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From an afternoon tea to yoga classes, upcycling to Pokemon, this is at your parents library.

Hello, I'm Julie Cooke, and on this edition of Tennessee is Talking, the topic is the Jackson-Madison County Public Library.

It's a whole lot more than just books.

What services do they offer and how you and your family can take part.

Let the conversation begin.

That's so cool.

Then that's when I said that.

The problem with that idea is.

Wow, that was amazing.

Then I came up with a solution.

What was that about?

Here's what I think about it.

Now we're talking.

West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

Thanks for joining the discussion here on Tennessee is Talking.

Hello, I'm Julie Cooke.

Some people call local libraries one of the greatest overlooked resources of our modern times.

Joining us today to tell us how we can start taking advantage of all they have to offer is Jackson-Madison County Public Library director, Dinah Harris, and the library's adult services manager, Shayne Plunk.

We thank you both for visiting with us today and getting some great information.

There's probably more than one thing about the library that most people don't know.

There is quite a few things.

I believe that a lot of people still see us as a place of books and we will always be a place of books, whether that be paper books or digital books.

We also have so many other things like our makerspace.

It's a place where there's a 3D printer, a place you can take podcasts.

There's a lot of services we offer that people don't know about as well, including a workforce initiative.

We're actually the first stop.

If somebody is looking for a job, we can assist with resumes and job searching and training as well.

-And computers.

-Computers.

We have a lot of online training that helps people if they're looking for a job as well to get them ready as a first stop.

There are probably a lot of people that have to get out in the job market for some reason or other that don't really have any computer background.

What do you have for them?

We have computer classes.

We can teach people how to use a computer.

Then once they know how to use a computer, we actually have online classes that they can take.

Some of them even earn continuing education units.

That would help them as they're going to search for jobs, prepare them for their jobs.

Now, the library has two locations.

The downtown location is the main library and the north, the north is smaller.

Do you have more services there at the downtown location?

Yes, we do.

The main library would be considered a full service loc.. because we have our Tennessee room.

We call it the crown jewel.

It's where the local history and genealogy is stored.

We have our maker space downtown.

All of our programming is held downtown.

Our north branch is just a precious little jewel out north.

It is mainly book circulation.

We have some of the best readers, advisors out there.

Brooke and Colleen and Krista, they are just-- It's a great location if you just want to go in and get a book and get a good recommendation.

It's so small that we can't have any programming out there.

Someday we hope to be able to have a larger location out north.

Do people still have book clubs?

We do.

We have a couple of book clubs for the library.

Then there are a lot of adult book clubs in the community.

A lot of times they'll call us and we'll try to get some extra copies or digital copies to help them out.

Now that we talked about the books, you actually have a thing library.

These are some things that you brought that you can actually check out the library.

A couple of them, I'm not sure what they are.

Shayne Plunk is with us and directs the adult programs.

Let's just go through the inventory here and you can tell us what's available.

We have got a whole, whole lot of "Things" that you can check out that aren't books.

I just brought a few fun things.

We've got a lot of stuff for the kitchen.

I brought an ice cream maker.

With a lot of the things, when you check them out, we will include, just like with the ice cream maker, we've got a book so you have the recipes right there ready to go.

We also have a telescope here for stargazing, bird watching, anything like that you might want to do.

Included with that is a little guide of different local birds and stuff like that.

We also have-- This is our home improvement kit.

It's got a thermal leak detector.

It has got a laser level to help you hang pictures, the stud finder, a voltage detector.

It's got all kinds of stuff in that one kit just to do some little upgrades to your home.

For hobbies, DIY.

Absolutely.

We've got a ukulele.

We've got instruments.

We've got a tabletop drum kit.

We have so many things that people don't realize that you can come check out from the library.

What can you do?

People need to be aware, and I know you all are great promoting because I get mail from you every month to tell what the children, teen, and adult programs are for.

As far as just things that are available and keeping up with the technology, is that one of your biggest challenges is keeping people informed of what you do have?

I would say that is probably one of our biggest challenges because we do everything, television, radio, social media, everything.

Our next biggest challenge is space.

We desperately need more space because the libraries are booming in both locations.

Our downtown is seeing 10,000 people a month.

Is that right?

We actually have people counters,.. that we're seeing 10,000 people a month coming in and out of our library.

Our north location is seeing 4,000 to 5,000.

Some folks know about it.

Yes, ma'am.

Are there plans for expansion?

Downtown, do you have a place to go?

Do you have room for expansion downtown?

We did a study a few years ago, a feasibility study, and the decision that was made was to keep the main library downtown.

We, a couple years ago, purchased some adjacent property.

The plan is to build on to the library downtown.

We have to wait on our funding bodies to get to us.

There's a lot of needs in this county, and we're on the list.

We just don't know how soon that will happen.

Our north branch, of course, our location out there is leased.

We hope at some point to be able to find a better location, a larger location, so that we can have some programming out there.

The north will never be as large as main because we couldn't afford two large locations.

It's not far to downtown.

Our north location is only about six miles from our downtown location.

We hope that when we get to redo our downtown location, it will be so fabulous that people won't mind driving six miles to get there.

I know you have a place for programs for little ones and story hours and things like that.

I want to talk about the programs that you have for children.

Kids are back in school now, but a lot of kids aren't in their homeschool.

The library is a lot different than when you and I came up.

Especially with the thing library and the books.

It's just that's right when they say it's not your parents library.

It's a whole new day.

What do you have to keep in mind when you're planning some of these programs?

Do you get requests for different things or we take surveys?

We do have some surveys on occasion just to see what times and days are best for people to come to.

With a lot of the programs, we have stuff that happens every week.

We have our story time that our children's librarian does Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30.

There's dozens of kids that come to all of those.

It's awesome to see that.

As far as planning, we do programs at the library, but we also try to branch out and go other places.

We had some real success during a previous-- We had something called the Big Read, which we encourage the whole community to read the same book.

We actually gave a novel to everybody who wanted to participate.

Absolutely.

We tried during that to reach out and do programs at places like Hub City Brewing, where we did some art nights, turntable coffee downtown.

We try to reach out.

Even though we don't have the programming space at North, we try to meet people where they are as well.

Yoga classes?

Yoga classes are at the library.

At the library?

They are at the library.

We have a big program center for that.

I know the Children Teen Theater recently did a production of Caesar.

Is that the big program room out there?

Yes.

Just so many other things like DAR has the genealogy class every, what is that, the first Tuesday of-.

I'm not sure which Tuesday it is.

It is one of the Tuesdays, I believe so.

I think it's one of the [?]

of the month, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and that you can just pick up and go.

Check our calendar online or anywhere that they can find that.

Whether they're sponsored by the library or not, you still have a calendar that they can check online.

Yes, if they're partnership organizations, if we're doing it as a partnership, it'll be on the library's calendar.

Is it hard to keep up with all the technology and e-books?

-How is that?

-Not too bad.

I've got a very young staff.

[laughter] Just ask the kids.

I also have a natural curiosity for it for myself.

Ever since computers came into the libraries, I've just been so smitten and intrigued by them because I love information, and it's just so satisfying how fast you can obtain life-changing information.

Oh, it is, because especially in your line, things do change all the time.

We have a technology symposium we sponsor every year at our library for all the librarians in this area.

I think we're doing pretty good about staying up on things.

Our makerspace is one of the best outside of Nashville or Memphis because like I said, we have podcasting equipment, we have 3D printers, more than one, and just a laser cutter, a thermal, everything.

Just all kinds of what you would call the newer technology.

Now, do you work with the teen programs?

I focus mainly on adult, but we do a lot of collaboration between the teen and adult.

There's a lot of overlap there.

I wonder are teens taking advantage, or do you have teenagers who pick up these?

What are some of the different programs you have for the kids?

For teenagers, we've been doing we call it Brown Bag Book Club is what we were calling it, where a lot of homeschool teens, can bring their lunch and they'll do a little book club.

We've got usually events on Saturdays, where teenagers can come in and do things like watch anime.

That's a big thing for a lot of libraries, is anime club.

That's one of the demographics that's harder to reach, but we're always trying.

Our teen librarian is always coming up with new things, and if she develops a new program and there's not much attendance, then she scraps that and tries to find another one that will get their attention.

The great thing is that sometime before the end of the year, we are going to move our teen space up adjacent to our maker space, and we feel like that will make a major difference.

They'll have more room, and the maker space librarian will be working with the teen librarian to get them more involved in those STEM activities there.

As soon as we get that done, we feel like that will be a great draw.

You mentioned homeschool children of all ages.

How have you seen the library usage change with the rise of more kids in homeschool over the past years?

Our teen librarian, that's one thing she really has to focus on, is reaching out to that group because they are big users of the library, more than any other of the young people.

We try to have things for them, but we also try to have things for the public school kids as well.

Just anything that we feel like will benefit that age group.

What are some of the adult programs?

I know you have a writing class.

We do.

That's actually one of my babies.

The Jackson Writers Guild meets every second and fourth Thursday at 5:30, and it's really a great group of people.

We have all kinds of writers from all different backgrounds.

We all write totally different stuff from one another, but really the whole purpose of the group is to come together and encourage each other to keep writing, to bounce ideas off of each other, and it's a great fellowship with other writers that I absolutely love.

Is it hard to read your things in front of other people?

We've been doing that group for probably about five years, and it's only been the last two years that I've gotten comfortable sharing my own writing.

It can be a little nerve-wracking, but everybody is so supportive that it's not hard to feel welcome to share stuff.

It's all experience levels.

You've got to try it out on somebody.

Absolutely.

We've got people who have never published and have only written for themselves, and then we've got people who have published a dozen, two dozen novels.

It's really a wide spread of skill.

What are some of the other programs for adults?

One of our more popular ones that tends to be adults is we have American Sign Language classes that we do.

We have a practice on Mondays at 12, and then we've got classes.

Usually they're eight-week long classes, that we do with the Jackson Center for Independent Living, and those are Tuesdays at 11:00.

It's a great skill to have, and we've seen some really great attendance for that.

Your website would have the schedules and times?

It will.

A lot of them meet once a week, don.. We do have a lot of programs that are weekly, yes.

We've got Tai Chi, the yoga that you mentioned.

We've got line dance.

We've got GED classes, English as a second language.

We've got lots of stuff going on.

That's so amazing.

I wonder, as far as when the technology changes, do you get federal funding, state and local, or grants?

What funds the operation is local funding.

It's 50 50 city-county, but we apply for federal grants to help especially with the technology.

The programming funding is from our friends at the library mostly.

They fund our summer reading program totally, and they fund other programs we've had, and also apply for grants.

Shayne and them will work on grants together and bring in special programming.

Like they brought in Bob Ross.

They painted Bob Ross with Bob Ross one time.

We did.

The friends funded for us to ha.. to do a follow-along with Bob Ross.

It was eye-opening.

I'm not artistic.

[laughter] We also have some programming money in our budget, but a lot of it does come from our friends at the library.

-We're very appreciative.

-I was going to ask you about that.

What is their primary, or just funding extra programs that you don't have funded?

They bring in programming beginning in August when school starts, or September.

I'm not sure which month they start now.

It seems like it might be September.

They have a program every month through May, and it's very well-attended, and they bring in different speakers.

Sometimes they'll review a book, and sometimes they'll bring in a speaker that'll talk about some important or interesting topic.

They help us out by having programming, but they also fund a lot of our programming.

Our foundation is our primary fundraising arm of the library.

-Those are two separate-- -Two different focuses.

The foundation has recently purchased a circulation desk for our north branch, really nice.

They needed a new one that was-- The old one was made for our former location, and it just was very awkward, and they purchased one now that's just so nice and user-friendly.

Now, what is the big event at the end of the summer?

It's called the Books of Madison County.

-Books of Madison County.

-We just had ours for this year.

That is a great event, and they usually raise a lot of money at that.

Then that goes back into the library for our larger needs that are not funded out of our budget.

I know it keeps growing every year.

They just keep saying, that's the biggest crowd we've ever had up in the past few years.

It does.

That's got to be encouraging for you.

Yes.

It's always a fun night, of course.

What do you see right now as your-- I know getting word out, but I guess as far as the challenges, what are some things that you'd like to see over?

I don't know if there's a five-year plan or.

Our space is the big challenge right now because some of our programming has almost outgrown the program center, and that's our biggest space.

Then also, having enough spaces for people to do the things like study rooms.

People are wanting study rooms all the time, and we don't have a quiet space that people can go and study in.

That's something that's very needed.

Space is becoming a huge issue.

We're doing the best we can.

That's why we're moving our teen space upstairs nex.. trying to give them more room to try to encourage the young people to come in.

I believe we can make a huge difference in the teens' lives.

We just got to make space.

I'll just tell you now, when you say 10,000 per month, that just sounds like so many.

We have a lot of people using our meeting rooms, and that's where some of that comes in.

It's everybody that walks through our doors, whether it be for a meeting, or to check out a book, or one of our programs, any of that.

Now, what is in the Tennessee library?

The Tennessee room?

The Tennessee room, yes.

That's local history and genealogy.

Evelyn Kiel is our manager in that room, and Jack Wood, he retired just a couple of years ago, but we held on to him, so he helps us out.

Couldn't keep him away.

[laughter] Once you go in you can't came back out.

In that room, it's just a jewel because if you bought a note house in Jackson, and you wanted to know the history of it, there's a good chance they would have the history.

That's what I wondered, if you had an address of a home, because there are records there.

They have old city directories, so you can look back and see what was at that address at a certain year, or who lived in that house at a certain year.

There's quite a few-- There's funeral records- -up there that you can actually see all that information that's on an obituary, an official one that tells the reason they died, their nearest of kin and all those things.

There's so much that it's -.

I don't even know what all you can find there, but we have trained staff.

If you have any question that has anything to do with genealogy or local history, they're the people to talk to.

I bet you see Ricky Long.

Oh yes, he's one of our volunteers as well.

Is that right?

He's the historian.

Mr. Harvard Alexander was that for so many years and of course he's passed away now but we see Ricky every once in a while.

He posts on Facebook old pictures and I would imagine there are a lot of old photos-.

There are.

of the town.

We hope to get Mitch Carter up there to help us identify some of the photos that it's not clear what they are.

He may have been the one that even took them, so we're hoping to get him to-- He's talking about volunteering to help us figure out some of those pictures as well.

What do people-- Do you need volunteers for people who may be interested in volunt.. We do very much.

The Tennessee Room, you would need to probably have a love for history or genealogy because it's very tedious work.

Then Shayne, he runs our volunteer program for downstairs.

I do.

We're always looking for volunteers for helping programs.

If you're an artsy person, then we would love to have artsy people volunteer in the makerspace because we do have a program in our makerspace twice a week that is for people to come in and to make art or to do 3D printing or whatever project they're working on.

If you've got somebody that comes in and they want to learn, just the very basics on how to paint or something, having some artsy people to encourage them, to show them where the materials are, would be fantastic as well.

That's mostly what we're looking for, people to help with events, people to help look at our shelves and make sure they look pretty.

And if the books are in order.

[laughter] If you're interested in being a volunteer, they will put you to work, is that it?

-Yes.

-Now what about library cards?

Do we have to have a library card to make use of [crosstalk]?

You have to have a library card to take anything out of the building.

You're welcome to look at books in the building.

You can use our computers, do anything inside the building without a library card.

You just need the card to take anything out of the building or to check out our online resources.

You have to have a local card.

Some of our databases we pay for, and so only our citizens are supposed to have access to them, so you have to have a library card from here to access a lot of our online resources.

What do you feel about the e-books?

Some people just say, "I don't want to do that because I just like the feel of a book in my hand."

I like both.

If I'm at home, I like to have a real book, but if I'm out, I prefer the e-book because you don't-- We remember years ago, you went to the doctor's office and you was going to be sitting there for two hours.

I took a bag and it had magazines and books because I might get to read one and not like it and pick up the other one, but now you can carry hundreds on your p..

I do enjoy the convenience.

If you're on an exercise bike or machine, you can just lay that up there.

You just touch it to turn the page.

You can make the font as large as you want.

Sometimes it's hard to get a book you want to read in large print.

You can make the font as big as you want so there's a lot of advantages to e-books.

I wish I was as willing to go into that.

[laughter] I've always been curious about it, but it seems like everything I touch, it makes me stuck and I can't go any further.

There's a certain age of people who have a difficult time making that transition.

The good news is if you are intimidated by any of our e-book stuff, if you come in and tell us that you need help or you need to be shown how to do that, any of the people that we have on staff are more than happy to show you exactly how to do what you're trying to do as far as getting an e-book and everything.

So good.

How do we get to the website?

What is that?

How do we get in touch?

It's www.jmclibrary.org.

Our website, we just recently, this past year, updated it.

It's very user-friendly.

We also have an app on your phone and it's Jackson-Madison County Library.

You can actually check your account there and renew your books.

Oh, so you don't have to go down and sign the cards?

We actually have auto-renewal right now.

If you have something checked out and it comes up for renewal and nobody's waiting on it, if it's not on hold for somebody, it will automatically renew for you.

That's nice.

You don't build up any $45 or $.. -We don't have late fees.

-No library fines anymore.

-You just don't even have them anymore?

-No, ma'am.

You just return the material and you're good.

Most people are doing good with that.

You all have been such a wealth of information today about the Jackson-Madison County Library.

Dinah Harris is the library director and Shayne Plunk is the adult services librarian.

I enjoyed very much talking to you.

I've learned a thing today about the theme library and I imagine a lot of others have, too, because I had no idea.

You have so many more things, DIY and kitchen and cooking or whatever you need, home improv..

Thank you all so much.

That is going to do it for this edition of Tennessee is Talking.

Thank you again to Dinah Harris and Shayne Plunk from the Jackson-Madison County Public Library.

Thank you for joining us.

Just a reminder, you can stream the program and all local Channel 11 programs on the PBS app, the West Tennessee PBS YouTube channel, and on westtnpbs.org and you can keep the conversation going.

Just follow West Tennessee PBS on social media.

Until next time, keep on talking, Tennessee.

Tennessee is Talking is a presentation of West Tennessee PBS with the goal of bringing people together, sharing ideas, thoughts, and different perspectives, learning from each other, and sharing a civil and respectful discussion.

Tennessee is Talking, the show that brings West Tennessee together.

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