Hello and welcome!

I am Public Affairs Supervisor Holly Walter, and I am

thrilled to introduce you to Podsdale, Scottsdale's new

employee podcast put together by the Office of Communication.

Podsdale is going to be all about city news, interesting

people, places, projects, and things happening throughout

the city, but most of all, it is about you, the employee.

So with that said, we do want you to be part of Podsdale,

whether that's joining us for a future episode as a guest,

sending us news to share, or even coming on as a co-host.

Today, though, I have my colleague with me,

Public Affairs Specialist, Stephanie Hirata.

She will join us every episode for

what we are calling our Fast Five.

That's right.

Thanks Holly.

I'm Stephanie Hirata with Five Fast Things

happening around the city that you need to know.

We started the list at number five,

employee gyms, they're open, that's right.

The workout rooms at City Hall, North Corp Yard and

other city facilities are now open to employees.

Of course, we have rules in place to keep things safe,

equipment will be sanitized and physical distancing is required.

If you're looking for a good workout during your work week.

Club Sar is another great option.

It's open to the public and employees are welcome to sign up

for an employee fitness pass, check City Point to learn more.

Number four is all about becoming your own chef,

want to eat healthier, but don't know where to start?

How about four weeks on the A to Zs of making tasty food at home?

You'll learn shortcuts and skillsets

to plan, shop, prep, and cook.

Sessions begin April 6th, visit City Point to sign up.

The Pony Express at Appaloosa

Library is in our number three spot.

It's a library self-service model that allows the

public to enter and use the branch with no library staff

on the floor, simply by swiping their library card.

Registration for this new self-service option started

March 8th and Appaloosa became assessable to approved

users on March 15th, visit Scottsdale library.org for more.

At number two Earth Day,

it's April 22nd, but in Scottsdale, we celebrate all month long.

Scottsdale's green building program will host two webinars.

We're planting 51 new trees throughout the city,

and the library will host a great waste audit, so

households can keep track of what they are disposing.

We have a whole list of events and great

programming happening the entire month.

Go to ScottsdaleAZ.gov, search

Sustainable Scottsdale to find out more.

Our number one, fast five spot goes

to Code Inspector, Jorge Espanoza.

Jorge was recently at Stonegate Park.

When he noticed a vehicle parked sideways in two handicapped

spots and found an unresponsive female driver behind the wheel.

Her doors were locked, so Jorge immediately called 9-1-1

and used his jacket to shield the woman from the sun.

Scottsdale Fire arrived to provide treatment

and transport the woman to the hospital.

If it hadn't been for Jorge's heroic actions, the

outcome could have been much worse, Jorge, kudos to you.

And that's our fast five for this episode of Podsdale.

Got something for a future fast five?

Tell us by emailing Communications@ScottsdaleAZ.gov.

I'll turn it back over to you Holly!

Thank you, Stephanie, I look forward to

having you on every episode to share our fast five with

our listeners and by the way, listeners be sure that you're

paying attention throughout the entire podcast because of

whether it's our fast five or our interview we will have a

trivia question at the end of every episode, and if you email

Communications@ScottsdaleAZ.gov, with the correct answer, we

are going to enter you into a drawing for a fabulous prize.

I can't reveal what that prize is right

now, but I can tell you it is fabulous.

Okay.

In our Podsdale guest today comes from the Library.

We would like everyone to meet Erin Riley.

She is our Library Adult Services Coordinator.

She's been with the City of Scottsdale for about five years now.

Thank you, Erin, for joining us on the podcast.

Thanks Holly.

I'm happy to be here.

So to start things off, why don't

you tell us a little bit about what you were doing

prior to joining us here at the City of Scottsdale?

Well, uh, let's see.

That's a good question.

Right before I worked here, I worked in a

tiny little post office inside a bike shop.

But that's a side story, which we could go into another time.

I did not actually take a traditional

route to becoming a librarian.

My background is in philosophy and

law and while I was in law school

getting my degree, I worked doing research

for professors and worked in the library.

And so when I went onto graduate school after law school,

cause I'm a gigantic geek, I ended up working for the

Dean of the law school doing library research and I, you

know, kind of, really enjoyed that side of it a lot more.

I had young children then an, working, you

know, 90 billable hours a week in a law firm.

Wasn't as appealing as it had been before I started law school.

So I just got much more into the research and so I

worked in public libraries and in academic libraries.

And so when I saw that there was an opening here at

Scottsdale, at the library, that I love to go to all

the time I applied and was lucky enough to get a job.

And I started as the 20 hour weekend

anchor librarian at the Mustang branch.

And I worked Friday, Saturdays and

Sundays for about a year and a half.

And then uh, got a full-time job.

Uh, became a lead librarian at Civic Center.

And then when the job for the Adult Services

Coordinator opened up, I was lucky enough to

be asked to interview and then get the job.

So that was about, Oh, it was almost two years ago.

And that's how I got here.

Great.

Well, that, that does sound like an unusual path.

We might have to revisit that job at some other point, but to

move forward, let's talk about, particularly, what has happened

within the last year with COVID-19 really that is caused,

significant change within the library

system, you've really had to be innovative.

You've had to adapt to the pandemic everything from

offering curbside service, you've developed online library

card registrations, our branches were closed for a short

while, but really that the library never stopped operating.

Correct?

That's right, Holly.

We were able to keep our drive-throughs open even while

all of our buildings were closed, which is really just

a short period of time because some of them reopened.

Closed, in March and reopened as quickly as June.

But even while anything was closed, we were

offering services through our drive-up windows

and we added curbside, as you mentioned.

And that's when we were able to start getting people library

cards online and letting them renew online, so that they never

really had to be without the library services and materials.

And you've also formed a virtual

library branch there among other things to

kick this off, what is a virtual library?

Well as you already know all of our physical

library branches are named after horses except for Civic Center.

Of course, we've got Mustang, Arabian and Appaloosa.

And so our virtual branch, which you can find on our

website, is called Pegasus because that's a horse, a mythical

horse, but this is a real place that, that kind of collects

all of the information on our website

about our virtual programming and services.

And this has been developed in the last six to eight months.

It's something we had been working on anyway, but the necessity

of having to really rethink our services because of COVID-19

and think about more contactless delivery for our services,

really, spurred us to get going with this

and find a place on our website that we could

collect all of this information for patrons.

So there's information about how to get a library card online.

There's information about how to renew your library card online.

There's a lot of programming that you can link to.

We have storytime programming and kids, crafts,

and steam programming that's accessible.

And then also our adult services programming that's available.

It can be linked from that Pegasus branch, which you

can get to from the very, the homepage of our website.

We also though have links t, other research databases

an, information about our digital library, which has,

soared in circulation during the time of COVID.

We have a lot of people who are avid, library users, who've

never stepped foot in a physical branch because they can

do everything they need from reserving to borrowing, to

reading right online and that all those digital services

include books and audio books, magazines, movies comic books.

Anything you can stream, you can access with your library card.

We actually have also started a series of

completely virtual programs called books and more.

And we have one that comes out of out of

Civic Center Library, which is called Get Lit.

And one that comes out of a Mustang Library called In The Stacks.

And then we're going to have a new one coming

out of Arabian Library called Turning The Page.

It's really an incredible variety of services and

to, to take a look at this virtual library, and I love the name

by the way, Pegasus, that ties in nicely with our branches,

Right?

Is it simply visiting the website?

It is, you just go to our homepage and

the first thing you'll see is Pegasus, the virtual

library branch, and you can click on it and it

just opens up all the services that are available.

And of course it's super easy for a

city employee to sign up for a library card, you

don't have to live in Scottsdale to do that, correct?

That's right, anyone in Maricopa

County can get a library card and we do have.

And now so all you have to do is go to our website,

click on a library card services, open the application,

upload a piece of postmarked mail with your name on

it, and a utility bill that comes to your address.

And you're in business and you can live anywhere

in Maricopa County and get a card for free.

And we do actually deliver people's library materials,

right to their office or their workstation in the city.

That's a service that we've been trying to do for

Scottsdale employees since the pandemic started.

Great.

And that's simply ScottsdaleLibrary.org

to get yourself set up to do that.

Let's, let's talk about your position in

particular as our Adult services coordinator

you've probably had to make a lot of changes,

I imagine, with the pandemic in place.

What, what do we offer though with

Adult Services and what is that?

Well, our Adult Services

are all of the programming from, uh, you

know, on up so, um, our

Youth

Services Team was very

quick off the

block to get virtual storytimes

and different kinds of

programming taped and, ready for

our youngest

patrons.

And it took

us a little bit longer, I have

to admit, to try to get some of our adult

services Into virtual

form.

And one of the reasons is that we have a huge contingent

of fabulous volunteers, who've done a lot of the work

here at the library, we have a great staff, of course,

who are fabulous, but they are really supplemented for

a lot of our Adult Services Programming by volunteers.

So all of our ESL programs had been taught by volunteers,

and our computer literacy classes were taught by volunteers

who had actually come over to us from the Via Linda

Senior Center, where they'd been teaching computer classes

for, I think almost 10 years, before they started here.

So about a year before the pandemic,

we transferred that program here,

set up computers and set up a space and started registering

for people for basic computer classes so that people could

get you know, just the basic knowledge they need to use

Word or do Excel or make photo books, really simple things.

And those were among our most popular programs.

And our volunteers, who were not

allowed to work in the building have,

been able to transfer their programs to work from home.

And they're actually doing their

volunteering mostly, right from their

own homes.

They're still

because of the COVID precautions.

We don't have City volunteers in city

buildings yet.

So they decided

they really wanted to take the

ball and run with it and keep that program

going.

So we use, uh,

our teams, Microsoft Teams platform, and put

the links to meetings

in our online

calendar.

We register

people and the last class

we had had 55 people

learning how to use Excel

spreadsheets which I think

is amazing because if I could avoid

learning how to use an Excel spreadsheet, I would,

do that.

But there

are enough people who wanted to do

it, and we had a great volunteer teaching the

class and people said

they really loved it.

We had a great response.

So we're going to try to expand that program virtually.

We've expanded and added some volunteers and had

some of our old volunteers take on new roles.

And we have staff who are working with

volunteers kind of as

chat monitoring, you know,

wing people to help keep

those programs running smoothly and

make sure all of the questions for each class are

answered.

And it's just

been a really great way to transform

something that we were doing, that was going

well, in to something that's going well in a

new format.

Some of our

programs, as you can imagine, we

were showing movies and we were having lectures

and doing all kinds of book, discussion groups,

we have had most of those

things be able to move online.

Our book discussion groups have moved online.

We've started some new ones and continued

old ones.

And our staff

members run those.

And we've had really great response from

patrons.

And all of

the things that we were doing that we'd really

like to provide the public, we've really tried to find a way to

continue to do them in this new format and in this new manner.

It's so good to hear

that we are doing those things.

In particular, we have so many great volunteers at

the library and the fact that we had to keep them

home for so long was, you know, was difficult.

I, I I'm sure, but the fact that we can bring folks back,

have them virtual and in particular, teach these literacy

classes, cause I'm sure, that likely ties into many of the

other things that you're offering within adult programming.

Absolutely.

It's fantastic to hear.

Absolutely.

Well, we have some other

things that we're

developing, we've gotten some grants

this year for doing citizen

science programs, which is,

crowdsourced, scientific research and we're going to be taking

those programs online and

making them virtual as well.

And we're going to premiere some of

that during April for, Earth Day

and Arbor Day, which is a big deal in Scottsdale.

And

we've also gotten a

grant

to provide like just

basic legal research information for patrons.

And we are going to make that virtual as well and put that on

our Pegasus branch so that it's a link people can go to and see

videos and learn about what kind of information we have that they

might need.

So all of

those things are, we've really taken a

little time to rethink what we were planning to do,

which was have programs, and have a lot of people in the

library and visiting and circulating all our materials.

And we really tried to make sure that

we can still get people the information

they need just in a

manner that safe and secure.

Great.

It's such a wealth of resources.

And just to hear that we had 55 people

attend a computer literacy class.

It sounds like during, this time it's an opportunity to

really learn a new skill and you can do that, right at home.

Absolutely.

We have other

resources on our Website as

well.

We have something that's called universal class, which

gives people all kinds

of classes ranging from, you know,

French grammar, to crocheting, to abnormal psychology.

And you can take those right on the

website.

They're taught by, skilled accredited

professionals

and you can get certificates of completion for some

of the things that might improve your job skills.

Or you can just take something for fun and learn

a new skill while you're not getting out, you

know, and mixing up and doing other social things.

Wow.

I'm going to have to check that out myself.

And it is to find this ScottsdaleLibrary.org.

Where you can, you can find any of this

information on our adult services, programming

and Pegasus and all the things that Erin has

talked about.

But not, that

she's not busy enough

already, but to add onto that, I

know that I've, I've

been fortunate to work with you and others

from across the city on a Bloomberg Philanthropies

training program, that's focused on some human

centered design.

What we're

looking at

really is trying to

find ways to reduce the number of non-emergency

health-related calls that come into our 9-1-1 system and what

we have learned through interviews with residents and others.

We have found that in many of these calls are coming

in from seniors and their caregivers, because they are

socially isolated and they don't know where turn for help.

How was, how was that related to what you do, Erin

and what have you learned from that experience?

Well, I

think the the whole

project is really been eyeopening for

me, not just in relation

to the problem that

we've been working on, which you just

described, but with the

ideas and the way we're

looking at solving that problem.

I think that

looking at getting, input from

citizens, which is something we've done

and looking at a problem from the perspective of

the people who are going to use our services rather

than from staff who

are providing services,

has really been enlightening for me.

And that really

did help me apply some

of that and solve some of the issues I had when I was

looking at how to make

our services virtual.

And I've been able to share some of that

information.

You know,

it library management

meetings where so many of

our team have been

working on the same kind of problems.

So when we were looking at trying to

put together a website and a form.

For people who wanted to sign up for a library

card online, we're able to try to streamline

it and think about it from the point of view of

the user.

Rather than,

you know, what's going to be

easiest for staff collecting that information.

I think that that was really helpful.

And I just really liked

that idea of trying to remember that services

are for

citizens and that citizen input

is really important as we

go about constructing those services.

Absolutely, about listening to those needs and

thinking about how we can

offer whatever it is that patron needs.

That's right.

Do you have any parting words of wisdom

that you can pass along to our employees about the

library or its services or anything else you want to

add about the things we've already discussed Erin?

Well, I think if you haven't

been in a library for a while, you should really

take a look at our website and, you know, come into our open

buildings because libraries have changed from when we were all

kids, there was a lot more going on and a lot more resources.

You can find so

many things In the library

that you couldn't even,

you know, five or 10 years ago,

so I think that's definitely worth a look.

And I also think that as we're all looking at

ways to manage, as we get through COVID-19.

And as we restart things

afterward you know,

when I first thought about, you know, basically

my whole job was offering programs that people came to at the

library and I had to look at it and figure out how to make that

totally different and it can be done, I guess.

That's really, I encourage everybody to

really just not despair,

but really to look at what they

can do.

And they'll surprise

themselves.

I think we've all surprised ourselves here at the

library and the response has been really great.

And those are great parting words, and we are so

thankful that you could join us on the program today and take the

time to talk to us about what's happening over at the library.

And again, anyone who would like to learn more

about adult programming, about our virtual library

branch, Pegasus the city's

curbside service, any of the other thing that Erin

talked about today, just please go to ScottsdaleLibrary.org.

And thank you again, Erin for being on the show.

Thank you for having me.

That concludes our first episode of Podsdale,

but we can't sign off without our trivia question.

Remember, answered this trivia question correctly,

email Communications@ScottsdaleAZ.gov, and we

will put you in a drawing for a fabulous prize.

And we plan to announce that winner in our next episode

here goes, what's the name of our virtual library space?

Email communications@ScottsdaleAZ.gov with your answer.

Thank you for joining us.

I hope you had a great time.

I know I did.

And we will be back in two weeks,