Alright Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining us today for what I believe will be an exciting presentation by members of the Sunni Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force, our panel members today are from Monroe Community College Potsdam purchase
Stony Brook, and Upstate.
Please feel free to ask questions in chat, and there will be a question chance to ask questions at the end and feel, feel free to unmute yourself at that time.
So, without further ado, I will pass this on to Christina Pope and Laura, Lauren Jackson back.
Hi, my name is Lauren Jackson back and I met SUNY Potsdam. And thank you Chris, thank you, Yvonne for for forwarding the slide.
I will say that that this this presentation came out of discussions on what some of our libraries are already doing to be more inclusive of different populations among our students, and those that use our libraries.
And this is something that one category, year that that Christina and I are going to talk about this today is the prayer and meditation rooms and Potsdam has a very simple one.
So this is kind of what you can do if you have very little money.
This was done before I began at Potsdam around 2016 is when we opened our prayer and meditation room, and this provides students with a space to practice meditation and prayer in peace and tranquility and quiet, without having to leave the library they
can continue to stay within the building, and then go back to their, their work.
And so I'm going to show you what we did and then Christina is going to bump it up a notch and show you what what what they were able to accomplish at Upstate Medical Center.
So, next slide, Yvonne, please.
So
SUNY Potsdam librarians found that we had some of our Muslim students actually going up into the stack area to to do their, their prayers, and it was felt like, golly, we really need to provide a space for them.
And so there were a lot of ideas that were thrown around. And what happened was we just simply took an unused office. It's on the second floor to in a quiet area behind the stacks.
And we use the space to create a meditation and prayer room.
There are no windows to the outside there's only the internal windows that look out onto the stacks, but there is an internal skylight. And so even with the lights off this room does does receive some light.
We didn't have a lot of funding we still don't so we don't, this is just kind of a bare bones, minimum budget that was used for this. And what was included was a prayer rug, that could be used, and we have yoga mats in there, we have you know Shoals,
and you know cloth there as well. We have a place for shoes. It's very bare bones.
We did find that we were having some issues at first, with students using the room for purposes other than what it was for fully intended. So students would go in there to take phone calls or group study and I guess sometimes sleep.
Next slide. Yvonne, please.
and so we, we do have some signage.
But when we talk about what we put in the room. There was a list of things that maybe we should include and you can see that there there are discussions on how, how fancy you want it to be.
It was a just a standard office room the dimensions are nine by 11 and 12 by seven.
And we, the librarians at the time because this this happen before I was there, talked about, you know, what do we need to include should it be functional with pillows or wall hooks or yoga mats, or seating.
Should it be atmospheric should there be things like an area rug which we which we did provide curtains plants soundproofing that sort of thing, or should it be or should there be objects that are purpose driven, for example, holy books such as the Bible
in the Quran, or maybe stress management objects. But, but it was settled on just simply, this is, this is just kind of the basic room.
And this was done, like I say, I'm very limited budgets. And we do need to increase update our signage, because we had to put a lot of signs up there that said please don't take phone calls in this room.
Please don't talk in the room please don't study here, that sort of thing. But for very little money you can create a space, which could be used by anyone for prayer, prayer time or meditation time and.
Next slide please.
And, yeah, so you see these were our slides. And as you can see we had the say please do not use it for sleeping or cell phone use. So, and and the the, we have many different signs, so we need to upgrade our signage, we need to, they need to all say
the same thing, and the tone of the signage needs to be improved and more positive and more welcoming.
I think that it kind of took some students off guard when it first came in and they didn't really quite understand what it was for. And now that students know what it is I think we can brand it a little bit more with, better, better signage a little more
nicely, that sort of thing but it didn't include a lot of a lot of funding for us. And the sad part was last year in the pandemic we did have students that wanted to use the room, but because the second floor was all closed we couldn't couldn't allow
them upstairs and I had to say no and I was very sorry to do so but I just could not find another space within our building.
To create the second purpose to create a purpose for this space.
And I think now, Christina is going to talk about what you can do when you, when you create a prayer room, and then you can, you know, you can take it up a notch.
So go ahead and Christina.
So good afternoon.
So our meditation space benefited from lessons we've learned from our first meditation space.
And the first meditation space came about through serendipity, and was driven really by our spirituality committee and their stakeholders, and they wanted a space and they were able to get the president of the university to buy into it.
And they came to the library to say hey, do you actually have space.
And this happened a long time ago, when we had photocopy machines.
And the photo photo copy machines were on their way out because he journals had come to stay. So we have this entire room that we could use for meditation space.
So we built this beautiful space because, you know, the president said we had money.
And we had this beautiful sponge paint job we had lights that dimmed in two different zones, we had a mural on the wall.
We were concerned about the sleeping too so the students who were designing the space deliberately selected furniture that was, was not comfortable for sleeping.
So this was built.
So over time.
It was, it was used the students really loved it.
But we started to notice these little wet footprints.
And as it turned out, our students are Muslim students who were using it
need to practice Buddha, which is when they wash their hands and their feet.
Before prayer, and so they would go across the hall to the bathroom, do their thing and then walk across the hallway and into the meditation space and so we had these, these wet floors.
So time passes, and that space is now swept into a simulation center. And so I had to go back and say okay so now you're taking our meditation space we need a new meditation space.
And not only do we need it need a new meditation space but because we had this safety issue with with footprints. We need a radio station.
And they all just looked at me.
Next slide.
So what is a Buddhist station.
So this picture on your right is a Buddhist station. It is a very basic Buddhist station. They come there and you know and shades of opulence.
But this would allow individuals to wash their, their hands in their feet in the room.
And you can sort of see the flooring change so originally we had this very nice carpeting and now we have more of a vinyl flooring so it's very easy to keep clean.
And the biggest issue with this was the plumbing.
So we couldn't sacrifice a bathroom.
So we had to find a space that was a Jason to existing plumbing.
And so even though our first meditation space was much larger.
It was much nicer visually and for meditation. This space is actually a lot more expensive even though it's a fraction of the size
to get it done.
You know we just we leveraged the reputation of the meditation space that had previously been there really worked with our students work with senior leadership.
and that they would have to go across the street to Syracuse University. In order to do this, or to walk 50 in bathrooms and then leave wet footprints all over.
And so that's what we were able to do it.
We also have prayer rugs.
And we do have a selection of texts.
Um, and, you know, it was just, you know, again a little bit of serendipity that we were able to do it and convince the simulation center project that they were going to have to fund this because they were dislocating this space and all of these students.
And that's, That's how we did it.
that slide next group.
Hey everybody, so Mustafa cicoria here from purchase and very honored to be able to talk about graffiti walls, so very much the Indi here and it's all about inclusiveness as we've been hearing from the other colleagues about their spaces about including
folks.
into into library programming that reflects cultural needs or other needs.
And I think some of those other needs are encompassed in this idea of graffiti walls. So I've been a huge fan of graffiti walls and graffiti in general.
I do a lot of hard work myself, and since I ever since I was a young kid I've always loved reading graffiti wherever I found it, there's an bathrooms or any places you visit the entire world is covered with graffiti.
It's actually one of the most ancient and original forms of art, creating graffiti I mean if you know the caves of Glasgow and France I mean, that's, in a sense, that's wall art that's graffiti art and graffiti as a concept as an idea has grown and respect
over the years.
We're all maybe familiar with the subway cars, bombed with graffiti. Those some of those subway cars are now in museums.
So, graffiti is going along the way, even now one of the most expensive, and well known artist is Banksy, you may have heard of Banksy the British artist.
His work is all about is all graffiti based it's it's kind of like guerrilla aspect of it.
There's actually a very democratic aspect of it that anybody can go out there and make a mark on a wall, they could do it an honest anonymously or otherwise, it's a very profound deep human desire to make a mark.
And to make that mark last, and so you'll find graffiti on on pyramids you'll find graffiti. In ancient temples, and you'll find them in libraries as well in fact I would encourage us to utilize graffiti was because of the very is a very low cost way
way to actually enable Student Involvement student expression student feedback, and there's different ways to do that. And I am personally very very touched by a lot of the things that I that I see and read on graffiti graffiti walls, and my interesting
graffiti walls, really began in my prior institution, one of our classrooms and not in the library was being dismantled. And there was this gigantic, gigantic a whiteboard, and they were going to, they didn't know what to do with it.
And then, I knew we had this blank wall right in front of the bathrooms.
And I thought, well let's just throw this here Why waste this beautiful new whiteboard. So I had them install it on this big empty wall right in front of the bathroom.
And our bathrooms are such that they're small, so at that at that institution, you had to close the door and lock it. And so people would have to wait to use the bathroom because they were small.
So while they're waiting, I have had a couple chairs put in front of this whiteboard. So you could actually write on the board.
While you're waiting for the bathroom. And it also, it, it, it also sometimes it prevents people from like that desire to do graffiti in the bathroom.
Now here you have this gigantic call we could do it there instead.
And here you have this gigantic, we could do it there instead. Anyway, so that's how I kind of got interested in trying this out as an idea. And as you can see what happens when you do a graffiti wall is you get all kinds of comments.
And if you give a little direction and I'll get to that in the next slide, you give a little direction to students and say something like, please give words of encouragement or positive comments please no profanity or anything, you get some really really
good comments that try to heal and encourage students for example here on this portion, you know, things like concentrated focus. I hope I can pass.
Nothing worth it will come easily pass all finals. Work hard keep pushing.
These are all words of encouragement from student to student, and I just find it quite moving sometimes some of these things that I that I see written there.
So maybe go to the next slide.
I'll actually before you go there actually before you go to the next slide, you'll see a little tiny image of some paint. That's actually called idea paint, that's what I used a purchase.
It's not the cheapest paint in the world, there's other Dry Erase paints that you can google and get an order online, but idea paint is particularly is, I believe it's actually a little bit higher quality, and you really might need.
just you can look at the specifications for one can can sometimes cover you know three feet by five feet and then another couple of gallon would cover another larger amount of space, and you get your facilities folks to actually, you know, if you can
find a space that's not being used I call them these dead space or negative spaces in the library where there's there's nothing going on.
And I actually encourage you to look around where your bathrooms are sometimes a good sort of anonymous, and it's good if there is some anonymity, to the space, so that you don't have somebody on you're looking behind your shoulder see what you're writing,
you know, other but you can you can also put them in public spaces as well.
So anyway, that's the idea of paint. There are other paints out there, so you go to the next slide.
Thank you, you want. So this is a larger draw photo of that same piece of that drawing prior. So this is, this is the board, and this was an initiative that I that I decided to do.
where we have therapy dogs. You know we have button making, and I thought well maybe we could have a graffiti wall as well as part of finals countdown. So, We did this for the first time, and it just got filled tremendously.
wonderful feeling. Wonderful. Sometimes artwork, we have a lot of art students, of course, purchase. So some of the drawings were quite quite good. And, and there's actually a viral effect here.
So a student makes a comment, another student comments on that comment you have you have this stream you have this conversation that develops within, within the region which often happens in bathrooms, you know, you know that somebody respond to it, but
I love that idea of other people be creating a dialogue and it becomes very interactive, in that sense, so it's very much not a static thing, it's actually quite interactive.
And on the left side of the board is where we have this hook with the dry erase pins there. And you can see that on the left side there in the photo. And I have a statement that I placed on the, on the board that kind of gives a little bit of policy so
maybe talk a little bit about policy, and also somebody mentioned in the chat, how do you police. Well you know you think it where you get a lot of bad words and things.
I, you don't really get that many, and you monitor it I like looking at these things so I will look at it, and if I see a bad word all just kind of gently erase it.
But it never has gotten really really bad. Interestingly enough, and sometimes students don't realize that their language is kind of intense. That's just the language they use.
So they don't might they might not necessarily necessarily intend harm, through their language, but I will sometimes go in and and just erase the word and that really is sufficient.
Otherwise, that's not been an issue.
So maybe the next slide anyone.
So here's a close up of the of the of the sign that I put their, you know, please just make sure it's not obscene use only the dry erase pens.
If they use their own like Sharpie that's bad.
It will not erase very well. You'll have to use some kind of special alcohol to get it off.
So we do try to provide the dry erase patterns which are really quite cheap as our whiteboards they're not. They're not that expensive and the paints not that expensive either.
If you have a whiteboard that you can put up, or, or paint, none of these things are that costly. We actually have an existing whiteboard in the library it's much smaller and but it's kind of hard to write on and it's made of plastic and that's a picture
of that. On the right side. And, you know, I, we had we had this one incident on campus, where students were, it was like a customer controversial incident and students were making comments on this board saying, Please don't do this, please don't suspend
so and so and so I told him, I said, Well, if this is a great way to express your feelings we have this other board that you can use. So they use the other larger board to then express their feelings and this is better than actually not giving them a
chance to vent, I mean I think it's important to do those things. So you can go to the next slide, then.
Thanks for thanks for that Fun fact, Yvonne about Dry Erase pens. So it's hard to see the I guess the photo on the, on the left there but this is that same bored.
After I erased it, and recently we, we, I decided to just permanently not not just for finals week but I decided to say, you know, anytime please come in and make some comments, and so it got filled pretty quickly with some really really beautiful artwork,
some of it there. But there's also important feedback that you get as a library, so you can't really read it, but in the bottom left corner it says the only stall in the men's room is broken and I do not have a.
I do not have the anatomy to use a urinal. I don't know what that last part means, but there really is a broken toilet and we've known about it, and this motivates us to fix these things, or if they have any other comments related to the library, we record
those things.
And, you know, we utilize that to improve the library.
On the right side is a really large whiteboard from my previous institution where I worked that we put in front of the bathrooms and you know it says things like more computers because we actually, we actually have what I call directed responses.
You can you can use the whiteboard for directed feedback that you want. So it says here Please give us your comments or suggestions that's General, but you can also say, should we add a gender free bathroom in the library and see what people say.
Here they're saying that they want longer hours they want more computers, they don't like what time be the library closes. So without having to do a big long survey, you just have this instant pulse, where you have this instant feedback from students
through directed questions and responses. And you can actually take this concept quite far.
We wanted to get new furniture, so we didn't know what to pick we had, we had this beautiful variety of different sort of mushroom type chairs seats. So we took pictures of them, we taped them to the whiteboard, and we said, Please put a checkmark on
your favorite one. So, we had two or three different types of, of, of, of stools companies tools cushiony ones. And we immediately saw everybody gravitating toward a certain type.
So that's the kind we bought that is exactly what we did we bought that, and lo and behold, it was extremely popular.
Students were using using them all over the place, and it was great. It was fantastic. So, this is a very very good way to really understand what what furniture what a student wants to sit at just throw it there on the whiteboard and see what check marks
and so again it's it's a survey mechanism it's a feedback mechanism. It's all kinds of mechanisms again it's, you know, safe venting, it's sometimes discourages graffiti, where you don't want graffiti.
And it's just a really inclusive way of incorporating integrating student student voice.
So I think that's my last slide. So the only thing I wanted to talk about was like lessons learned. I guess what I learned through this process is that it is a quick and easy way as I've been mentioning other sorts of things I could mention to you is
that you do want to take a photo, it'd be good idea to take a photo of them when you're done, because you use, you might think later on. Oh yeah, there was a comment about this on a whiteboard.
If you have the time, you can actually take the data and put it into a spreadsheet, especially if you have directed responses and you want to record all that you'll need somebody to record all that on a spreadsheet.
If that's what you want to do.
And other than that, I just found it to be a really really wonderful way of working with students and kind of cool, interesting artistic way sometimes in the library and I would encourage you all to think about animating some of those, what I call negative
laws, negative spaces where you just don't have anything. And because you'd be surprised at how students enjoy taking a break from their studies going over and just kind of just, you know, 11 o'clock at night, putting some stuff on that on that whiteboard
on that on that wall. And so that's pretty much my spiel and I'm trying to see if there's any questions. How long can you keep it that oh yeah that's right.
So the other thing to keep in mind is dry erase gets harder over time. So, the longer you keep the dry erase on there, the harder it is to get rid of you sometimes have to use, not an eraser but alcohol or white be to get rid of it after a while.
So once it gets full you can decide when to erase it. If it gets once it gets full I erase it. It could take three weeks it could take three days, but did you want to do want to kind of erase it and then get the new stuff on there.
As far as a new coat of paint. I've had ours up for two years. I don't think it needs new coat of paint. Every time you erase it leaves a little bit of revenue.
But that's okay you know after a while it just becomes this very light light sort of coloration happening, which is not the worst thing in the world.
But I would say after, probably about three years you'd need to get another coat of paint on their whiteboards might last a little longer than white paint based walls.
So thank you everybody.
Hi everyone, I'm Katie to do from Monroe Community College Library, and I'm going to talk a little bit about how we implemented family friendly spaces on our campuses.
And so we turned them family friendly study rooms, and they're just small rooms in our one that are writing campus and one at our downtown campus that include things like kids size furniture, computers whiteboards children's books.
That includes things like kids size furniture, computers whiteboards children's books. And we also have some games and activities for for students who want to bring their kids in.
We wanted to provide like a really welcoming place for student parents to come in and me work on projects and study.
And this really grew out of a couple of different things. We, on our campus there, there was a big initiative to support, particularly single moms and also student parents when we were working to implement this.
And there was a lot of research being collected on student parents at MCC. And what we found was that one in five MCC students were student parents, meaning that they had kids under the age of 18, and we're taking classes at MCC.
So as a huge number of our, our current students.
And we were finding that they were already bringing their kids into the library with them.
Often in the evenings often on weekends. And what we saw was that students were struggling to work on a paper and maybe at one at one of our computers, while also trying to occupy their children, keep them close to them, make sure they weren't bothering
anyone nearby. We have kind of like a large computer lab.
And so it wasn't very private for those students parents.
And so, one of our librarians Andrea Kingston came to me with a proposal to implement family friendly study rooms, she had looked at what other libraries were doing.
And we worked to gather support and funding and input from other groups on campus, so that we could implement them.
Next slide please.
And so this is our family friendly study room at our Brighton campus, our main campus.
You can't see it here but it's a fairly.
It's like the size of an office. It has a glass front on the wall on with the door in his glass so that were a little concerned at first about if it was totally.
There's no visibility about being able to monitor it, we placed it on our main floor right near our circulation desk and also near our computers and printers, we found that a lot of times students parents were wanting to work on papers, print things out.
And so we wanted to make sure we were close to the things they needed to do. It's also written x just our bathrooms.
Because all we're also concerned about people leaving children unattended and so we tried to put it in a location that would be most helpful to our student parents and yeah I love it Mustafa we should add a graffiti wall and it'd be great to see what
kids, you know drawn there as well as the student parents.
So in addition to like you can see we really tried to make it colorful through the furniture in the rug.
We also added, we do have small whiteboards but we could get a bigger one.
Like I said before, we had computers. And we also have children's books.
And what we ended up doing was, they're not part of our regular collection. They are just in there. And so if someone wants to take it home they can we ask them to bring it back.
People can donate children's books to. And we found that we have, it's worked out really well. So there's less worry about you know what if my kid takes us or what if they really like it and don't want to leave without it.
And then next slide please.
I should have mentioned that last room we got paid for by working with our foundation and using some, like donor money to purchase all the furniture in the materials.
And so this one is at our downtown campus, it is a little less colorful but you can see we still have.
We brought in some colorful furniture. This one does have a lot of whiteboards so we could have some graffiti walls, and also some computers in the back.
We did end up adding some more colorful like books and activities in there after the fact. And this one was funded by our Student Services Division. And so again, it didn't end up coming from the library budget.
It was totally funded by other groups on our campus who wanted to support the vision we had for welcoming student parents and their kids into the library.
Let's see. And then I did want to talk a little bit about policies for the rooms because I think that's usually what comes up when we talk about implementing like a student friends or family friendly space, and we tried to be really thoughtful about not
creating more policies that were necessary. So we obviously wanted to make sure that the children being brought in were safe, that they were attended to by a parent.
I know that our staff were a little nervous that we would end up with, you know, people leaving their kids in the room and going you know to run out and do something we really haven't found that to be the case.
And so our policies are, you know, children must be attended at all times, you cannot leave them ever.
You can check out a key to this room in advance, you can reserve it or you can just walk in and use it.
Um, we have them open for any student on campus.
We don't monitor whether like what constitutes a family or what constitutes children. We know that you know older children often might not look, they might look more like our MCC students then that when we think of children and so we really wanted to
be not put staff in a place where they needed to decide who could use this room and who couldn't. And we found that it's been students have done a really good job of using it, but not not abusing it right.
Next slide please.
And then one other thing we did is that we created tickets and so they're in these colorful backpacks, and we have them for different age groups that can be checked out at our service desks, both campuses, and they're mainly.
The idea is to entertain right things you can use to entertain your children while you're trying to get work done. And so I think we have like bags for under age three, from age three to 669 and then nine and up.
And again, you can just check it out. You can use it anywhere in the library or on campus and then we just ask that people notify us if anything's missing.
Each kit has like a laminated paper in it with all of the pieces that are supposed to be in there. So our staff can kind of check when things are returned.
Um, but again, so we implemented these rooms in the kid kits in January of 2020.
And then in March 2020 you all know that we, the pandemic happened and we had to close. And so we only had a few months of usage.
Before the pandemic. But it generally went very smoothly. And then just this fall we opened up our family friendly study rooms again.
And I see.
Yeah, Renee I. We did see a decrease in students bringing their kids last year.
So our Library and Learning Commons were open all of last year for students.
Um, but students had to kind of think of the requirements like at that point they had to take a covert test weekly to come to campus and they had to sign in at the door there was only one open door on our campus.
And so it really limited people hanging out on campus, it really limited people coming to campus and it definitely limited people bringing their kids.
But I will say this fall, we've had, we've seen people bringing their kids back and using the rooms.
And I think that was everything I was going to cover so we can move on to the next presentation. Thank you.
I guess that's me.
So my name is Lisa, and I'm from Stony Brook University Libraries and in our space one of our many reading rooms we have what we call our access visa.
I know you're there.
Can you hear me.
It's pretty low.
Can you hear me really low.
This.
That's better. Okay. Yeah, and we'll stick with this thing, I'm sorry about that.
I've been hearing you guys perfectly well and now, not so much. Okay. Um, my name is Lisa I'm from Stony Brook University, and we set up an accessibility room, which was, and I guess I don't have to be embarrassed to admit it anymore.
It was a utility closet we for our locations under the massive renovation handful of years ago, we had some extra funds so we asked facilities to give it a quick paint job and add more more Liam to the flooring in that location.
And then, I don't know if all the universities do this but if you are a student on campus with a special requirement. You can register with the Student Accessibility Support Center, they provide you with a password and then that unlocks all of the individual
The Student Accessibility Support Center, they provide you with a password and then that unlocks all of the individual locations that are able to provide services to you.
If they have them.
And thankfully we have one.
So you just come into our space give us the password and we will make our accessibility room available to you.
We'll jump into the next slide please. And we'll show the room.
Again, it was an old utility closet so we cleaned it up as best we could.
When we do the renovation and we found that we had a couch that wasn't working for one particular space towards right good into this location.
It is over eight feet long and worked out beautifully for one of our patrons. Some time ago, who needed a quiet space to lay down during the course of their day.
The entry to this room is right off of one of our silence spaces, very unnoticeable.
When you walk in.
You can see there's just adjustable height study space. We have a computer, it is a rather large room. There are two closets for storage, the light is motion sensitive and one of the beautiful things about this location is because you can see that lovely
grey door. It is a university door. So we are able to have facilities, maintain it. So they'll come in and clean it they'll wax the floors and they'll keep it very quiet.
Now, they'll keep it very clean and always polished and I like to stay on top of that.
Next slide, please.
Thank you, this is these are some of the things that are for me.
I'm very proud about the use of this room and my location.
Some of the features so when you come into the room. You'll notice that there is a computer desk that is separate from the study desk, and I find that most of our patrons actually use the study desk.
They don't need to computer because they all use their own personal devices, which they have synced up to their individual needs.
However, we do have the two adjustable height study desks easily manipulated with one hand.
And then we did have the Student Accessibility Support Center come in and install the Zoom Text magnifier the Dragon Naturally Speaking and the jaws software into the system.
Additionally, they provide multiple trainings to all of our staff, once or twice per calendar year, to make sure that if any of our excess and user services staff are confronted with a patron who requires assistance that we are capably trained to assist
if need be.
So, in the course of a day, who comes in, will give us the password that they've been given from sassy we call it. They do not need to show us any identification, we will support the patron to the room, unlock it, the only information that we put down
is the time that that patron enters the room, so that we know that there's somebody in there, in case of an emergency, in case it's closing time. We just need to know that there is somebody in here.
We do require that the rain, only being used by one person we just have a not drink in there. If it's possible.
There is dual, the worst case of an emergency.
There are no time limits again we do not monitor any activity. We do not pay any attention to anybody.
However, as I mentioned we do note the time that somebody comes, so that if somebody else comes in and we'd like to use the room, we can refer back to the previous page.
And if they have exceeded a two hour time limit, we can extend to go ahead and relinquish the room in favor of a new patron.
Recently, this is very interesting. Um, I would have to think that this is due to the fact that we do have so many patrons. With increased anxieties and need for quiet space, especially in light of coven and then returned to campus
that the sassy office has been giving out the password, pretty much to anybody. So we've seen a dramatic increase in use in that room.
It is one of the most respected places in all of our library locations.
I'm going to say it's probably about a 700% increase in the course of this semester alone.
And we're enjoying it.
And we love to be able to offer it to the patrons and as long as they continue to use it with the same respect that it's always been used.
We will only improve upon it and hope that we can retrofit some of these antiquated spaces to include more going forward.
Um, and I guess that's it.
All right, thank you so much everyone. This has been great.
Like to open this up for questions. Does anyone have anything to to comment or question,
can go ahead and unmute yourself. Yeah, I've got a got a question for Lauren about the meditation room, thank you so much for your presentation was just really really wonderful and also Christina for what you guys are doing there support all the students
that need those spaces.
So I was just wondering, in terms of the students that are actually using it Have you gotten any feedback like from the Muslim students for example that oh wow they love it.
This is great or could you add this or from other student groups that say, Hey, could we have this kind of a Bible not that Bible, or, or any kind of more specifics along those lines.
I have not gotten that type of feedback.
We do have a sign that that asked students in the room to comment and let us know what they think or what they'd like to see in it.
And certainly, if, if, you know, if I received comments about, including additional resources or changing things up a little bit.
If we could afford to do it we certainly would, but I have not received the only comments that I received was during the pandemic oh please can we use the room and it's like I'm so sorry.
The whole second floors like blocked off.
So, we haven't, we, we haven't received comment but also I feel like we need to do more advertising. We need to get the word out more that we have this kind of space.
And I think that if we got the word out, maybe there would be requests for texts for changes to the room or upgrades, and we would be happy to accommodate if we obviously within the budget request Yeah, that's great and I see the Christina's are also
added some comments there thanks so much Christina.
This was a big desire at my prior institution we just weren't we weren't able to do it the Muslim students were, you know, doing their prayer in the stacks and stacks of the library.
And, and I, you know i'm not i'm not a practicing Muslim but I I come from that culture so I will say a couple thoughts there that it is not essential that you at least coming from a Turkish cultural background I'm not sure if some Arab states but I think
it is.
It is not essential that you that you wash that you do the evolutions, it's not essential.
You know, if you're out in a, in a desert and your you know your Shepherd around the fields and your Shepherd or something, you just you just can't do that or whatever you don't have to, or if you're traveling.
They have a lot of accommodations in Islam, like you're traveling, you don't have to do it it's kind of weird situation you have to do it. But you're supposed to pray, you're always supposed to pray, but you don't necessarily have to wash up.
And also they call it, they actually call it just a cultural Fun fact, in Turkey they call it up tests, not will do.
I believe I will do might be more of a Arab term or African term in a lot of the Central Asian and Turkey, interview they'll call it up desk still fun factor.
Thank you so much.
I think one of the keys to all of these, these initiatives to take away is that we've seen like people are using unused spaces or they're used their repurposing some of their spaces for these different purposes, and depending on your budget you can you
can start one of these projects or combination of the projects with very little money. And then, as things catch on. And as you get support from different constituents on your campus and different departments, you can upgrade them to to offer more services
or to include more support say from accommodate of services. And I think that that that that that's wonderful.
And so this is something you know you don't necessarily have to do all this need a lot of money to do some of some of these, these inclusive practice
carry us a comment in the chat and I think maybe Mustafa would be a good one, and Christina. One, two.
Yeah, Christina is really, really, Christina is very very knowledgeable on this because she actually built one.
I didn't realize that you actually get special station actually special evolutions stations, I didn't realize that.
But what it is it's just there's a whole ritual that you go through in Islam before you pray.
It's a whole sequence you start with your, your hair your ears your nose your mouth. Hands, even up to your elbows, and then you and then you and then your feet, and you're supposed to do this sequence, and as you do it you're also, you're also praying
a bit as you do it. And it's a requirement for you need to go clean you need to address God in a clean way if we claim, but again there are exceptions to that.
I think on a lot of I think Muslim students would be appreciative of just the space itself, just to do prayer, without necessarily having to have a state of an evolution station.
They would appreciate just a place to do it privately, and not enough, sort of like big public area.
So if you can go that far with, you don't necessarily have to have the station there but but if there's a bathroom nearby I can see some Muslim students, kind of like really wanting to stick the protocol and then going into the bathroom and walking and
hence you get the wet the wet floor that Christina was mentioning, really kind of depends on how conservative you are as a Muslim.
Thanks so much Mustafa.
Does anyone else have anything else to talk about questions to race.
All right. Oh, I think I think i finally unmuted I'm having trouble with my computer, I just wanted to thank everyone and echo some of the things other people are saying in the chat.
How inspiring to hear from you guys and what you're doing in your, your different places I want to implement. I want to implement all of these.
And, and to Laurens point, I really do. I really also appreciate, like, particularly with the prayer and meditation rooms that you know the kind of the, the, the low budget and the higher budget options I think that's a really great point you you make
Lauren that you can start out small, and you know improve later.
And I'm just I'm very inspired. So, thank you, thank you to the presenters for doing this.
Thank you, sir.
This is Holly chambers from Potsdam. I just wanted to mention one thing that we did. I'm not sure how many years ago, it is now. It's not a facilities things specifically I mean it's not a building thing.
But the Muslim Student Association, at least for a couple years did a food drive for the campus food pantry. So maybe there are other ways for involving, you know, diverse groups and doing things in the building that you know benefit benefit the whole
campus.
Yeah, we, I remember that Holly we had that and then it kind of, well, then coven happened right, everything kind of stopped and it'll be interesting to see kind of I think next year, we're all kind of waiting to see what's going to happen next year and,
you know, are all the student groups going to come back full force are they going to have new ideas are they going to want to request some, some different projects are they going to offer some different service around the campus for each other and for
for the community. So, you know, hopefully, hopefully things, things will get a little bit more back to normal next year.
And we also been doing kind of a graffiti wall here at Potsdam for for several years. And we called it kind of the feedback loop and so you know like Mustafa said sometimes you ask a question, and then you wait for the response and Mustapha calls at the
that the directed response and i think that's that's quite accurate.
One of the points to make with all of this is that you.
You want to try to close that loop.
So that when you have students talking about something asking about something, if it's within your power, and you can close that loop, so that they feel like they're being heard.
Right. And so this may.
This may be a way to kind of support the students but also keep keep up that line of communication open.
You know, and our room is unlocked it's totally unlocked for the duration of the hours.
Hi, this is Renee from Cuba Community College. And I'd look, I just want to comment on on Lisa on your accessibility room.
I love it.
I have a daughter who's a commuter college student and she uses a wheelchair and she has a need to get out of her chair during the day. and it's you know it's almost impossible to find a campus that has like a private place that you can do that and I
realized it's a really unusual lead.
There aren't, you know, nearly than any great number of students who need that but I love that you acknowledge that and you have a space for that.
And really interesting. I'm so proud that we can do that for for anybody actually Oh my gosh. Yeah. You have no idea how unusual and great that is. Oh yeah.
Yeah, really, and.
And it's really cool, you know, then you have other you know accessible technology in there as well. And, and at first I thought well maybe that's weird that it's a private space you know they don't want to be singled out but when I think about it more
it does make sense to make it a private space, if you know they're using the couch, for example for you know need. So that's really great. And
so since you've seen this like multi, you know, many hundreds of percentage increase of the room, I imagine now there it's expanded well beyond the couch and that technology.
So, are you like thinking of adding another room for different types of uses related.
I would love to be able to do that certainly it's on my radar, um, what I prefer to do though is not pigeonhole any one room into a specific use, which is why we try to keep it as bland as possible.
Sorry I mentioned a little earlier that we were privy to some information at one of the patrons required just laying down quietly in the dark for some time during the day.
And we were glad that we could accommodate that need.
If we are able to steal away some space that I can prove is not providing the library with anything positive, I would like to designate other locations, it's hard when their university doors because they can't.
that is completely unsupervised, and has those big doors where we can't watch it, we can't supervise it we're so big.
It's difficult for its kind of goes against my grain not to have any glass doors.
Yeah.
Perhaps it's just me know we I've worked at another college yeah where the yeah they're definitely pros and cons with those glass door.
We've been the library has been voted the best place to be alone. In years past.
So, definitely don't want to renew that distinction.
But on my radar it's, again it's all on my radar so I do, I do most of the outreach that is di focused, as it pertains to students.
I definitely want to develop this and run with it and just be so proud of it, and welcoming with it so yeah if you have ideas but I'm so open to talking about it.
All right, I will. If I think of anything, I will definitely contact to, or if not have it relations. Thank you, please.
Alright. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much everybody.
We have a couple of minutes left. We did have a question from Sarah saying has there been any been any concern expressed by students having the glass window, about having the glass windows do they express concerned about their prayer practice being observed
by others,
we've, we've received no no concerns about about that. And actually, in some ways we, the windows for us or a safety feature that we can make sure that that students that are in the room which are safe.
So, um, but, you know, certainly we if if students express that they didn't feel safe, or they felt uncomfortable with that we would certainly see what we could do to address the issue by putting up shades are blind.
Nice.