 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly online event. We are a webinar, we are a webcast, an online show, the terminology is up for debate, but whatever you want to call us, we are here live, online every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. If you are unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. We do record the show every week, so you can always go to our website later and watch recordings of all of our shows. And at the end of today's session, I will show you where you can see all those recordings. We do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, many training sessions, interviews, demos sometimes. Basically anything library related, we are happy to have it on the show. We are very broad with that. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do do presentations, Nebraska things that we are doing here, but we also bring in guest speakers. And that's what we have this morning. On the line of us, from the organization Libraries Without Borders, which you will hear more about in a second here, is Paloma Prader and Kimmy Ross. Good morning guys. Good morning. Good morning. And they are both from the organization Libraries Without Borders, a non-profit organization who is doing some great work with getting libraries, support, and programs and resources into places all over the world, both in the US and internationally, but I'll just let them explain it a lot better than I can. I'll just hand it over to you guys to take it away. Great. Thank you so much, Krista, for hosting us today. And thank you for everyone to join us today. I am Paloma Prader, and I am a project officer at Libraries Without Borders, and I'm with my colleague Kimmy Ross. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about our work, Libraries Without Borders, and how we're innovating access to information among the most under-resourced communities. So just before we dive straight into it, I wanted to go give you a little bit of an overview of what we're going to be discussing today. I'm going to be giving you a lot of background about Libraries Without Borders, what we do, our history, and then we're going to be talking about our first innovation, the Ideas Box, and how it's been implemented domestically and abroad. Then we're going to be discussing a little bit about the Coombook, which is a second innovation drawn from the Ideas Box. And then we'll give you a little bit of an overview of our strategy of implementation, how we plan our projects, and then we'll tell you a bit about where we're headed next. So thank you so much for joining us, and we're really excited to get started. All right, so to understand Libraries Without Borders from a basic level, you need to understand our mission statement. So at Libraries Without Borders, we believe that libraries are not just connections of collectors of books, but connectivity hubs that empower economic and human development and provide people with the tools necessary to transform their lives. And this has really shaped all of the programs that we've undertaken domestically and abroad as one of our focuses is economic development and international aid. So given our mission statement, we work to create and support 21st century libraries around the world, and provide access to quality information and education to the most vulnerable populations. In addition, we believe that free access to information is a fundamental human right. And we believe that education, innovation, co-creation, diversity, and lifelong learning are central to the emancipation and development of human beings and their communities. So all of our programs which currently span four continents and 27 countries focus on these core values and beliefs. In addition, our programming revolves around three themes, civic engagement, in which we engage in efforts to support literacy rates, education, and community resilience, entrepreneurship, in which we support professional development, and humanitarian crises, in which we provide disaster relief and psychosocial healing specifically for refugees. So these three themes, again, they target these specific areas and really help to build community resilience around education. So before diving straight into our current projects, I wanted to give a little bit of context to Libraries Without Borders and how we began. So we were founded in 2007 in France, and we actually began our work in Haiti by supporting the Haiti University Network. In 2010, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck, and the university asked us to stay because there was such a huge impact on an already under-resourced community, and there is also a huge impact on the educational resources there. In fact, half of the country's population is under-18, meaning that the school-age children and families were those that were especially affected. And we've noticed that in post-disaster context, education is simply not a priority, and we were able to see this firsthand in Haiti once the earthquake struck. About 4,000 schools were damaged and destroyed in an already extremely under-resourced context. So this had a really significant impact on Haiti, and there was so little support that we saw a huge opportunity to help support libraries and librarians and to increase access to information and education in these areas. A huge amount of people lost their homes. They were forced to move to camps without adequate school resources. So in this context, we've realized the huge potential of libraries and how we can reimagine library spaces to help populations such as these and to increase access to information and education and provide high quality education. And so now, from then, we've been working to find innovating ways to access education information. And to this point today, we are in fact implemented in 27 countries, which we're really proud about and we're really excited to keeping the programs going and to expand to even more countries and continents. So on to the birth of the Ideas Box. The Ideas Box is our first innovation, our first tool created by Libraries Without Borders, and it was created in 2013. We partnered with UNHDR and PhilipsDark to create an optimal design to provide, to increase the access to information and to education. It is an autonomous, portable, and customizable pop-up media center and mobile classroom that provides a variety of resources, devices, and all sorts of resources for all ages to access. This has been specifically used in post-context, post-disaster contexts. And this was actually first used in Burundi. So what is the Ideas Box? The Ideas Box is what is pictured here, and as you can see, it contains four modules as well as two silver cases containing tables and furniture. The Ideas Box ships on two standard shipping pallets and is easily transportable, and the shell of the box is waterproof and unfolds to create furniture. As you will see in a video that we're going to be showing you shortly, the box unfolds to create a 100 meter squared space which acts as a makeshift school and supportive educational center. So we'd just like to show you a short video on the Ideas Box. As you can see, a team of four people is able to reconstruct the Ideas Box and assemble its necessary components. The yellow box that they're working in the foreground of the video here is the administration module, which is the backbone of the Ideas Box, as it houses the network system and power system. The orange box over to the left hand of the screen there is the library module and it contains up to 300 paperback books and a dozen board and video games as well as stationary. The IT module in the back, which is the green box, contains 50 e-readers, 15 tablets, five laptops and five HD cameras, and the Sidual Cinema module, which is the blue one also in the back right, houses an HD television perfect for screening video content. As you can see, the Ideas Box is really creating a physical learning space. It has furniture, tablets, computers, the Sidual Cinema module, and paperback books, which really provides an innovative and interactive learning space for all program participants. That's the Ideas Box in the nutshell. So thank you for watching that with us. We hope you have a better idea of what the Ideas Box is and a visual image of how easily it can be unfolded and unpacked within 20 minutes with just a small team, and create a 100 meter squared space with educational resources, cultural resources, and a huge amount of information. So we want to discuss the goals of the Ideas Box. And before we go on to that, I wanted for all of you to take a quick guess about the average length of stay of a refugee in a refugee camp. And you can keep that in mind if you want to write it in the dialogue box that is encouraged. We'd love to hear your thoughts. So I'll give you a few seconds to just think about the average length. Yep, everybody can go ahead and use the question section there to type in if you have any clue, any insight. First person says five or more years. Okay, great. Well actually, the average length of time for a refugee in a camp is 17 years, which is a really significant amount and much more than most people would first assume. And when we're thinking about that statistic, it's really important to think of children in particular. So if a child is born in a refugee camp or enters a refugee camp at the age of two or three years old, by the time 17 years is passed, their entire lifespan of education is gone as well. So within 17 years, most children will have completed elementary school, middle school, high school, and earn some sort of formal educational certificate, attesting to the fact that they are able and ready to participate in society, get a job, and kind of enter the workforce and become an adult. So when 17 years passes and refugee children do not have access to educational resources, they are really losing an entire lifetime of education, which means that essentially we're losing an entire generation of children with today's Syrian refugee crisis, given its magnitude by the fact that they are not allowed access to information and educational resources. So when we created the Ideas Box, we wanted to make sure that these programs expand access to information, education, to connectivity, and to create collaborative spaces in ways that can empower communities to design their own developmental solutions. And this is in all contexts and not necessarily just in refugee camps. We believe that the Ideas Box is a really remarkable toolbox that can empower children and adults. I like to pave foundations for a self-reliant future and to help provide for themselves and become independent. Its design is mobile, it's robust, it has its own power source. So it can really provide a safe space for all generations, for all ages, where creativity can flourish and to help children and adults with their education, which they might not have access to. So we have four goals with the Ideas Box. And firstly, it is to create a safe space, especially in contexts such as refugee camps. They can be extremely dangerous, especially to children. So not only can children go here to have access to all these sorts of resources, thousands of resources and activities that they can use and have fun with, it can also help significantly reduce the risk of exposed children and refugee camps and provide that very safe space that, for example, libraries would otherwise provide, which they do not have access to there. Our second goal is to strengthen community ties. Again, in post-disaster context, there can be a significant amount of community tensions and a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder. So the Ideas Box is very much an interactive space that can facilitate encounters between individuals and act as a catalyst for community bonds. We really aim to strengthen the peace and to provide the support for those who are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, who are in shock, and those who have just lost absolutely everything, including schools and access to information. In addition, the Ideas Box works to support educational efforts. So as we mentioned, a lot of refugee children don't have access to schools in the camps where they are living. And if they do, there are UNHCR makeshift schools, schools that aren't really supplied with the necessary resources that are essential to children's education in an interactive manner. So the Ideas Box provides access to a wide range of content, including offline content, as the Ideas Box creates an offline Wi-Fi hotspot on which users are able to connect laptops, tablets, and smartphones to access preloaded educational content, including Wikipedia, TED Talks, Code Academy, Khan Academy, etc. And again, our resources are both digital and paper, as the Ideas Box does provide up to 300 paperback books within the library module, which we saw in the video. And so this innovative tool supports both teachers and students, as it allows teachers to have access to the resources they need to effectively communicate their lesson plans and goals, and students have the ability to interact with the material in new and exciting ways. Through these efforts, we are also reimagining the power of library spaces. So we're transforming what is typically seen as a collection of books into an interactive community hub where people can rally around and support one another in order to build social and economic resilience. So where in the world is the Ideas Box? As we mentioned, Lenders Without Borders has worked in over 27 countries spanning four continents. And you can see here the exact locations of where we have implemented Ideas Boxes in the past and where they are implemented today. And it's important to note that to the far left of the map, we see two dots in the United States. And this is, again, important because we're speaking a lot about the Ideas Box in refugee contexts, and the Ideas Box is not only a tool for refugee populations. So in the United States, we've implemented the Ideas Box in Detroit and in the South Bronx. And again, this is important because these areas are areas that we think of as developed areas that have access to internet, areas that are just kind of like where you and I grew up. But in fact, these are very under-resourced communities, and they need help in terms of supplying their educational content. So we've used the Ideas Box to build community resilience, strengthen community ties, and support local educators there. So now that we hope that you have a clear idea of what the Ideas Box is and a sort of visual image, we wanted to discuss about our current programs and the programs that we have implemented in the past. As I previously mentioned, we implemented our first Ideas Box program in Burundi. And we have a little video to show you about the really positive impact the Ideas Box had in this area and how it's extremely resourceful to those who just don't have any access to information. So I'm going to show you a quick video. We have a very important message and a very important message as well, when we start fighting the scale where language is a triumph in our hopes. We always come from some part of what is impressive in history. We will use this example before to prove that when we want, we can aim. When we want, we can find. After the scale, take your hand and draw your future. How many of you are here? How many of you are in Victoria? How many of you are here? I am responsible for the development of Patience, and I am responsible for the safety of my country. As the law says, the children have the right to education. We are really at the brink of adaptive materials. When I learned that Mandela was dead, I learned it after four days. I find myself as if I was abandoned in a sort of tomb, but I did not follow it. It is true that I rest in the name of canyons and consulates. I am a politician. I am on the verge of death. We do not have access to information, to training. We do not have internet. We do not even have a computer. My name is Munga Malouli. I am a member of the Pungo group. I like to read, I like to write. I am an artist, a slammer. I am also a chronicler. Our days, we spend them often at home, where we stay in the camp, without doing anything. We changed our lives, just in a few minutes. We had the Pungo occupations that we applied here. We isolated the world. What we miss the most is culture. When we have nothing left, the only thing we cannot remove is the dream. That is why the library in front of me touched me so much, because it is fair. It is very fair, because it is the first and the last thing to give to people who have lost it. All of a sudden, there are people who arrive, who fall from the sky, who devalue all the colors, who set up a tent, and the terror of each village is wonderful. Our children must become saviors with that. We will compare them with the children, let them go. Tomorrow or after tomorrow, our country may have peace. Will these children be useful to the Congolese society? Yes, they must be, because I work very hard. I give the best of myself, if the conditions are right. Surprisingly, it is such a huge number, but 61% of the population is under 18 years old, which brings me back to what Kimi was talking about with the 17 years of the average time that a refugee spends in a refugee camp. That is a whole generation loss. 61% of 50,000 will not have any basic education and no sort of certificate. Only about 25% of children aged 12 to 17 are enrolled in the camps' middle and high schools. This really highlights the importance of improving education in refugee camps and to increase that access to information. As you saw in the video, all these, this whole population, there are so many ambitious people in here and they have no access and they have absolutely no resources to go to. So in 2014, we deployed two Ideas Box kits and within three months, there are already over 24,000 visits and 3,300 registered users, which is a really huge amount and we're really excited about how successful the Ideas Box proved to be. It actually improved and increased academic performance by more than 23%. So we're really focused to meet the educational, psychosocial and informational needs of refugee populations. There are ethnic conflicts that continue in the camp and we really strive to aid these. The community use and interests are continuously on the rise. So this has been a very exciting project through and through and we're excited to continue it. In addition to our international Ideas Box programs, we also have some domestic Ideas Box programs as well. So the first one we'd like to speak to you about is the program that we launched in the South Bronx and you can see a photo from that program on the left side of the screen. And this program took place over the summer of 2015, so last year at this time. And the program was based in Morris Heights, which is part of the nation's poorest congressional district and one of the South Bronx's poorest neighborhoods. And what we did was we sent Ideas Box kits and installed them in laundromats and public parks. So spaces where the community members would already be and allowed them access to educational resources. The Ideas Box was open five afternoons per week. And this was really important because it allowed the community, again, a space where they can engage collaboratively. And it also supplemented education during the summer months for children who otherwise wouldn't have access to summer programs, summer camps, or summer educational resources. And in Detroit, we implemented the Ideas Box program. And this was after a recent closing of libraries and schools in Detroit. So there was a huge demand for these sort of spaces that provide and increase the access to information and education. Although there is internet connection, there aren't many locations in Detroit that have public educational resources. And often, many children lack afterschool educational opportunities. They're very geographically isolated from these. So we worked with our community partners to reimagine educational development, to develop new collaborations, and to engage new users in creating a safe and accessible space for individuals of all ages. The Ideas Box is really equipped to provide access to high quality educational resources. We really aim to fill the need for more intergenerational spaces in Detroit. It's important to remember that the Ideas Box isn't just for children who lack educational resources. There are also a significant amount of resources for parents, for adults, such as courses to help with resume writing, and other adult educational courses. So that's one of our main names is to fill that multi-generational gap for spaces in Detroit. And the attendance at each location has increased daily, and through interviews and assessments, the Ideas Box has really generated a really positive response from the users, from parents, from partners, and from interviews, 100% of the users said that they would definitely come back and use the Ideas Box again, and they did. So it's amazing to see such positive responses, particularly in domestic contexts, rather than in refugee camps, and that really highlights the need of these educational spaces in cities and domestically. So while we did have some Ideas Box programs in the United States, our domestic tool is really the Coombook, which you see pictured in the upper right corner. And the Coombook is essentially the server taken out of the Ideas Box and packaged in its own hard case. The server, again, has educational content including Wikipedia, Khan Academy, Code Academy, and TED Talks, but the server also comes with a large blank space, allowing it to be fully customizable, depending on where we implement it and with what local partners. The Coombook is about the size of a dictionary. It's very lightweight and portable. And when packaged as a kit, it's the size of a carry-on suitcase, as it includes laptops and or tablets for the communities that we are deploying it to. We truly believe that the Coombook is the digital library of the future, as it allows improvisional spaces to become educational communal spaces for all. And again, it creates an offline Wi-Fi hotspot on which users can connect using smartphones, tablets, or computers, and they have access to preloaded content, including thousands of educational, cultural, and training resources. The Coombook, if connected to a television or video projector, can also stream videos, which is great for engaging groups through educational activities. And 20 users can connect at one time for a period of five hours before the Coombook has to be recharged. It's important to note that this is an extremely customizable tool. We preload materials before the program, but throughout the program, we train those on-site how to use the Coombook and how to upload content as they go. As long as they're connected to a Wi-Fi network, they can keep uploading different sorts of content onto the Coombook. So some of our current domestic Coombook programs include one that we're launching, we have ongoing right now, on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona. And the focus of this Coombook program is to increase tribal historical preservation and build the content of the Fort Apache Museum. So we have currently about 10 Apache children enrolled in our summer program, and they are going around using the Coombooks and using video cameras to record their tribal history through interviews and conversations with tribal members, tribal leadership, and tribal historians. And this is allowing children to actively participate in the making of their own history, which we find really exciting. We've had really great feedback on this program, and we're excited to expand our Coombook programs domestically, particularly on Native American reservations. Currently, we have also launched another Coombook program in Detroit as well, and this is called the Detroit Learning Circles. Learning Circles is a program that was previously implemented in another area in the United States, and we decided to expand it to Detroit. We facilitate study groups for learners who want to take online courses together, and we implement the program in public parks, and we've partnered with P2PU to create a new model of learning circles. So this is the creation of the Learning Circles is essentially an online course that participants can take part in in public parks about two hours a week, and throughout the summer program they can take this course and earn a certificate at the end. So we're really expanding the access for everyone to take part in these courses, as they are in public areas, specifically in public parks. So it's very accessible for everyone, and they can access libraries, internet, or digital tools. So now that you've heard a little bit about our tools and our programs, we'd like to speak a bit about our strategy, how we identify these under-resourced communities, and how we engage them in a positive manner. So the first step for that is obviously finding these vulnerable communities, reaching out to them, and we do this in partnership with large international and domestic organizations. We point the problem areas in the United States and suggest ways for members to increase the resilience of educational resources in these areas. From there, we look to find implementing partners, which are typically local organizations or centers, which allow us to incorporate the ideas box or coombook into their current programs. And this is really important to stress that we incorporate our technology into already established community educational resources. We do not take them over. We do not wipe out all the local educational efforts being made on the ground, because we understand that local knowledge is the most valuable when it comes to implementing our programs, and we really like to value the voices of those who are going to be affected by our programming. So this means that much of our time is spent building bridges between ed tech, librarians, international policy organizations, local leaders, and human rights groups, so that our technology is really thought through and gets at the core needs of the communities. So for example, in the case of the White Mountain Apache, which I just spoke to you about as a domestic coombook program, we reached out to the White Mountain Apache Foundation, and we formed a partnership with them to best address the needs of their community. So obviously, members of the community understand best what their community needs. Therefore, we really value their input when designing our programs. Additionally for the ideas box, we partner with organizations such as CARE International and the International Refugee Committee to design sustainable programs to really get at the needs of refugees today on the ground, and we also customize them to geographic location. So for example, for a refugee in the Ivory Coast, we would customize all of our coombook and ideas box programming to French. So that just makes it much more streamlined, easy for them to use, and obviously getting at the core needs of their day-to-day educational needs. From there, we engage sponsors. So together with the local partnerships that we have formed, we apply for grant applications, we reach out to sponsors, and we really try to find people that are sympathetic to these causes and understand the real needs at the base of our programming. And then we also empower local partners to run and sustain the programming. So once we have our technology on the ground, once we have program facilitators in place, we have local partners ready to engage the community, we like to empower these partners to take over and take responsibility and ownership of the programming. So they're responsible for maintaining, updating, and implementing the programs long after we have sent the technology and trained local implementers, and we monitor very closely the evaluation of these programs to ensure that they are effective and also change and evolve with community needs. But again, we really do like to empower local partners in this process because they are the ones who understand best the needs of their community. From here, we'd like to speak a bit about our funding strategy. So as we said, Libraries Without Borders works with partners to organize funding strategies. So we applied grant partnership, grant foundations, or funds, rather, together. We also are reaching out to donors, trying to apply for grants, and we should be launching a crowdfunding campaign shortly in late summer, early fall. So please look out for that. Share it among your networks if you'd like, which should help us really spread the word about our programs and also increase funding. So we are also a 501c3, which is a non-profit classification, meaning that our team builds partnerships with foundations and corporations to help bring resources, again, to these vulnerable populations. Some of our past partnerships include Google, Sony, the Alexander Soros Foundation, and the Gates Foundation. And these have been really important to us in building and implementing our programs. So the impact of the IdeasBox. Before we launch any program, we really evaluate how impactful the IdeasBox can to fulfill the needs of the community and what we're striving for. So we have four goals that we strive to achieve. And firstly, it is capacity building. So by participating in the different workshops and the training sessions that we provide in our projects, librarians, cultural entrepreneurs, disadvantaged populations, all sorts of people can be exposed to these new set of skills. And then the general public is also made aware of these new and innovative technologies, such as the IdeasBox and the Coombook, because having a server and a hotspot is really new and it's definitely a device that we're very excited about. So by building and transforming and perpetuating libraries, we really guarantee this lifelong access to training and this help in increasing skills for all generations, for all ages. Our second sort of impact is literacy and education. And we really strive to promote access to reading, to information and knowledge, so that everyone who uses the IdeasBox or the Coombook can help increase in adult and child literacy in communities overall. For example, in the Detroit project, we found that about 4% of 8th graders are at the standard level of math. So this is really shocking statistic and we really strive to help increase this just through improving basic education through the introduction of our new innovative teaching methods. In addition, we also have a focus on social entrepreneurship. And this loops back to our mission statement, which we really state that we believe that libraries are connectivity centers that empower communities through economic and social development, given the right tools and given the right resources to implement programming. So we empower libraries by helping them ensure economic survival and their ability to grow by accommodating more users. We really want to make them central to communities when it comes to building economic growth. As a result, our libraries that we've worked with have become local economic agents and also increased employment in the areas as they provide training resources, job videos, resume building tools, things of that nature. And again, we really aim to transform them into spaces where people can receive training and learn new skills as this is what ensures their impact in the long run. And finally, we also believe that libraries are spaces that can promote social cohesion as they incorporate collaborative approaches to learning and capacity building. They are programming with libraries that's also allowed for strengthening of cultural heritage. And this is an essential factor in democratic practice and respect of human rights, which you can see through our international interventions and programming. So our support of libraries and cultural structures provides gathering spaces that are open to all, allowing people from various social and ethnic backgrounds to come together, work in collaborative spaces and build intergenerational bonds that allow and perpetuate economic growth in the future. So given all of the programs that we've done, we've also won some notable awards for our work. The first of which we'd like to highlight is the 2015 Google Impact Challenge, which we're very excited about. Because obviously Google is a very innovative company that focuses on technology, and the Ideas Box is really revolutionizing the way that technology is implemented in traditional library spaces and in non-traditional library spaces such as our Ideas Box. We're also very excited about our partnerships with organizations such as Ashoka, which provides us professional advice around our programming, helping us to strengthen our current programs and build more resilient programs for the future. We're also partnered with TEDx, as we spoke about previously, which allows us to use their content on our servers for the Kubebook and for the Ideas Box. We're also members of the Clinton Global Initiative, which allows us to increase our impact globally and spread our mission around the world. We also have some programs in the works currently, the first of which being the Ideas Box for Entrepreneurs, which we're hoping to establish in the Ivory Coast. Essentially what this program does is it allows local community members to lease an Ideas Box and then sell the services of the Ideas Box to other community members. So for example, the Ideas Box can kind of transform to an internet cafe-esque space where people can come, use the internet, print off materials, stream videos, etc., all for a user fee for a specific time period. So let's say like an hour is $3, that would be $3 more in the pocket of the local community member who is leasing the Ideas Box, and this really helps to grow social entrepreneurship among this community. We also have Ideas Box programs planned for Jordan and Lebanon, which we hope to implement within the coming years. Regarding the Kubebook, we have a lot of potential plans that we've been working on. Following the White Mountain Apache, we are hoping to expand our programming on other Native American reservations because there is a huge need for educational resources and to help support education in those areas. We also have been planning programs for prisons. Many people don't know, but internet access is forbidden in all prisons, naturally for security reasons. However, this means that prisoners don't have any access to education, and so when they re-enter society, there are extremely high re-incarceration rates as a lot of them have no educational backgrounds, no basic skills, cannot find employment. So we really aim to help the prisoners in taking online courses so they can develop their skills. And we believe that this will have a huge impact on the re-incarceration rates and significantly reduce them. Furthermore, we have other planned programs for other under-resourced communities domestically in the states, such as Colorado, Tennessee, and Kentucky. And we really strive to focus on those areas that are most under-resourced, have very scarce internet connection, or are geographically isolated from libraries or community spaces, and also those in which literacy rates, numeracy rates are significantly lower than the U.S. standard level. So, how can you get involved? Well, firstly, you can support our programs. We'd love for you to check out our website, librarieswithoutborders.org, and feel free to donate. We also support volunteers. We'd love for you to stay informed as well. We're very active on our Facebook page, Libraries Without Borders, and our Twitter, which is LWB on the web. And we love to answer questions, so you can always tweet at us or post on our wall with any questions, and we'll answer very quickly or very efficiently. And please keep an eye out for all our crowdfunding campaign that's set to launch in late summer slash early fall. So, you can help support our domestic and international programs. We hope that you're inspired by what we've done so far, and we're really enthusiastic to expand our programs to more countries globally and to more continents. We're very excited about our innovations and what impact it can have on communities. In addition, we're calling librarians to engage with us through our Librarian Board of Advisors. So, if you're a trained librarian with a degree in library sciences interested in influencing developmental aid, or looking to give back to under-resourced communities in your area, and you'd like to play a role in shaping Libraries Without Borders future domestic programming, we ask that you send a resume or a CV to admin at librarieswithoutborders.org, which you can see on the screen, to apply for our Librarian Board of Advisors. So again, this is going to be a Board of Advisors aimed at really shaping Libraries Without Borders programs, policies, and ways in which we implement our technology. So please, if you're interested, reach out to us. We would love to hear back from you, and that is a new and exciting initiative that we are undertaking. So that's about all from us today. Please don't be shy with any questions that you may have about the program, about the Librarian Board of Advisors, about ways to get involved, and about our technology. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you very much, Paloma and Kimmy. That was great. I didn't know much about Libraries Without Borders until actually last year at our annual State Library Conference here, one of our Omaha Public Library staff had done a presentation about it, talking about it there, and I had seen it there, and thought it would be great to share it with more people that weren't able to attend our conference. It is definitely very inspiring, and when I first heard about the Ideas Box II, I wasn't exactly sure what it was, and I watched that video, the one of the four staff people opening it up and setting it up, and it was just amazed and stunned and thought how awesome that is that should be everywhere. Thank you. This is just a small thing, 300 actual books in that little box. We're very lucky to work with Philips Stark and UNHTR to help design it. Yes, I read about that, having someone who could figure out how do you efficiently fit everything into something as small as possible for transport. I just moved recently to a new house, and I know we have more than 300. I wish I had something to help me move all those books that I had. Yeah, being a librarian, they add up. If anybody does have any questions, please do type them into the questions section of your GoToWebinar interface, and we can have Paloma and Kimi answer them for you now. One thing I was actually very much impressed with is having the resources and everything there and the books and the classes is great. The fact that the Ideas Box comes with its own power and supply and access to Internet, how is that pulled off, I guess, like logistically? How does that actually work? Sure, so Paloma, you can feel free to jump in here at any point. I don't know the specifics of the design of the Ideas Box, unfortunately, but we do know that it is, like you said, it is completely autonomous in terms of a power source, and it does have its offline server, which provides Wi-Fi connection. So it is offline. It does not create an Internet Wi-Fi hotspot, an active live Wi-Fi hotspot in the area, but it does allow offline connection to preloaded cached websites and educational resources. Well, that's nice for what you need in those areas that don't have access to that at all. Absolutely, yes, exactly. But the Coombox, that's the Wi-Fi hotspot one. Yeah, so that's it. Go ahead. Okay, so the Coombox is incorporated into the Ideas Bots. And yes, so essentially what Kimmy had said, it's a server and you preload materials onto it. We are partnered with Khan Academy. We have Code Academy. We can put TED Talks, as previously mentioned, and a variety, a series of other educational resources. We are also potentially hoping to work in Ecuador, so Latin America countries as well. South American countries we can work with as well and provide Spanish-focused resources. So there's really endless possibilities with the Coombox and providing educational resources for a variety of languages and a variety of populations. Nice. And as people almost said, that is the same server that is found in the Ideas Box. So again, it does not create a live Wi-Fi internet connection, but it does have an offline server hotspot connection to all of the preloaded content. And you said that's customizable too, so if they locally wanted to put something else on there, they would be able to modify it to something that's specific to their community. So before we implement the program, we make sure to communicate and collaborate with the community to fit their needs and what resources they want on it. So they specify which resources would be most beneficial for the community, so we preloaded before. However also, when we've implemented it, we also help train the facilitators on how to use the Coombox and how to upload content on site while they're there. However, they do need to be connected to internet to upload content. What's great about that too is that it's customizable around themes, meaning that for example, if we're using it in a classroom setting, if a teacher wants to have a biology lesson, they can customize it for that particular lesson using biology videos, articles from Wikipedia, TED Talks, things of that nature. So it can really change to adapt on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour basis. Nice. We do have one question, and I was wondering about this too. Coombook, where does that name come from? Coom. That's something I'd figure out like an acronym for something. Well, actually we're in the process of changing the name, but this was the temporary name because it Coombook. Coombooka means to remember in Swahili. Yes, that's where it originated from. However, this is a temporary name and we're hoping to change it to something a little bit more universal because, well, many people don't know Swahili. And like this situation, having to explain it to people, there's something I should know about that it's called that. So that's where the name originated. However, it's not going to be like that permanent. Okay. All right. Any other questions from the audience? Nobody typed in anything more than that? I kept writing down questions that I wanted to ask, and you kept answering them. Well, how to contact you to get, like if someone in the United States wanted to reach out to you to actually have either a library box or a Coombook in their area. You said there's ways to reach out to just to contact you guys online. Yes. So our web, we would just ask that you write us an email or write us a Facebook message. So again, our Facebook page is called Libraries Without Borders. It's like an official page. So when you type that in, you should see the little check mark that means it's an official page. Yeah, blue check, yeah. Exactly. So you can send us messages there. And then also our email is admin, so A-D-M-I-N at librarieswithoutborders.org. So you can shoot us an email, but any questions you may have, try to get in contact again to bring our technology to specific areas. And we're pretty responsive about that. Yeah. I think that on your Facebook page, yeah, that you're very active in posting new things on there all the time. So definitely try to get it done. And also just a little reminder, we are in partnership with Riverhead Books. And they help support us in launching a fundraising initiative, in which if you donate $250 to us, you can get a little figurine of your favorite author, such as Calla Dossini. And that is a fundraising initiative is actually finishing tomorrow. So if you are very into your authors and would love to donate, we'd be greatly appreciated. And it's finishing tomorrow. So we've got a lot of support from that. And we really appreciate all the help that Riverhead Books has provided for us. That's very, yeah, that is very, people love their little things. And I've got a lot of those little various statues and things on my desk of various. Definitely. Yeah. It's been a really successful initiative. And we really appreciate it. Yeah. No, go ahead. Well, just going back to how you can get the Coombe book or the ideas box. We just want to emphasize as an organization, we really strive to work with implementing partners in producing programs. So we don't just drop off materials. We aim to create sustainable programs that can last over a significant amount of time. And we help support the implementing partners in creating this program. So we really don't just drop off the materials, but we support them and we collaborate with the partners. However, once the program is implemented, we ensure that the partner can sustain this program and we pass on the responsibility onto them. So, yes, that's a bit about how we work and how we want to create a very lasting change and economic and social development. Nice. Okay. Well, we're just about hitting 11 a.m. So just another minute left, 11 a.m. Central Time. So I think since nobody seems to have any urgent questions for you at the moment, we will wrap it up for today. I would, as you guys said about this, the Library Board of Advisors, the Library Board of Advisors sounds very interesting. And I hope a lot of my colleagues will reach out to you guys to try and participate in that. And I will definitely be sharing it in all the groups that I am in online to get people to know about what you guys are doing there. Thank you. We appreciate that. You get some good resumes that come in. A lot of people that are very interested in anything like this and would want to be involved in it. All right. So, yeah, I think we'll wrap it up for today. Thank you so much, Paloma and Kimmy. This was great. Very inspiring and just some of the information, you know, it is sad, things that are happening out there. They're, you know, heart-wrenching. I'm glad that you guys are there doing this part of this work to help some of these people in these situations both abroad and especially here now in the U.S. I know we have Indian reservations here in Nebraska and Indian groups that would definitely be interested in what you're doing as well. So, maybe we'll get some of them contacting you as well. That would be wonderful. Thank you so much for having us on today. We really appreciate it. Great. Thank you so much. All right. So, yes, that will wrap it up for today's show. I'm going to pull back presenter control to my screen. Great. Thank you so much. Yeah. And the show has been recorded, is being recorded as we speak, and will be available later today. I've been bookmarking a lot of the sites that you've mentioned there at your site, the Coom book site. As you can see, I've got here. This is the, those 3D models that you can get. I found the site for that by Googling it. The Riverhead books there. Oh, yes. They're pretty cool. They look like, almost like little Lego heads actually, but I see they're 3D. They do. They're just neat. Yeah. So, all of that will be available to you as well. And the PowerPoint presentation, will you guys send that to me so I can share that with people if they want to watch that later? Of course. Okay. We'll have that as, well, there later. It will be here on our Encompass Live website. Luckily, Encompass Live, if you just Google Encompass Live or use any of your search engines for that, so far nobody else has called anything that. So, we come up first in your results. Awesome. Our recordings are here on our main page right underneath. Our upcoming shows is our archived Encompass Live sessions link. So, later this afternoon, the one for today will be on here. And like our previous one, you'll have a link to the recording, a link to the presentation, and to the URLs in the delicious account that we have here. And I'll email all of you guys, let you know when that's available. And, like I said, later this afternoon depends on how quickly everything processes. So, that wraps it up for today. I hope you'll join us for next week's show when our topic is cataloging. Cataloging is always a very popular topic here on the show. Making your catalog work for your community, how to develop local cataloging standards. This is something that many libraries do, just a lot of copy cataloging, just taking mark records or mark records as they are to put into their local online catalogs. There's a lot of things you can do to make things specific to your organization or that you need to do to do that. We will have Emily Nimsacant, who is from our University of Brass College of Law Library here, Schmidt Law Library. And she'll be on the show with us next week to talk about that. So, definitely log in, sign up for that. And any of our other shows coming up here, I've got dates going into August, more being added as I get things confirmed and finalized with everyone. So, keep an eye on our website here for more upcoming shows being posted. Also, we are also on Facebook. So, if you are a big Facebook user, please do pop over to our Facebook page and give us a like. I post reminders. Here's one from this morning reminding people they can log in on the fly to our show. When our recordings are available, I post information about that on here. So, if you're a big user on Facebook, please do go right ahead over there and give us a like. Other than that, that wraps it up for this morning's show. Thank you very much for attending. And we'll see you next time at Encompass Live. Bye-bye.