(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal," I'm Steve Kendall.

The Upper Sandusky Community Library is known for providing local citizen access to a variety of media throughout its more than 100 year history.

Special events are also a significant part of what they do.

We're joined by Krystal Smalley and Patti Davidson from the Upper Sandusky Community Library.

And Krystal and Patti, thank you so much for being here, appreciate you taking the time to talk about this.

As I mentioned, you've got a very special event coming up, but you do a lot of those and you do a lot of 'em very well, but this one that we're gonna talk about shortly is an incredible one.

But also talk about the fact that the library has all of these other services, because if you look at your website, you look at your social media, there's just a lot of things you do that people might be surprised that are available.

So talk about some of those services.

It runs from preschool to senior citizens, so all the demographics, everything, but a lot of services and a lot of things that people might not be aware you do.

- Yeah, we do have a lot of things going on, especially for all ages.

It starts really young for story time.

It's ages zero to three, and then a preschool story time that they do with Ms. Jill, and she handles that three days a week.

And she even goes out to schools and preschools and stuff like that to do story time as well.

And then we also do our regular programming.

We have two different book clubs.

We have a lunch bunch, which is a monthly gathering for people to bring a themed dish every month, as well as every other month is "Patti's Tastes of History" this year.

(laughs) And then we also have Craft Party every month where adults can get together and do a themed craft.

So those are our regular ones that we have going on, but each month we also have different programs.

So like in April right now, we are getting ready to do a lot of plant stuff.

That's always real big with our community.

They love gardening and anything like that.

So we always do a plant week where they can swap plants, and then some kind of program related to that.

This year is gonna be flower arranging, but we've also had other things related to gardening every year for that.

Some other fun stuff that we have going on, we also, (chuckles) next month in May, we're doing a pet month because, well, we like pets.

(laughs) - [Steve] Sure.

- [Krystal] And we like to help out our local Humane Society.

So our community really seems to respond to that.

And during the entire month, we accept donations for our Humane Society, and then we tailor programs around that.

But each month we always have something going on, some kind of big events that we have that we're doing.

- [Steve] Yeah and I noticed as I was looking, again, through your website and your social media, you have an incredible genealogy area too, where people have all sorts of resources they can tap into.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because, obviously we run "Finding Your Roots," which is a genealogy series, but people individually have a lot of resource they can access and do their own, finding their roots kind of thing.

So talk a little about your genealogy area as well.

- Well, what's so great about that is we actually offer genealogy stuff to people.

We have whole family histories back there, and that's all run by Jenny McKee, she's our professional.

We always send people back to her because, well, she knows what she's doing back there, but we have people coming in all the time asking for, that can be anything from obits or looking through the old newspapers or the old yearbooks back there.

But it's actually quite amazing to see how many people actually come in to use our heritage room back there.

And we also have a lot of Wyandot Indian stuff there too as well.

- [Steve] Yeah, and when you look through the resources, you mentioned the newspapers, but there's census information, there's all of these different things that I guess, you know, fire insurance maps.

I thought that was kind of interesting that that's part of what's available there.

You know, 40,000 maps of Ohio cities, I mean, just, yeah, the amount of resources is pretty incredible.

When you look at some of these things too, and I know the other thing I was looking at too is the Ellison room, which is die cut activities, die cut access.

So explain that a little bit because I read that and I was like, "I think I know what that is," but see if I guessed right.

But go ahead and explain what that is.

- [Krystal] So, you know, when you're in an elementary school room and you see all these little cutouts of things that the teachers will put up, so for displays or stuff, all those cutouts are what we actually have.

And they're just steel things that you can smash down and create the different ones.

And you'd think that we just have that for our staff, but it's not, it's actually open to the entire community.

They just come in, sign up, and they can go through all the different things that we have.

It's letters, numbers, images, there's even like 3D boxes you can cut out.

So it's super popular.

We have a lot of the cheerleaders who will come in at the beginning of the year so they can decorate lockers for the athletes.

Or even just a random person who needs to come in and do, I think we've had people come in for wedding invitations.

But yeah, they can go through anything that we have, and if we don't have it, we can get die cuts from other libraries in the area too.

- [Steve] Oh yeah, that's an incredible resource because obviously it touches pretty much anything that would go on in the community events like that.

When you sit down to look at this, and I know we we're gonna talk about this special event, "Americans in the Holocaust," how do you, when you guys sit down and decide, here's what we think would be something that the community would be interested in, here's something we think the community needs to be interested in, what's that sort of process like for you?

And Patti, feel free to jump into as well.

So how do you determine what things to bring to the library beyond all of these other great services you offer?

- [Krystal] Because we're a small community, we tend to get to know our patrons very, very well, and we get a sense of what they like and what they're into.

And a lot of times it'll just be, we had a tea program last month, and after the lady got done talking about different herbal teas, somebody came up to me and is like, "Did you know this was going on in Marion?"

And one of our local restaurants actually uses these special kind of mushrooms from this business in Marion.

They're like, "That would be so cool."

So a lot of times we'll just have people come up to us and say, "This is what we would like."

Other than that, (chuckles) I'm part of the adult programming, and Patti helps too, with the food related stuff.

But it's my other coworker, Rachel Kerns-Moore, we bounce ideas off of each other all the time.

So sometimes we're just throw something out or we'll see that somebody else is doing something and see how we could offer that to our community.

So a lot of it is just creativeness, bouncing off each other.

- [Steve] Yeah, and one of the things too, I noticed, I know Patti is listed as the Technology Coordinator, Patti, when you look at the service you offer, because obviously technology access to anything that allows you to connect better to the world around us.

Patti, talk a little bit about what you do as the technology coordinator and how important that is to the community as well.

- Well, the building we're in now was built in 1985, and that's pre-technology.

So we have a big struggle here, (chuckles) getting computers in, make sure they work, wifi.

We are constantly having people come in and print stuff.

We've learned to print off phones and to the copiers.

So we offer, if you don't have printer ink at home, we offer that service.

It is a challenge keeping everything up and running on the wifi, especially in the basement.

We have large meeting rooms in the basement, and keeping everything up and running in there is also a challenge.

But we have computer access for people and internet access for people that wouldn't normally have it.

We have kids that come in after school, they do homework on the computers, they play games.

So it's so important.

- [Steve] Yeah, the connectivity part.

- [Patti] It is a challenge.

- [Steve] Mmhmm, yeah.

And I think that's one of the things too, because we hear about, especially smaller rural areas, and upper Sandusky's a mid-sized town, it's not a small little village, it's a larger place, but commuter access, internet access, broadband access, all of that is so important now because that's the easiest way or the only way, sometimes, you can, from a business point of view, or you just wanna pay a bill, it's almost as if that's the direction you need to go.

So having access to that probably really does help people an incredible amount.

You say your biggest challenge is really just retrofitting the building, as is always the case with older buildings designed for a totally different way of doing things.

We're in a different century and it changes so fast.

So that's gotta be a challenge.

- [Patti] It is a challenge.

We have a tech company, Buckeye IT out of Tiffin, and bless them, because we call them all the time.

And I tell them, I don't know if we're on ancient Indian grounds here, I believe that we are, but this building was not supposed to have technology in it.

So anything that we can do to bring that to people, it is a challenge.

So we offer, on Tuesday mornings, Krystal is usually the one that does it, a Tech Connect for usually our senior population that needs help with their cell phones, with their laptops, with their iPads.

We have a lot of seniors that come in that know they need to do something on the computers, but they don't even know where to start.

So we do offer that help for them as well.

- Good, well when we come back, because with the end of this segment, we can kind of drill down into, because you guys have brought a lot of accolades for the things you're doing with regard to the Holocaust, and we wanna talk about that because you've got this really incredible event coming up downstream a little bit, but it's never too soon to talk about something like this.

So when we come back, we're gonna talk with Krystal Smalley and Patti Davidson from the Upper Sandusky Community Library.

Back in just a moment, here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with here at "The Journal."

Our guests are Krystal Smalley and Patti Davidson from the Upper Sandusky Community Library.

We talked about all the services that the library offers, but you've got a very special event coming, but the story predates the particular event we're gonna be talking about, which is "Americans and the Holocaust."

Patti, talk about sort of the genesis, the story behind how we're gonna get to talking about this traveling exhibit that's gonna be here in 2026.

So talk about how that sort of evolved.

But go back to the beginning of the story, why you were involved in the Holocaust, involved in that and talking about.

So tell us that story and then we can talk about the event as well.

- [Patti] This all started with a book, "The Daughter of Auschwitz," by Tova Friedman, which I read.

And in the beginning of the book, the author states that we have forgotten the Holocaust.

They don't teach it anymore, people have forgotten about it.

So I went to our librarian, Rachel, and said, "Holocaust Remembrance Day is in January, why don't we do a display in the front entryway, marking liberation?"

And we came up with a timeline, and she created this beautiful display in the front vestibule.

And then on January 27th, a national "Vice" story broke that we had neo-Nazi home-schoolers in our small town.

So we decided to continue on.

We brought our display into the library.

We contacted newspapers, they contacted us.

We then had people coming from other towns into our library to see our display, to check out the books.

It was Krystal's idea to get a hold of someone at the Nancy and David Wolfe Holocaust and Humanity Center, in Cincinnati, and we had a Holocaust survivor meet with us, via Zoom, his name was Henry Finichel, And it was a wonderful, personal thing to have this Holocaust survivor talk to us.

I did a presentation at the Wyandot County History Museum that was one of the largest attended, that was standing room only.

So obviously, we have a need in our community.

People want to know what happened, and we're the library, we're gonna step up and we're gonna tell them what happened.

- Now, when you mentioned this, the neo-Nazi portion of this, when the story broke, was there a lot of reaction to the fact that that existed, or was that something that was sort of generated by what you guys started to do?

How did that sort of evolve?

Was there immediate negative reaction?

Was there any reaction at all, or what was that piece of that about?

- [Patti] Yeah, there was no reaction.

- [Steve Kendall] Wow, yeah.

- [Patti] It was pretty silent.

Everyone I think was afraid to say anything.

What if it's not true, and the more research we did into the story, well, it is true.

So, I think the library was one of the first ones to stand up and say something about it.

But it was pretty quiet in town.

- [Steve] Yeah, well it's interesting because yeah, normal reaction would be, "Well, that can't be happening.

That can't be happening."

So you guys were able to then make sure, well, it actually is, and then you move to address it by moving your display into a more prominent space.

And obviously the reaction to that was incredibly supportive.

- [Patti] Yes.

- [Steve] Were you surprised by that level of support initially or not, because it had been so low key, the initial reaction to the neo-Nazi part of the story, were you surprised by the huge positive reaction you got or not?

- I was, because everything was so quiet.

No one was really wanting to stand up, and that was one thing that we did when we were nominated for an Up-Stander Award from the Cincinnati Holocaust and Humanities Center, we didn't really understand the impact of that, because in our small rural area, yeah, it was a big deal what we were doing, but it wasn't that big of a deal.

Nobody made that big of a deal about it.

But here in Cincinnati, they really made a big deal about it.

- Yeah, because I know there's a video there of Katie Couric talking about getting ready to give you guys this award, and obviously, when you look at that, as national, international reach when you do something like that.

Did you ever think, I mean, you guys obviously provide all these incredible services, day to day, all these things you do for the community, yeah, did you ever think you'd have this sort of international or global reaction that what you got about what you did, this one particular thing?

- [Patti] No.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- [Patti] And we talk about it all the time.

We're just a small library.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Patti] We just do what we can here.

That recognition was a surprise.

I don't know if Krystal was surprised.

I did not think we were gonna win an award.

- [Steve] Yeah, and she obviously started to deal with all of the people coming in, all the inquiries about, you know, what are you guys doing?

Who are you?

What are you doing?

Why are you doing it?

How did you, yeah, this kind of thing.

So yeah, I mean, I guess it speaks to the fact that when you guys took the initiative to stand up and do this, that obviously, as you said, a lot of people were either unwilling to, or were afraid to, and you guys were able to, you know, step up and do that and lead them through this and say, "We need to talk about this."

Has it led to other things beyond, and obviously, you've got this event coming in and we're gonna talk about that.

Has it led to any other reaction, in terms of people becoming more interested just in general in the Holocaust and the books and things you have at the library?

Has it expanded beyond that, had legs beyond just this particular thing?

Not that this isn't big, but has it inspired some additional interest, maybe, that wouldn't have been there before?

- Oh, it has, it has.

We've had parents come in, checking out books for their children because we talk all the time about it's not taught.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- And what we don't remember, we repeat.

That's the big thing, we're gonna repeat this.

So it has made a big impact on our small community.

- [Steve] Yeah, and it makes a good point.

You say, you know, that really if you had, and again, if you go back and you look at, you read this book, if you, you know, that's what started it, that was sort of the piece of this that got people interested.

Then the display, which just by either divine luck or something, you end up doing it at a time when this other event comes up with the neo-Nazi.

So it's funny how that worked, but the bottom line is, you guys were already on the case a little bit and the timing was pretty good on this.

So, yeah, yeah.

Within the library, I mean, obviously we're talking to the two of you, but there are a lot of other people there.

There's a long list of staff members.

Did this become kind of an overall group effort among everybody at the library then, all of the staff?

- [Patti] Absolutely.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- [Patti] Everyone's involved.

Our board of directors decided to send all of the librarians to Cincinnati for the Up-Stander Awards.

- [Steve] Great.

- [Patti] They were very supportive.

Yes, all of our librarians are involved in this now.

They all know what's coming up and the programs that we're working on, everybody is involved in this.

It's not just the two of us.

- Yeah.

And I guess it speaks, you know, other things that might come up, other events, other ideas.

Now you have a real deep skillset set now on, hey, if this really breaks big, we're ready for it this time because I'm sure at first you're like, "Wow, everybody's interested, how did that happen," kind of because you're thinking, "We're focused on our community.

We're gonna do this thing for the community."

And then you get all of these other inquiries about what you're doing.

So yeah, you're ready for the next one when it happens, not if it happens, when it happens.

Yeah, good- - [Patti] Yes, it's opened a lot of doors for us.

- [Steve] Yeah, great, fantastic.

Well when we come back, let's talk about the specific event that's gonna come up.

It's downstream a little bit, but it's never too early to talk about this, particularly so that people don't miss it when it's there in a year or so.

Back in just a moment with Krystal Smalley and Patti Davidson here on "The Journal" from the Upper Sandusky Community Library.

Back in just a moment.

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Krystal Smalley and Patti Davidson, from the Upper Sandusky Community Library.

We've talked about all of the services.

We've talked about the story behind the event that's gonna be coming up and how we got to this point.

And along the way too, and if people wanna look, you can go online and see you folks receiving your Love of Learning Award from the Up-Stander Awards, that sort of thing, in Cincinnati.

There's a clip on there too that you talk about the Holocaust survivor that became kind of integral to this as well.

So we've got this story, you guys are involved in Holocaust, making sure people don't forget it, story breaks about the neo-Nazi curriculum that was going on in your local area.

You're now gonna have this very special event and it's gonna take place downstream a little bit, in 2026, but Krystal, talk about the fact that "Americans in the Holocaust," this traveling exhibit is going to be coming to your library and talk about just how that all evolved too, because that's not something that, there's only basically about three or four dozen libraries around this country that are gonna have this traveling exhibit.

So talk about how that all took place, and then we can talk specifically about the event and what your expectations are for that as well.

- Everything really just sort of died down, quieted down, after, basically when you're looking toward the middle of last year, and then all of a sudden, there's a newsletter for librarians who do programming, and they're like, "Hey guys, there is this traveling exhibit that they are going to be doing for the second time.

If you want to go ahead and apply."

So I clicked on it, and of course, it's the "Americans in the Holocaust" traveling exhibit.

And I was like, you know what, we got Henry in here before we did our display.

We could totally do this with the backing of national organizations.

And so I went to Patti (chuckles) and I was like, "Okay, if we can do this, would you help back me up on this?"

She was like, "Yeah."

So then we had to go to our director and then to our board to get approval to go ahead and apply for this.

And of course our board has been very, very supportive on this, and they said, "Go for it."

And that's when I started filling out this application, Patti and I basically pounded the pavement to get letters of support from our community.

So we hit up the school district, we met with the board of commissioners, we got the Historical Society, our own board, a whole bunch of letters of support from our community that says, "This is very important and we want it here."

And so filled out the application, turned it in in October, and then didn't hear anything for a couple of months.

And I was just like, we're a smaller library, maybe we don't get it versus these bigger ones, in the bigger cities or the university libraries.

And then in, I believe it was February, we were just standing in the work room and I just happened to have my laptop on me, (chuckles) and I see this email come across and I rush out to Patti at the front desk and I'm like, "Look at this," and I hadn't even read the email at that point, (laughs) but it was approval for the "Americans in the Holocaust" exhibit in 2026.

So we are so excited to be able to do this.

We even went out and visited the Marshall Public Library in Illinois because they were a small library, small town just like us, and we wanted to be able to see how they were able to do it.

So we're like, if they can do it, we can definitely do it, and now we are going to do it.

(laughs) - Yeah.

'cause you're gonna expect, I assume, a lot of traffic through this exhibit because of the content, and of course, obviously the fact that you guys have done a lot of work in this area before.

So yeah, it makes sense to go out there and say, let's see what's gonna happen.

When we open the door, what's it gonna look like?

And you talk about the fact, I think this is the other important thing, all of the other agencies, organizations, groups that got on board with this, when you talk to 'em about, "Hey, we wanna apply for this.

We think it's a good idea," yeah again, the wide range of community support that you got.

- We even got a letter of support from the Nancy and David Wolfe Holocaust and Humanity Center down in Cincinnati, and I think that's really what helped us because they just wrote us a glowing recommendation after our partnership early last year.

So all the letters of support helped us to show that this is what our community wanted.

- [Steve] Yeah, well we've got a little clip of this particular item.

So let's take just a moment and watch that.

- [Video] People are shocked to find out how early Americans learned about what the Nazis called, "The Final Solution," and what they did about it.

America has its own prejudices, antisemitism, racism and segregation, political fears, fear of communism.

As the Nazis are expanding, our doors are closing even more.

What would you do?

Would you be willing to take the risk to go to Europe and aid refugees?

There was a Nazi threat that most Americans understood as a threat to democracy, and they went to war to defeat it militarily, but never to rescue the victims of Nazism.

The special exhibitions that we've done have really focused on victims and perpetrators.

This one is different.

This is about Americans.

What did Americans know?

When did they know it?

What were the range of American responses to the threat of Nazism?

- [Steve] Yeah, so that gives people an idea of what they're going to see, but obviously, there'll be nothing like actually being there.

We can look at that video, we can see what the content's gonna be like.

As you look at the planning for this, what are some of the logistical things you're thinking about because obviously, as I said, you're gonna expect a lot of people, a lot of people.

And not that you probably aren't relatively busy all the time, but the reality is these people are going to come for a specific event in a specific timeframe.

Kind of a smaller version of the eclipse, or maybe just like the eclipse, you'll have thousands of people showing up on your door for this.

So how are you dealing with that and planning for that?

You went out to look at how another library had a little bit, what are some of the things that you're going to have to take into account that may not be just your typical day to day way of doing things?

- [Krystal] Luckily we have some parking around us, so we don't have to worry too much about that.

And it's going to be available for free, basically during library hours.

We will also be holding guided tours where people can go on it themselves.

But what's gonna happen is everything's gonna be done in our basement, because that's where our large meeting room is, but we are using the entirety of the basement to dedicating it to this exhibit.

One side will be the exhibit itself, the other side in our boardroom is where we are going to host documentaries and other videos all day long.

So it's not just learning from the exhibit itself, but everything around it.

Patti's gonna be teaming up with the middle school to do a Butterfly Project display, Patti, if you wanna, (chuckles) you know more about that one than I do.

- [Steve] Yeah, well good, I mean- - [Patti] The Butterfly Project with the middle schoolers, it's based on a book about Theresienstadt Concentration Camp called "I Never Saw Another Butterfly."

- [Steve] Wow okay, wow.

- [Patti] So I'm gonna work with the middle schools, we're gonna work with the high schools to get in field trips out here.

I'm hoping to do a cantata with the drama and the chorus, and we're working with the Wyandot County Historical Museum on doing different programming.

And because our program rooms are gonna be full, then we're gonna have to do programming out into the community so that we have been offered different places in the community already that we can do our programs there.

- Yeah, it's gonna be an incredible event and it's gonna come up August 19th, September 30th of 2026.

Am I correct about that?

- [Krystal] Yes.

- [Steve] So we're out a little bit, but lots of time to talk about it.

But I appreciate both of you being here today.

Krystal Smalley, Patti Davidson, thank you so much, from the Upper Sandusky Community Library, for doing this, and congratulations on all these well-deserved accolades.

So thank you so much.

- [Krystal] Thank you.

- [Steve] Great.

- [Patti] Thanks.

- You can check us out at WBGU.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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