So let's start big picture because a lot of people love their libraries too, but they probably don't always think about who pays for what and where all this stuff comes from, right? So how do you articulate the financial value that a library gives to its community?

Yeah, it's a great question and one that we love to answer because there is so much value that you can boil down.

You know, there's been a lot of studies on public libraries that essentially shows about for every dollar invested in public libraries, there's about $4 to $9 output related to both economic and social value.

You know, there's a lot of different things that people are aware of.

Public libraries provide to the communities and many things that folks aren't aware.

So clearly direct savings by allowing local patrons to borrow books, increasingly borrowing e-books and audio books online, movies, all kinds of tools that we're saving folks every day.

But then there's a whole lot of other additional kind of benefits too.

Were there any takeaways in terms of value to community or the way people looked at libraries or even budget that came from that period for you all?

Sure.

So, uh, here's the facts, Emily.

We do an employee satisfaction survey every single year.

I've been here for about two and a half years, and in those two years we've done the surveys, we've seen significant increases in those scores year over year.

So people are pretty satisfied [laughs] about being here, and we're seeing, uh, we're seeing an increase in positive morale.

Like I mentioned, we've got, you know, really high retention rates.

People love working here.

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