I'm going to go ahead and get our recording started here.

I'm so excited to welcome our presenters for today's session.

My colleague, Kendra Morgan, is the program director at WebJunction.

She's joined by Karen Wilson, who is the Peer Outreach Coordinator at the Charles County Public Library in Maryland, and Drea Douglas is the Learning Coordinator at the North Bend Public Library in Bend, Oregon.

Welcome.

>> KENDRA: Thank you so much, Jennifer.

Thanks to everyone for being here today.

I'll also note that our senior project coordinator, Karen Medina, is also in the session.

You'll find her in chat sharing resources and answering questions.

So, we're looking forward to sharing information with you today and helping to introduce you to some new resources that are available through WebJunction.

So, today we're really here to discuss a new support kit for libraries on responding to the opioid crisis, which has been made available by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The primary audience for this kit is public library staff, but we definitely see broader possibilities for engaging your board, trustees, other members of your professional network.

It really can be used by libraries of all types, but some of the language may feel a little publicy, for lack of a better term.

But before we get started, I really do want to acknowledge that this work can be a bit stressful.

It can sometimes feel overwhelming and be hard.

It can also be incredibly rewarding.

But it is getting harder and harder to find someone who hasn't been impacted by the opioid crisis -- a friend or relative who has needed treatment, loved ones who have died or overdosed but not died.

We just don't know what people are going through, and the best we can do sometimes is to find the compassion and empathy to realize that even if it isn't hard on us, it is definitely hard on someone.

And that includes our colleagues, members of our community, our patrons.

So, truly, thank you for being here and for listening and for engaging in this work.

So, this research builds on work that we did with the Public Library Association from 2018 to 2020, which was a series of research-based case studies, which were also sponsored by IMLS.

We created eight case studies based on public libraries and how they were responding to the opioid crisis with their communities, very specifically with partners.

And then, based on that research, we developed a call to action.

That was published in February of 2020 and was really a compilation of steps that library staff could take in response to the opioid crisis that had some of the findings that emerged in the research.

This project and this phase of the work really expands on those steps and outlines activities and approaches that library staff can take to increase their knowledge, increase their confidence, which is a really big part of being able to do our jobs well.

When we feel like we understand something a bit better, we can often approach it a little bit mother confidently.

And really, be able to create and deliver programming and resources for your community.

So, one of the things that I want to do is learn a little bit more about what you all are doing.

So, if you look on the right-hand side of your screen in Webex, you should see a poll.

We're asking if your library has engaged in programming or activities related to the opioid crisis.

We're just curious if the answer is yes, no, maybe planning underway.

We'll see.

So, most folks are no.

A few people have planning underway.

That's great.

But 36% of you, it looks like, so far, have already done some type of planning and activities.

We'd love to see you share that in chat today.

Jennifer was mentioning that we really like to use chat to connect all of us who are joining from often all around the United States and often internationally as well.

So, feel free to add your responses in there.

So, that'll just helpful to know.

We're looking at about 60% have not done any type of programming or activities yet, 35% yes, and 6% of you have some planning underway, which is all great.

So, I'll go ahead and pause that poll.

And, we'll keep going here.

All right.

I'm really appreciative of the fact that you have all joined today, but a little bit of grounding into why this continues to be so important.

We've got 2.1 million people in the United States who are affected by substance use disorder.

Opioid overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the country.

We also know that libraries already provide so much information on health topics, right.

We are hubs for how to engage in healthy eating and exercise, understanding different types of medical conditions.

Libraries are already doing much of that work, so this aligns really well with that.

And then we're also seeing that library staff, they need support in how to deal with and address opioid use disorder related incidents.

So without support and awareness, staff and patrons can find themselves in particularly challenging and unfamiliar situations.

So, we're looking for an opportunity here to try and connect people with information that can help them do their jobs.

So, this is the 2022 statistic, and that is that 218 people die in the U.S. every day from an opioid overdose.

When we first started this work in 2018, which was really looking at the impact the opioid crisis was having on libraries, that number was 130 deaths per day.

This was 2023.

They're actually seeing it leveling off a little bit, but as with so many things, the COVID-19 pandemic really exacerbated the crisis.

This situation just really underscores a critical need for federal, state, local efforts to formulate everything from prevention, response, treatment strategies, and strengthening public health and public safety partnerships.

So, since the first phase of this project ended in 2020, there really has been a considerable amount of movement in the country on the opioid crisis, including major lawsuits against manufacturers, which have resulted in large financial settlements that are being directed to states and agencies to implement programs and provide support in local communities.

So, there have been some positive outcomes, but the devastation really has continued to exacerbate.

So this is just an overview of what we're looking at.

Sometimes it's just really impactful to see these numbers graphically.

We're looking at, like I said when we started, with 68,000 deaths a year.

We peaked in 2021 at 80,000 deaths.

So it's really just a very impactful health crisis and something that we can look to, to help provide some support.

As we look at the bigger picture of libraries supporting healthy communities, and that's really the broad brush that we are painting with this webinar and a lot of the topics that WebJunction has addressed over the year.

This quote came from a report on the Healthy Library Initiative, which was a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania and the Free Library of Philadelphia.

That library offers a great range of programs to the community that are connected to health.

The report noted that there were two particular strengths that libraries contribute to the community.

That is both accessibility and trustworthiness.

And these are two aspects that are really important to keep in mind as we go through the session today.

Accessibility and trustworthiness.

Our libraries are open to all.

They are accessible.

And you, the staff who serve the community, are seen as trustworthy.

That is a really powerful combination.

So, the support kit lays out six actions, each with a range of activities, and this is a -- I'm going to talk more about the format and what you're going to find when you're in the support kit, but these are activities that you can take on as a library, with your partners, and we're really looking to help engage stakeholders and really to help your colleagues understand a little bit more about the crisis, why it's something the library can and should engage with.

There are many obvious signs of substance abuse within our community.

Libraries are seeing that sometimes on library property, in the stacks, in the bathrooms, outdoors.

There are also hidden sides of this crisis, including someone who is suffering because a loved one is dealing with substance misuse, and they don't know how to help.

There are people dealing with substance use disorder, and the people in their life may not know about it.

The section on getting to why, which really helps to understand a little bit more and ground you in some of the fundamentals about how addiction happens, what's specifically different about the opioid crisis compared to other addictions, which can just be really helpful in helping to level set and prepare us for conversations.

So, these six steps are all laid out in the support kit, and each one you're going to find activities, videos, exercises that you can take part in.

One of the things that I want to emphasize is this is not a resource that you have to read or you have to do cover to cover.

It's pretty lengthy.

It's over 30 pages.

You do not have to do everything.

So, if you feel really comfortable about understanding the data that's behind this, you could skip that section and action two.

Maybe you want focus on how you can support staff, which is action five.

You can just read that section.

They're not dependent on each other.

Is it helpful?

Absolutely.

Required?

Definitely not.

One of the biggest hang-ups that I really think that we have in our work, in our lives is that we worry that we aren't doing enough or that we can't do the whole thing.

I really want to take that guilt, that barrier away.

Any step with this work is a good step.

And if you have 15 minutes, use those 15 minutes.

You don't need to be able to carve out 15 hours to make an impact.

This is a Word document of the support kit.

So you can edit it, you can make changes.

We really want you to be able to adapt it for your local situation.

So, I wanted to share a little bit of background about how the support kit was created and how we relied on library staff, including my co-presenters today, to inform this version of the support kit.

We opened an opportunity for people to apply to become a pilot tester in December of 2022, and we had about 75 libraries apply.

We selected 15 libraries to participate.

Each of the dots on this map represents one of the participating libraries.

One of the things that I want to emphasize is, you know, obviously we can't cover every community and every variable, but we were really intentional at selecting libraries that were coming to this work and testers who were coming to this work with different experiences.

So we picked communities that had a really high overdose rate.

We picked communities that had a low overdose rate.

We picked communities that had a high average income and lower average income.

We also looked at communities that ranged in size from just 2,000 to over 200,000.

 We looked at libraries that were single site.

So, they were a single location.

We also included libraries that were part of a system.

So we were really intentional in this.

One of the other factors was had they done anything related to the opioid crisis.

There was a mixture in that as well.

We wanted this to support people who were on, as we often say, all stages of the continuum.

Are you just starting this work, or is it something that you've been working on for a long time?

We wanted it to be able to resonate with different audiences.

So, some of the things that did resonate with testers, and we had a lot of feedback that was collected, but information on how people become addicted to opioids, that's a lot in action one.

People just found that really helpful in understanding how the crisis even started and why it's so difficult to overcome these issues.

Another area was activities around assessing existing and potential partners.

This is one area where, you know, we really are mindful that every library has a very different situation.

I'm going to dig into this a little bit more, but people found that helpful to think about, how they could leverage people in their networks and maybe folks who were new.

The idea of having an emergency response plan also resonated.

This is especially from not just being able to serve your patrons but your staff.

So, if something happens that is traumatic in your library, do you have an emergency response plan that includes addressing the impact of that trauma on that library staff member?

Can we make access to counselors available?

And understanding who needs to be informed and how we can step through the an emergency response.

And I go back to what I mentioned earlier.

That is that any step is a good step.

That was something that our testers told us they really felt.

They could see that doing one of these activities really could help make a difference in their understanding.

So, one of the things that someone shared with us is that they learned that they library didn't have a customer service policy and one was needed.

Staff development and training on patron privacy and trust is a crucial part of customer service.

You'll find this in a section that really addresses the importance of the language that we use with each other.

So, how are we talking about our patrons when we're in the back rooms?

How are we speaking to people when we're dealing with them at the desk?

And this customer service policy help prod vied a framework of how the library wants to aspire to do that work.

Another comment was that the resources gave many creative and doable ideas that can be easily implemented in a rural community, such as mine, including getting local organizations or medical professionals involved.

One of the things that comes up over and over again is that library staff are not subject matter experts in substance use disorder.

We are connectors.

We can bring in people who have that expertise.

We can make sure that our patrons have access to that, and we can do that through partnerships, through getting information from other local organizations.

So, I want to talk a little bit about the engagement and programming options.

For this, I'm really excited that you're going to get to hear from a couple of folks who participated in that pilot testing.

The types of programs and services that we've seen really range from high-touch things that involved training staff, a detailed partnership, such as a peer navigator program, which connects patrons to needed information and ideas about services in the community.

Often these peer navigators come with lived experience and have dealt with substance use disorder in their own lives or through loved ones.

Those types of programs are really intensive, and libraries are sometimes hiring peer navigators or are partnering with folks in the community to bring those people into the library.

But we also see a lot of -- it can almost be a one-off.

Naloxone training.

I've seen people talking about offering naloxone training to staff, to patrons.

That's something that could be a one-day activity, right.

My recommendation is that you try to offer it a couple of times a year so that you can get people when they're ready or when their calendars are open, but also when they've had a chance to learn a little bit about it without being in the training.

Maybe they hear about it from a co-worker or from a community member.

Allowing for a couple of opportunities for people to access that training can be really helpful.

We're also seeing, you know, awareness and information campaigns when we did this original project in 2018.

The Salt Lake County Public Library was engaged in a campaign to help bring awareness to the fact that opioids were really impacting their community and that that is something that was heavily promoted in the library.

You actually walked in, and in the vestibule of one of their branch, you saw a little pill bottle hanging from the ceiling that represents the thousands of prescriptions that were written every day.

So they were really helpful to inform folks.

Community reads and author talks are another really popular activity that align so well with traditional library services and often fit expectations of a traditional library program or you already have a model for how to do that.

So, lots of great ideas.

You'll see many of these captured in the support kit, as well as in the original research that was conducted.

All right.

So, with that, I actually want you to hear directly from several of our pilot testers.

First up is Karen Wilson from the Charles County Public Library.

Karen, thanks so much for being here today.

>> KAREN: Thank you.

I'm excited to be here.

I'm really happy to be able to share what we did in relationship to the support kit.

So, I just want to share that, yes, we were selected as one of the participants to test the kit, and first of all, just a little bit about where we are.

We are Charles County Public Library.

We're located in central-southern Maryland, and we have about 150,000 people in our community.

So, we are considered a bedroom community to Washington, D.C..

So there are a lot of folks that actually live in our community, but they work elsewhere.

So, with that being said, I also wanted to just mention that my role is actually as peer outreach coordinator, and that positions me to connect both the library people to community resources, as well as connecting organizations and agencies within Charles County to the library.

So, we find it very beneficial fortous partner with our local organizations and government agencies.

I will talk about that a little more in my presentation.

And so as you can see on the slide, we do have four brick-and-mortar branches.

We have a mobile library, but we also have two other vehicles that we use to bring services to the community.

One is a vehicle that mainly is designed for tech.

We call it our discovery lab.

Then we also have a 24-hour kiosk, which is located in part of the far-reaching areas of our county.

Then we have our newest branch, which is our detention center branch, located within the Charles County detention center.

So, we decided we wanted to participate in the project because, of course, we wanted some education, information, stimulation, and activation.

By that, I mean we wanted to of course educate ourselves.

As Kendra mentioned, yes, libraries are welcoming learning places and spaces for everyone.

So we wanted to be able to have trusted information that we could share.

So in participating in the project, we were able to learn.

Specifically, I was one of those people that found the "getting to the why" most impactful because it does matter, finding out what exactly has prompted the opioid crisis.

So, in educating ourselves, we would be able to give credible, trustworthy information to the public, and in turn, that would cause awareness to be more widespread in the community.

And then ultimately, change our community for the better.

Of course, we are of the same notion that just one thing is more than enough just getting started.

We didn't change the entire world, but we did do some things.

And so, when we were tasked with creating a program, the first thing I said, let's do a drug take back.

Again, one of the things most impactful was finding out how the opioid crisis actually has become.

So, understanding that there are many that have been impacted by this because they were receiving treatment for a regular surgical procedure or something.

It was a prescribed medication, a necessary medication they needed, and at some point, just the way the drugs interact with the brain and all of that was so fascinating to me.

So, I said let's look at taking the drugs out of the community.

Of course, the first thought I had was let's work with our law enforcement officers.

Upon contacting them, it was a hard stop.

It was a big no.

They actually shared with me that they typically don't participate in drug take-backs because they tend to be a deterrent to people bringing back the drugs.

I said, well, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world.

So, of course, we had to pivot.

In pivoting, just going about my normal activity, we had an outreach event.

I met with one of our representatives from the department of health.

They were actually presenting Narcan training.

They were actually doing it on site.

I went and just spoke to her, and she mentioned that -- and I shared my idea, my idea of doing a drug take-back in the community.

She mentioned that, well, we have these pouches.

You know, that might be something that you could do.

Not knowing anything about that, being the library person that I am, I went back to research and found out, ah, these Deterra deactivation pouches could be just the thing.

So we did.

We pivoted and partnered with the department of health.

They provided the educational materials, and they also provided the Deterra drug disposal pouches.

As a result, we had a very successful program.

I say it was successful because we were able to collaborate with the local department of health.

Again, them providing the pouches and educational materials.

Then we scheduled our programming.

What we did was took a week where we highlighted the pouches, and they were available free of charge, of course, to anyone who would come into the branches.

So on the stations where the pouches were, we had the information, and we had the pouches.

There were lots of folks that came in.

As a matter of fact, I remember one particular lady.

She came in with a bottle of old pills, this large thing.

I said, oh, my goodness.

She was like, yes, I came to dispose of the drugs.

I was like, yes, absolutely.

These are the pouches.

You can take those with you.

We're not doing that on site, but yes, you can take as many as you'd like.

And it has been a huge success.

As you can see from the slide, during that first three-month period, we distributed over 400 pouches.

Since then, we have continued to have the pouches available in all of our brick-and-mortar branches, just like the health department collaborates with us to provide the COVID self-test kits, we have them seated together, kind of a co-marketing thing.

If you're taking that test kit, that is actually medical waste, if you will.

So, using the Deterra pouch to dispose of that properly.

Another thing we did when we did our outreach events, we would also carry the drug pouches with us and give them out that way.

It was just about getting the information and the awareness out to the community.

At one of those events, one of our commissioners happened to come past our table, and he was very impressed and pleasantly surprised that we were offering this service to the community.

Because not only were we getting unused, old, expired medications out of the community, but we were promoting it to be done in an environmentally safe way.

So, it was just a win/win all around.

>> KENDRA: Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Karen.

I did see a couple questions come in.

I'll share a little bit about those Deterra drug deactivation systems.

I've added a link to the chat.

They're a pouch that seals.

So you open it up, add the medication in, and you put in some water.

You seal it up, and then the medication is no longer usable.

It gets disintegrated.

Then that pouch can go into the garbage.

It is waste, right, that needs to be thrown away, but one of the advantages to the Deterra approach and using that type of disposal is that some people will often flush medications into the septic or into the wastewater system, and that can be really challenging in the community.

Depending on how your community is set up, that can additional chemicals to your community wastewater.

So the Deterra pouches help to eliminate that.

They're very popular.

We know many libraries are doing them, especially in partnership with someone who gives them to the library for free.

I think in the case that Karen was describing where they had a partner who was able to provide them, that's a really helpful approach.

Many times -- many, many times -- those partners have not thought of the library as a distribution point.

So it's really helpful when libraries reach out and do the initial introduction because it can make -- open their eyes, eyes of the partners, to something they hadn't really realized before.

Thanks, Karen.

I really appreciate that.

All right.

We're going to hear now from Drea Douglas from the North Bend Public Library.

Welcome, Drea.

>> DREA: Hi.

Thanks so much for having me.

This has been such a great discussion so far.

So my name is Drea Douglas.

I'm the Learn Coordinator here at the North Bend Public Library.

Learning coordinator pretty much means I do adult programming and whatever else my director says I should do.

So, one thing that I want to get across here is that we are very rural.

North Bend is contiguous with the city of Coos Bay.

We are the largest community on the Oregon coast.

To get to the next biggest town, you have to go about 120 miles on twisting mountain roads to go inland to Eugene, Oregon.

So, we're a small library in a rural area, and the attitude around here is pretty much that in terms of immediate action, we're on our own.

We can get something put in place, but when it comes to something now, the resources we have are the people we have here.

So, along with that, because of Oregon being rather temperate, especially on the coast -- on the coast, you're rarely going to see it freeze and rarely going to see it overheat, which means that you can have a higher homeless population than elsewhere.

And this is not to say that if you're experiencing homelessness that you are necessarily going to be using drugs.

But, we do know that there's a higher rate of TBI among people living on the streets, and sometimes self-medication is the only medication available.

Along with this, Oregon does have the second highest opioid addiction rate in the U.S.

So, with all of this going together, we really thought we should be on this pilot program, if possible.

We have something to offer.

Now, one thing we found very -- 

I get to move these slides on my own.

Hold on here.

One thing we found very useful in the support kit is the emphasis on people, that it is less about the substance misuse than it is about people in a situation.

As has been mentioned, most of the time people experiencing an opioid addiction started out in a doctor's office.

They had a pain problem, whether it was an accident, whether it was an operation.

They needed high levels of pain relief, and they may have at that time not realized how easy it was to become used to that level of relief.

Instead of tapering off, started to find other venues to get opioids.

As we know, it is very easy to find them on the street.

They are highly reproducible.

So, the thing is, is that when we get a prescription, we take it to the pharmacy.

They fulfill it.

They say get well soon.

And we're seen as a human all through this.

When we think, oh, dirty hippy junky, we don't want to know them, we're talking about someone who is actually a human.

We're talking about someone who may have started out with a prescription and a pharmacy.

We're talking about our relatives, our co-workers, someone's kid.

The pilot project, the support kit, really does seem to emphasize these are people, these are people, these are people.

So, we wanted to continue with that model in what we ended up doing.

Now, one item in the support -- 

another item in the support kit is finding someone who can help you -- let me try that again.

One item in the support kit is talking about how you can go through your resources.

Who do you know?

What do you have available at the library?

What else is going on?

What are the days you have available that you could do something like this?

Are they convenient for other people?

So, one of the things that makes this really, really easy is a community engagement specialist.

These are often social workers.

They may not be in LCSW.

But they're attaching people to needed programs.

Whether it's housing, job applications, and very often addiction recovery services.

So once we got a CES, she started us on having Narcan training as a quarterly event.

For the library, it was new, but this was also something that we offered to the community.

So every quarter for two hours, we've got training.

The training sessions are only a half hour each.

You only need to attend one, and if you go to it, you will get a Narcan kit.

We thought, you know, this was great.

This was a great way to start.

Again, this was something we were doing before this pilot project.

But the thing is, is having a CES meant we had someone who was already thinking in terms of how can we connect people to a vital service.

Our CES we share with the Coos Bay library.

It is a grant-funded position.

If you're thinking we're never going to be able to fund that, again, grants.

And as I say, we share ours.

It's not even that we needed to do all the work.

We had other people to help us do it.

So, one thing the CES was telling us was that she knew who to call to find out where the greatest concentration of opioid overdoses had been called in our community in any given week.

That's a rather disturbing set of numbers to be able to find.

So the naloxone training was something we felt was helpful, but we wanted to do more.

So another resource we have, we do have hospitals here.

We're not that small.

What we did was we decided we wanted a very human-focused program.

 So here I am behind on my thing.

We have our naloxone training.

We partner with the HIV alliance.

They come over and do this.

Actually, a half-hour is more than you need, but they talk about harm reduction in general and talk about different things you can do in most situations.

They're really good people.

You're going to have someone like that in your community, even if it's not by that name.

But as far as what we did using the toolkit on its own was to say, well, let's have some sort of outreach with the community, and we wanted to talk.

We wanted a discussion.

So, we ended up getting three professionals, two doctors and the manager of a clinic.

One of the doctors does pain management relief without opioids.

Another is an addiction specialist.

Then the program director is for Adapt, which is a local addiction clinic.

We wanted to emphasize the fact that there are options besides opioids.

We wanted to talk about what's the path that leads someone from community, from their own needs, to following a drug into its own little world.

Also, that no matter what, there is help possible.

There is treatment possible.

So, how did it do?

Welt, unfortunately, it was not well attended.

But the thing is, we all know that.

We all know.

We've all had programs that we thought it was going to go great, and we had five people show up.

We had about 14 people show up at this, and among the people that were there was someone wondering about how to help her brother and someone else saying, you know, I've been on high doses of opioids for years.

Is this a problem?

So, she was able to talk to someone to say, well, you will need to talk to your doctor, but she was able to have this conversation because someone was sitting there saying here's the problem with these drugs, and also, here's other things that can be done.

So, who knows.

She may still be on these.

She may still need this level of pain management.

But the thing is, she can assess it now.

Someone is saying, we can work with this.

So, we really appreciated having them come talk to us.

So, as I say, you don't need a crowd if the right people show up.

And that's what I have here.

Thanks so much for letting me share this.

>> KENDRA: Thanks, Drea.

I agree.

Having 13 people there who need it and wanted to hear that information is just really impactful.

Connecting with local professionals -- and I mentioned this at the beginning, about the fact that, you know, your community is a place that you can tap into to find the resources that you need to be able to deliver these programs.

When we did the original research, it really did focus on those partnerships and the importance of having partnerships and not having to carry all of the weight of becoming a subject matter expert or offering the training.

There was quite a bit of discussion in the chat about naloxone.

I just wanted to share that there is a section in the support kit that helps you dig in a little bit to understand local naloxone rules, regulations.

This is a medication that's now available without a prescription.

So, you can get it at a pharmacy without a prescription.

But libraries are also in a place where they can distribute it, and many places -- this isn't for everybody, but in many places, you can just have them available.

I can think of the Salt Lake County Library, where someone can walk in and ask for two doses.

They were provided those resources and they could leave.

The Kokomo Howard Public Library in Indiana has a vending machine.

Someone can walk in and get a dose of naloxone.

I also saw mention of the use of a nalox-box on the outside of the building so people can get access to that resource 24 hours a day.

They can come up and receive those.

It is a life-saving medication.

It is extremely impactful.

When we did the first round of research that informed this, I had the opportunity to interview members of the community, and one of the gentleman I interviewed was, at the time, living in a local shelter.

He said that, you know, knowing for him, he's like I do know that some of the people I am staying with are currently using opioids, and knowing he had naloxone available made him feel more comfortable about the situation.

He's like, sometimes the person who might be designated isn't there, and he wanted to be prepared.

We also have had people that I interviewed who said their loved one was getting a surgery, and they wanted to have naloxone in the house in case there were any complications.

It's a really -- you don't know why someone is getting that medication or why they're carrying it.

But it can be very life saving.

And these are just a few images from libraries that have been offering programs, providing these services in their communities with their partners.

All right.

So, I want to talk a little bit more about using the support kit.

You heard Karen and Drea talk about their experiences as pilot testers.

One of the things that I really wanted to focus on is the power of partnerships.

I've already touched on it, but I really think it's grounded in the idea that we are stronger together.

It also acknowledges the fact that library staff can't be subject matter experts, but we can tap into our community expertise.

One of the tips that we added to the support kit after the pilot testing was from one of the pilot testers who called out the importance of talking to your colleagues about understanding the depth of partnerships.

We just may not be aware of other partnerships that other teams in the library may have, so that activity for them helped to really look at where the library was partnering outside of just your team.

Because it could turn out that the people in children's services are actually partnering with a local health department about healthy eating habits with children, and they could have other interests in helping to support the opioid crisis as well.

So, there's a lot there that comes from having conversations within the library to better understand who else we're partnering with.

The other tasks you might be able to tap into, documenting your strengths.

this is something that I have long been advocating for with libraries.

Sometimes you forget just how amazing you are and what you have to offer.

That can be the fact that you have a meeting room that nobody else in the community has, and it's freely available for anyone to use.

So you could do a training in conjunction with the health department.

You have access to people who the health department doesn't normally interact with.

If you think back to those two items of accessibility, of trustworthiness, people who may not be interested in going to the health department could find the library to be a safe space where they can get access to information.

So, there's a lot there to dig into to serve as a reminder sometimes of grounding ourselves in all the possibilities.

The thing that we found -- we did the case studies on eight libraries when we did the original research.

In almost every case, the partners had not thought of the library as a potential in this work, and the library was the first person to reach out.

So the library said, hey, we're your local public library.

These are some of the things that we're currently doing.

We'd love to hear what you're interested in and what you're trying to accomplish and how could we serve our community together.

Really, that outcome could be space.

It could be time.

It could be subject matter expertise.

But until we have the conversation, we don't know.

So, it's really digging into that power of partnerships.

So the tools and resources that you can find, I think many of you that might be very small locations that could be geographically far away from resources.

Drea was talking about the fact that it's a drive for them to get to resources.

They have some medical care nearby, but many other options are far away.

There's a tool that we highlight in the support kit called the neighborhood navigator.

I ran a search for a rural town in Washington State.

This is an example of one of the programs that came up.

It's a virtual program that's available to help friends and relatives of those who suffer from a current or former substance abuse.

I know that many of you here today are from small communities with few options for partners and services in town.

These types of virtual programs can be a lifeline to you, to your patrons, but learning about them can be hard.

So, digging in and poking around to the neighborhood navigator can help connect you to some of that information.

This activity is connected to completing an assessment of different types of local, regional, or national partners that could be helpful for your library.

I also wanted to call out while this isn't an example of a program that addresses substance use disorder, public libraries are in the neighborhood navigator.

There's an option at the bottom of the screen to suggest a program, and libraries can be included in their database.

This was an example.

If someone was looking for technology help, they could get one-on-one help at the King County Library system in Duval.

So there are lots of options here you could tap into, to help bring increased awareness to programs and services that the library offers.

All right.

I'm going to open up another poll.

I am curious.

One of the best parts about our webinars is the opportunity to help troubleshoot some ideas, to think about barriers.

So on the right-hand side of the screen in the Slido poll, I'd like to hear from some of you about what do you think the biggest barrier is to this work.

So when you think about engaging and creating a response to the opioid crisis, to doing programming within your library, what comes to mind as a concern for you.

I'm seeing time, stigma, budget, liability, trust and privacy, bureaucracy, fear.

Finding presenters.

Marketing the event.

Time is a huge one, right?

You only have so much of it.

The public perception.

We do know that sometimes libraries have offered programs that have sparked frustration in community members.

Why is the library doing this?

This isn't the right venue.

But my perspective on that is that when you are connecting people to information, that is a core, core tenant of public libraries.

You're connecting them to information, to knowledge, to lifelong learning.

And these things all fall under that.

Mm-hmm, concerns about harm reduction initiatives.

Harm reduction is a term that you'll hear a lot in this work.

Like, how can we reduce harm?

So, naloxone, fentanyl testing strips, trauma-informed care can often have that type of perception.

So, thank you for sharing those.

I'll stop that poll.

The two biggest barriers we found really align with some of the things that several of you mentioned.

One is the stigma.

It's a really big thing.

Drea touched on it a bit in her comments, right.

Some of the words that come to mind when we think about people who are dealing with addiction are not kind, and they do not lead with empathy.

Those words truly do matter.

This can be reinforced through  customer service policies.

We try and touch on that in the support kit by providing facts and statistics, one of those being that the genes people are born with account for half of their risk of addiction.

And this is a disease.

So understanding that this is often something that people were predisposed to and then a confluence of events may have led to their addiction.

We want to really call that out in action four about how stigmatizing language can really impact the willingness of individuals to seek help and how it impacts us as individuals when you use that language.

So, one of the activities really focuses on how we describe things, including the negative behaviors that can be associated with drug use.

So I want to talk about the fact you really can make a difference in this work, and it's been great to see some of the comments that have come in and understanding that any step is a good step.

This is a recent story in the news, just in February.

The city officials in San Francisco introduced legislation to provide universal access to drug recovery books.

Because it turned out that the most stolen books from the public library were not the hottest new novels or memoirs, they were books about recovering from addiction.

If we go back to that stigma, that shame that people feel on this topic, that they would rather steal a book than have to check it out or to give awareness to the fact they were struggling with that, it's massive, that that is really impactful.

There's stolen books from Alcoholics Anonymous.

They call it the big book.

The library has already been doing this, and they've distributed more than 3200 books through their pilot program.

One of our subject matter experts who helped inform the creation of the support kit was Cindy Grove, who is a library director on the east coast.

She's also written a book about how libraries can help support the opioid crisis.

She puts materials and fliers in the stacks.

She doesn't put them at the front of the building.

She takes them to that section of the library and puts them on the shelf.

She says she can't keep them in stock.

People are constantly taking those materials so that they can read them on their own, in the privacy of their own home.

We can think about that, right.

If we think about the impact of the words and what we make available to people, it's really -- it's important that we slow down and consider how we talk about things, and this applies to so much.

But that language that we use that we've talked about with stigma.

If you are at the desk talking with a patron you know is experiencing substance use disorder, are you talking about it with empathy and compassion?

Because your co-worker could be struggling.

The next patron who might overhear could be struggling.

Can they feel safe and that this is a place that can support them, or are they going to feel judged?

So we have a lot of opportunities in our daily life.

Library Journal just came out with their movers and shakers for 2024.

One of the individuals they recognized was Clare Varesio on her work to educate staff and the community about naloxone through a series of workshops.

The head librarian there shared that between stigma and lack of knowledge or other barriers, many people who would benefit from help do not currently receive it.

So anything that we can do in our libraries can be helpful.

There are a couple other resources, and I know that Jennifer has been great about popping these into chat.

I do encourage you to join our Facebook group, if you're on Facebook.

We do share resources about things that impact libraries.

You'll also find Cindy's book on Libraries and Substance Abuse Crisis.

I want to take a few minutes to answer questions in chat.

Jennifer, is there anything that's coming through?

>> JENNIFER: Yes, we did have some questions come through.

There was a question to the full group, but I'm hoping that you and our presenters have some other input.

Recently, me and another staff member had a fentanyl scare during opening hours.

To any library staff with a similar experience, what precautions did you take to keep staff and patrons safe?

>> KENDRA: Yeah, that's a great question and something that I think the idea of an emergency plan and working with your local health department on when these types of things come up, how can we address them.

Because it's not new, right.

If we talk about any type of chemical spill, like, that's a hazard.

That's an emergency that requires a response.

If there's a hazard in the library, what are the local recommendations for addressing that?

I think that goes beyond the opioid crisis, and that's why having those types of plans can be helpful.

>> JENNIFER: Let's see.

There's another one.

Does anyone have a post-crisis procedure for when library staff experience a traumatic event, such as an overdose in the library?

Somebody mentioned in chat earlier on that 30 minutes ago, they experienced it at their library.

>> KENDRA: Yeah, that's a good question and one that we've had a hard time getting people to share their responses.

I think there's a little bit of concern about the privacy and their policies and procedures that they want to keep secure.

So I don't have specific examples, but I do encourage people, if you have them, we can redact them.

We can simplify them.

We can do boilerplate language.

So if you have ones that you're willing to share, please email those, and I'll be happy to help share those with the broader group.

I wanted to touch on a little bit of the fact that the support kits are the reason we invited Karen and Drea here today.

They informed the updates that were made to get to this third version that we've put out.

We're still finding mistakes.

We're finding some links that are no longer active.

We have new resources that we can share.

So when you find those mistakes, we will be fixing them.

But we need to hear from you in order to do that.

So, in every section of the support kit at the end, there's a link to feedback.

This feedback is critical to us.

It's going to help us improve the resource.

It's going to help us keep it up to date.

Any feedback is helpful to us.

Did you find it useful?

Did you find one particular element useful?

Did you wish there was something else?

Share those things with us so that we can improve it as we continue to move through this process.

You'll find the link.

It's just a Survey Monkey.

You can complete, review as many times as you want.

So you can do just section one, action one, and come back in a couple of weeks and do action five.

We'll take your feedback when you have it.

>> JENNIFER: I have another question that just came through, looking for advice on handling this kind of stigma-based rationale.

We were working with the board of health to host a mobile harm reduction van in the library parking lot on a day when the library was closed.

We ended up having to find another location because police thought it was an inappropriate location because we serve children, even though we wouldn't have patrons visiting the library.

So, do you have thoughts on how to manage that kind of relationship?

>> KENDRA: Yeah, I'd be interested if Karen and Drea had any thoughts about that as well.

You know, that is part of the baby steps that sometimes we have to take.

If they're not interested in offering making the van available.

Children are impacted by the opioid crisis.

Harm reduction benefits children.

That, to me, is part of the whole story about how libraries can support their communities.

Karen, Drea, anything to add to that?

>> KAREN: Yeah, I would add that perhaps speaking with the other organizations prior to the event, just to allay any concerns or fears about things that they're not comfortable with happening there.

But I agree, yeah, children are affected as well.

>> DREA: Agree, same.

Also, finding out from your partners, you know, how do you deal with this sort of question.

I think if I talk to the HIV Alliance, they would probably have many stories about getting pushback and, you know, what their policies are, what their statements are.

These would be good to introduce.

>> KENDRA: That's great, Drea.

Thank you.

I'm going to answer a few more questions in chat, but I want to offer my thanks to Karen Wilson and Drea Douglas and Karen Medina and our captioner Rachel.

We really appreciate you being here today, as well as all of you who participated.

Jennifer, any closing thoughts?

>> JENNIFER: Just a reminder to folks that I'll send you an email later once the recording is posted and all of the great resources you shared into chat.

I'll also then send you a certificate in a week for attending.

You don't need to request that.

And a note that we'll send you to a short survey as you leave.

We really appreciate your feedback.

It helps us guide our ongoing programming, and we'll share that with our presenters.

If you don't have time to complete it now, know that the email will also include that link.

All right.

Yes, thank you so much to all of you for being here.

We look forward to hearing from you with your feedback on the support kit.

Definitely think about all those things that come up as you're reviewing it.

We really appreciate your feedback.

A special thanks to Karen and Drea for being here today to share your great work and your experience working with us.

So, thank you so much.

>> KAREN: Thank you.

It was my pleasure.

>> DREA: Thanks so much.

It was an honor to do this.

>> JENNIFER: All right.

Well, everyone have a great rest of your week, and we'll see you next time.
	
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