22:33

But I think, as we've seen over the past few years, there's a lot of stories about censorship in libraries. That's a related topic, right, like if you are taking a book away from the community because one person objects to it, you're not serving the community. We’re seeing so many challenges to books that are about people who are LGBTQIA+, who are BIPOC, just these underrepresented stories in our libraries. And libraries have been complicit in kind of not looking at their collections to make sure they're representative of their communities, and that has really been a big change over the past few years. So it's related in that if you're offering books to people, the whole point is that you should be able to read about what you're curious about or want to know about without someone else in the community saying I don't like that and so we're taking it out of the library so no one can read it. You know it's your responsibility to read what you want to read. It's your responsibility to keep an eye on what your kids want to take out.

Kim: 23:32

But once they have their own card, they get to take out what they want when they come to the desk. We're not asking, did your parents say this was okay? We're not parents. We want to provide resources. We want people to be able to pursue their curiosities and have intellectual freedom. And that is inherently an anti-censorship position. And so I think people are maybe a little more familiar because of things going on in the news, but it is certainly worth repeating that we don't share information. We barely keep information to share and you know, without some kind of subpoena or something, you don't get records out of us. Like we want your information to be safe. We want you to be able to pursue the topics you're interested in or curious about without some kind of consequence I guess.

Matt: 24:17

Yeah. So the other thing you want to talk about was your strategic planning going forward, and so you want to talk about that a little bit.

Kim: 24:24

Sure. So I was very happy to have completed a strategic plan in Needham and then to find out that when I took this job, we were due to have ours done this year.

Matt: 24:35

You had your practice.

Kim: 24:38

Because it's kind of a big effort. They took a lot of work and it was really nice to feel like, great, we're done and we can now work on the things putting the objectives into play. And then starting over here. But it is a really great process. We get a lot of community feedback. I think it had been done differently here in past years. I think they had a smaller group of people. They had a few trustees, one staff representative, and maybe like one or two community representatives that sort of worked on the strategic planning process. And I really prefer kind of a more open approach. So you know, we also have a survey that's available now. We had our hard launch of it January 1st and we have about 700 responses so far, the majority of them being online, but some of them are in paper and some of them are in paper on our translated versions. And we've also been doing focus groups. We sort of asked staff for recommendations of patrons to speak with, like people who are regular users of the children's room. Let's talk to them during the parent focus group. Today there's a focus group for stakeholder groups like the Watertown Community Foundation and the Business Coalition. We've been really fortunate to work with Tyler Cote, the community engagement specialist at City Hall on this, so he's been running our focus groups and doing informal chats as well. So he's going to have some informal chats here on the second floor coming up soon and there will be publicity about that. We had informal chats in the children's room in December or November. So he's been really great working with Jamie and I to sort of strategize about how to promote what we're doing, how to get feedback from people. I think we're inviting a lot of people in this time. We had a staff focus group where admin wasn't present and so staff got to give a lot more input. And I think that all just helps us understand what the trends are and when we're sorting through that data after, that's what you're looking for, right. Like what are the things that we are maybe missing or not meeting expectations on, or adjusting what our expectations even are. How do we need to adapt to the current needs of our community? And all of these efforts, the informal chats, the focus groups and the survey really give us that insight. I think we hear a lot from people all the time, which is great.

Kim: 26:56

We have feedback forms on our website. People use them regularly, but this is an opportunity to get more granular or actually maybe even more holistic sometimes than what the feedback form might be telling you about. It might be hyper-specific. Sometimes it's about the noise level. I think that's one thing that going back to your earlier question about what people might not understand too is that sometimes things seem really like a simple fix, but it really isn't. Like the library volume. We get a lot of comments about how the noise carries to the second floor and why don't you just cover over this little glass area? And it's because our HVAC system is set up so that it comes from the top to the bottom and we would have to do a major renovation to even make that possible. And so it feels like there's these very simple answers for things sometimes and there's a lot of we're really reliant on the infrastructure of the city and other departments to make some of those things happen, and some of them cost a lot of money. So we get some of that hyper-specific feedback. We get some of that general feedback throughout the year, but the survey and the focus groups really give us a chance to see more of a holistic view. Some people might have a complaint about something, but they love something else, and it's interesting to hear that and see, are there trends in certain types of users? 

Kim: 28:07

I think we're serving our immigrant population with Project Literacy. We have about 890 students this year. It's constantly growing and we know immigration laws are going to be probably changing and so we're preparing for that and thinking about how to serve people. So, you know, is that community feeling like their needs are being met? Are school students feeling their needs are being met?

Kim: 28:31

And we had teen focus groups as well. So it really helps us get a sense and get a big picture, like a snapshot, of where we are and how we're doing. When the plan itself is really like a high level conceptual document. But then on the internal side we have action items that are related to it that we are releasing as an action plan each year that the trustees vote on and approve and that type of thing, and that's what gives us kind of direction on more specific things throughout the year. You know I don't expect like major changes they are generally fairly similar documents in reality but it helps us to understand what our action items need to be to really meet those objectives. So I'm really excited to see what we come up with.

Matt: 29:11

Yeah, and are there any, I mean, I know it's early, but are there any insights or trends that you're hearing or seeing already, or things that you're expecting to see or commonly hear, even without the confines?

Kim: 29:23

Sure, the number one thing is that we don't have enough space and people are noticing it. We don't have enough meeting room space. We don't have enough community room space. We're constantly booking our community and meeting rooms three to six months out. We just need more room. And our collections are downsized almost as much as they can be, I would say. There's very little fat to cut. You can't just create the space within the structure that we have.

Kim: 29:48

So, you know, the Watertown Square Area Planning Project is a big, exciting thing for us because we're part of it, and hopefully it will include some expansion for us. But that is the number one thing we hear. The number two thing that we hear is that parking is terrible. I think people think it's our lot and it's not the library's parking lot. It is just a municipal lot that happens to be behind the library, and so when we get comments about how is it a free library if we have to pay, or how come you can't offer some free spots? You know it's not fun to read. I understand where it's coming from though. But we just don't control that, and we're hoping that, with the Watertown Square area plans, as they've sort of been discussed, after the middle school is now done, when we get to that, we're hoping a lot of that will be rectified. So there's a lot of things we hear that we know we can't do anything about right now, but it's beneficial in making the case in the future. By then we'll probably have done one or two more strategic plans and I expect to keep hearing those things because demand just grows and grows.

Kim: 30:50

One of the more special things that I think we heard out of one of the focus groups was there's a patron who's here every day and they are doing their job from their laptop. They participate in a focus group and we found out they commute here every day from Quincy. And they come in right at 9 am so they're doing rush hour traffic to be here. They're leaving at like five. And it's because they said they had tried all the libraries kind of closer to them and felt like we were very welcoming and didn't make them feel judged for taking a phone call or being there all day. Which is just really special. I mean, like that's a pretty big compliment to drive from Quincy. It’s a commute. So we're learning a lot about our patrons, with more specificity, I think, than what we sometimes get otherwise, because we're getting to know a little bit more about the person behind the comment as well and sort of understand maybe the motivations or where it's coming from. Is it a misconception? Is it something we need to work on our publicity about? What can we do to be more welcoming? What do people find unwelcoming?

Matt: 31:49

When are you wrapping up that whole process? I mean the first stage of the process.

Kim: 31:54

So the survey will close the end of January and then we need to start processing that data. So I'm going to be asking my department heads to go through that with me and look for trends, identify those things that are standing out. I think all of those eyes on it are helpful because something might stand out to someone that someone else sort of overlooked or something. We need to have it approved by the June trustees meeting, and so we'll be working hard in February and March to really narrow down what we're looking at as a plan. So far, reading the responses, you know I'm keeping an eye on it as they come in and you are sort of just seeing trends, like I mentioned, about space, about meeting rooms. Wanting more room for collections. Wanting something for adults on the first floor which is actually one of the first things that I noticed when I came into the building for the first time and it's something that we want to work to change and adjust our lobby to bring the new collection down at least. We had been talking about that last year and then the Watertown Square area plan process started happening and so we felt like maybe it wasn't a good time to do that if we were looking at a bigger project. But now that it looks like it's more like seven to ten years away, spending the funding and working on making our lobby both more safe and more welcoming and to bring things down for accessibility. You know, if our elevator's out, you can't get up here to find anything for adults. But also if you're running into the children's room, it would be nice to have all of the new books there to sort of quickly peruse and grab on your way in or out, you know, and have a little more seating and things like that. So we've got some things that we're already aware of and are probably already in the works to fix, but we're going to have to really look at the trends.

Kim: 33:38

What are people saying? I don't expect a lot of surprises at this point. We are hearing a lot of the same stuff. Which is good because then we don't have to figure out as much of what to prioritize or deprioritize. Again, they are higher concept documents and strategies. Like now, one of our objectives in the current plan is centering the library experience. Right, you know it's all very broad, but our action plan related to that is very specific. And so it helps us identify maybe some of those projects. What's like the biggest priority project that would help us meet this objective, is what we're going to have to work pretty hard on in February, because I'm hoping to have something for the March or April meeting for trustees to start looking at. But it's high hopes because there's always a lot going on. 

Matt: 34:22

Well good luck with that. Before we, I think maybe we could wrap up with the One Book, One Watertown, was there anything else you wanted to touch on before we do that? Anything about the cafe going on with that or anything else?

Kim: 34:39

Oh yeah, that's actually, thank you for bringing that up. So the cafe has had a change in the vendor. The new vendor will be O’Some, but they're going through the permitting process and that is just taking as long as it takes. Which is a hard answer to have to give people that we don't know when it will open. They've been really trying to get vending machines at least, and had no luck finding a company that will serve them and that type of thing. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes that, you know, makes sense as to why it's not open yet, but we wouldn't necessarily just tell everyone all the time. We want it back just as much as everyone else. Our staff certainly miss it. We'll definitely let people know when it's coming, but we're hoping that they can start some of their construction soon and get it open. I mean now I'm hoping by the summer, but it sort of just depends on permitting and things like that. So we're all eager to get there, but it's been a long time without it. So I get the frustration, yeah.

Matt: 35:26

It's good to hear that update, just so people know what's going on. Cool. Then why don't we wrap up here with the One Book, One Watertown. Explain a little bit what it is and what you got coming this year for it.

Kim: 35:35

Sure. So overall it's a community read type of program where we're asking people to read the same material and interact with it through a variety of programs during the month of March. The reference team has traditionally been the group that has worked on selecting the title. And they selected the Book of Delights by Ross Gay, which is a book of short little writings where he did kind of one writing each day. So some are a little bit longer chapters, some are a page, some are maybe a paragraph, just his musings on finding delight in kind of the mundane. I think that in the world we're in, where everyone's go, go, go and there's always something bigger, better or whatever out there to accomplish or to have. We're very consumerist. One of the things I love about the library is that we sort of combat that consumerism and I think that the Book of Delights really helps speak to that and help people get into that state of mind of having enough and being grateful for what you have around you or noticing the things around you. So we're really excited.

Kim: 36:37

Unfortunately, Ross Gay won't be able to come in person, so he will be doing his author talk virtually. And that's on March 18th. I think there's going to be a lot of fun talking about and focusing on finding happiness in the world right now, and some of that is just the really small stuff like looking out the window and noticing what birds are in your yard or what flowers are coming up and appreciating those things. So I think it's going to be fun to invite people to really go through that together and converse about that.

Matt: 37:08

Yeah, but so people can check out the book? You have a bunch of those?

Kim: 37:11

We do have a ton of copies. I don't know how many we bought, but I'm sure it's near a hundred or more. Most of them are checked out. If you come through you'll see the display is mostly empty, and if a book goes up on it it's gone in two seconds. But we also have it available free on Hoopla, so that's one of the apps you get access to with your card. There's no waiting, it's something you can just use immediately, whereas on Libby you might have to be on a hold list. It's one use per copy. Hoopla has a different structure and so people can just check out the book. So we're hoping people will utilize that too if they're really eager to get it. 

Matt: 37:48 

But there's still time. It's March.

Kim: 37:49

Yes, yeah, and the author talk is until March 18th. Ross Gay has writings online. You can probably find shorter pieces of his as well, and if you're able to kind of think about the theme, you're going to be able to engage with our programming around it, whether you've read the book or not. And that's the whole point, is just bringing people together to talk about a theme. And I think that is one of the biggest things that libraries can help with today is providing those spaces for people to meet each other and understand each other and their neighbors and people from different walks of life better through these opportunities where you have this like third thing to do. You're not just face to face with someone you don't know. You are talking about a topic, but then you're also getting to know people and that is building community and that's what libraries are really about. So it fits very nicely into all of our values. Yeah, I'm very excited about it.

Matt: 38:39

Well, thank you for taking the time to sit down and chat and share your thoughts and your stories and everything about the Watertown Library and the what and why behind it. So it's been really great to hear that. So thank you.

Kim: 38:49

Yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity. I know you've met with several staff before and I really appreciate any chance that we get to really share what we're doing and have people have a more full understanding of what we might offer. So thank you.

Matt: 39:04

So that's it for my conversation with Kim. If you're listening the day this is coming out, it's the last day of January, so go take that patron survey. Let her and the rest of the staff of the library know what you love about the library, what you'd like to see more. Go check that out. I'll put the link in the show notes. If you like the podcast, head on over to littlelocalconversations.com. You can find all the conversations I've done, any upcoming events, like the second Creative Chats event that I'm doing at the Mosesian Center for the Arts next month at the end of February. February 28th. Which is actually going to be with another librarian there. I'm going to chat with Jamie Kallestad, who is a musician, singer/songwriter, but also is the communications and design specialist for the library. So a couple of library connections here coming up in the Little Local Conversations orbit. You can also listen to the podcast on any of the streaming services, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. And I do want to give a couple of shout outs here at the end.

Matt: 39:57

The first one is to the Watertown Cultural Council. Got a little grant from them this year to help support make this podcast. Appreciate that. I want to give them the proper credit, which is this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about the Watertown Cultural Council at watertownculturalcouncil.org, and you can find out more about the Mass Cultural Council at massculturalcouncil.org. I also want to give a shout out to a promotional partner, the Watertown Business Coalition. They're a nonprofit organization here in Watertown that are bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. Check more of them out at watertownbusinesscoalition.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.