 All right good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays that's fine we do to record the show as we are doing today and it'll be posted on our website in our archives for you to watch at your convenience. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch so please share with your friends family neighbors colleagues. Here at the Nebraska Library Commission we are the state agency for libraries in Nebraska so we provide services to all types of libraries so we have shows on Encompass Live that may be for all types of libraries public academic school corrections museums archives etc etc really anything and everything really our only criteria is something is that it's something to do with libraries we do book reviews interviews mini training sessions demos of services and products all sorts of things we sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff come on and do presentations for us about programs and services we offer to the Commission and we also bring in guest speakers sometimes and today we have a mixture of that I would say yes um yeah today we were talking about as you can see here well I'm not going to be they are letters about literature uh Nebraska's uh writing contest for students in Nebraska uh and we have three people who are involved in it to our Commission staff one is um Richard Miller is on the um a board member of the Nebraska Center for the Book and a former Nebraska Library Commission staff member too um but I will hand over to you all to introduce yourself and tell us all about our Nebraska's letters about literature and what we're doing this year so I'm Tessa Terry I work at the Nebraska Library Commission as our communications coordinator and I help run the letters about literature contest I'm Richard Miller I am on the board of the uh Nebraska Center for the Book I currently serve as secretary I'm Sally Snyder and I work at the Library Commission I'm the coordinator of children in young adult library services and I am a judge for letters about literature so we'll just get started um Richard's going to talk a little bit about the Nebraska Center for the Book in general and why we have this competition can we switch to the Nebraska Center for the Book website yeah all right okay there we're going to go through a few things about the Nebraska Center for the Book for you to look at we are on the the website for Nebraska Center for the Book the reason we're doing this is because letters about literature is one of the programs of the uh Nebraska Center for the Book can we get that out of the way so I can get to some see what that is up there right there yes all right thank you very good the Nebraska Center for the Book is a 501c3 organization a not-for-profit organization currently we have 19 board members and we're going to look a little bit at the website if I click in here will that go away all right okay the uh the organization supports programs that that celebrate and stimulate public like interest in books reading and the written word and we're going to look a little bit at their website if we click on about here you can see about the history the mission statement which I'm not going to read to you there's a list of the board members and then committees and members of those committees and there's contact information the uh Nebraska Center for the Book is an affiliate of the Library of Congress's Center for the Book John Cole used to be at the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress and used to travel all over the country and starting these up and he really did a an excellent job of of helping them get started under the news tab here uh there's a mention of the NCB news which Tessa edits and so you could go there and find out whatever the Center for the Book is doing and there's kind of a summary of what's been in past issues of the NCB news it's really handy you should sign up you should become a member and you should receive this because it's very informative Tessa does an excellent job under the resources there are a good number of resources for you as a librarian that I think would be useful to you as you can see there are book lists there's reader information writers kids information teams I won't read through all those but there are excellent links there which I think Tessa keeps up the date so we don't have any deadlinks or let her know if there are any under awards these awards the Jane Keski award the Mildred Bennett award and the Nebraska Book Awards are going to be given again at the annual celebration of the book which takes place on October 22nd at the Nebraska History Museum you have to come and find out who the award winners are in this in this first one I believe the Nebraska Book Awards are posted ahead of time right now yeah they're posted ahead of time there are awards for children's books youth books non-fiction books cover an illustration cover and design illustration there are a good number of non-fiction categories that we usually awarded and we also award poetry books for their awards and I think we're going to move the poetry awards up this year so I think that's my request so I can watch them I don't have to be outpouring why I want to be first though under programs you will find information on Nebraska letters about literature which we'll be talking about in more detail today one book one Nebraska the Nebraska Book Festival which I don't believe happened last year but it's supposed to happen this coming year no it's been on hiatus with COVID but we are looking to have it in 2023 very good the annual meeting of the Nebraska Center for the book takes place at the same time that the celebration of Nebraska books occurs and what also occurs during the celebration of Nebraska books is that all those awards which you just saw are granted at that point and a good number of the authors or editors attend that and read from the book so if you have an opportunity to come to that please do it's really fun and there's free food so you might as well come and I mentioned the NCB newsletter you can find a link there for that I think that's free to sign up for that is it not to get it from you remember yeah oh you have to be a member of the Nebraska Center for Book pardon me it's not very costly join one and all all right that's all I want to say at this point and then I'll just have Tessa talk about letters about literature right back to our slides so letters about literature what it is it if you haven't been involved we'll just do a really quick overview it's a state reading program that happens here in Nebraska there are other states that have their own letters about literature competitions for their school students but this is ours and it's all done here in Nebraska it's for readers grades four through 12 and those are broken out into three different groups so you don't have fourth graders competing against 12th graders good and the goal of it is to get these students to do some reflective writing and learn some communication skills about writing letters so they are to pick a book or an author that has really impacted their life or changed their view of the world and we want them to write a letter to that author telling them how their work has changed their life or impacted their their world or how they see the world it can be any genre fiction nonfiction it can be a living or a dead author it can be poetry it we are really open to the different genres and we just want them to explain how that author's work has changed their life here are the details about the contest we ask students to submit their letters between October 1st and December 31st and that's new this year we actually changed the submission date from November to October we thought we had some teachers ask us for a longer submission period especially with all the holidays in November and December and all these students break time so we gave them an extra month to have some extra letter writing time and editing time and reading time for finding the perfect book and author here we have our different grade levels level one is for grades four through six level two is for middle grades seven and eight and level three is for high school students nine through 12th and then our theme it's the same every year how did an author's work change your view of the world or yourself so that's a really important point that sometimes gets missed by the letter writers but that's what we're really aiming to hear about we've got a lot of ways people have been involved in the past or you guys can get involved now um specifically for librarians they can partner with classrooms and teachers to help them find the perfect book they can have clinics at their library um they can share the LAL materials with your library users I know a lot of homeschool groups use libraries they have a lot of after-school programs at libraries around the state so just getting materials into students hands or parents hands would be a great help to us and we have bookmarks we can send you as well if you're looking for some easy hand out material for kids one thing I love the idea of is challenging adults parents or teachers to write their own letter as examples for the students letters but don't submit those no don't submit your letters but it's a great way to show kids you know what you're looking for this isn't a book report and that um that's a great way to just give them a good example of what reflective writing looks like if you have writing groups in your town or community they would be really good for mentors or college classes that are doing creative writing homeschool groups we talked about that or you could host a letter writing clinic which we have um resources for on our website and that just involves having a group of kids that are willing to get together and talk about the books you might pick for this have a chance as a group to talk about their letters and themes and their authors and just kind of work through that as a group and not just individually so we're going to hop over to the Nebraska Center for the book website so we can walk through how you submit your letters we've tried to make it as simple a process as possible and we have a link on our webpage for it one thing to mention is students that are under the age oh this is old under the age of 13 as of October 1st 2022 their parents need to legally consent to submit their letters so we have a place on the application where we get the parents e-signature and then also all of your submitted letters become the property of the Nebraska Center for the book and that just means that um we will post them on the website um we we don't return your letters afterwards so if you want to keep a copy of them that's important too but we do know that a lot of these letters can have really personal um themes in them so if a student was ever to not want their letter shared publicly we would be open to that too so if we go to the letters about literature webpage on the center for the book site we have a lot of great information on here one of them is the 2022 guidelines for the contest and this is a pdf that has the submission dates and the age levels it also has some great information about what we're looking for in a letter and how students can start to think through that process we've got the submission link and then we also have some entry um and letter details about what the judges are looking for and we're going to go over that a little more in depth with our two judges but that all that information is here on your guidelines to submit we have a nice big submit button can't miss it can't miss it and it will take you to this simple google doc we want um the school name if it's a homeschool put that in we're just looking for some contact information we don't ask for the students contact information we get the school and teacher contact information or parent or guardian contact information if they're homeschooled or library or library this could be a librarian's information as well we're just looking for um an adult to contact essentially if that student wins the student's first and last name here's the information on the student's age and once again if they're under the age of 13 by october 1st 2022 that has the right date yeah that this one has the right date um we just need a parents e-signature here to make sure that they're comfortable having their students work submitted on an online website grade level which one you fall into your specific grade because they break down um a little differently in here and then here's where we either want a teacher's name parent guardian or a librarian um someone who you want to be contacted if this student wins this is where that information goes it's generally a teacher or a librarian or a parent the author they're writing to the title of the book and then submit your letter so our letters we would like them to be typed and in a pdf format so that they can't be edited um we don't want um word documents nothing like that um so that the student's letter stays exactly the way they submitted it um we also ask that you put your first and last name for the student and the grade or the competition level that they are submitting in so for example john smith level three just makes it really easy for us to organize the letters once they come in but you just click here and it takes you to a drop box website and then you just click submit if there are any troubles my information is on the nebraska center for the book website and you can easily contact me if you have any issues so i'm going to hand it over to richard and sally they're both judges richard judges for the level three and sally does level one judging but they're just going to talk a little bit as judges about what they really look for in a letter and christa if we have any questions pop up feel free to uh pass those through yeah yeah if anybody does have any questions type into the questions section of your go-to-web in our interface um and i can grab those questions from there for anybody yeah well i'll talk a little bit about being one of the two judges for the um level one grades four to six group and we do look at grammar and spelling thank you we also look for originality as it says because we we're hoping that the right the person who's writing this has really done some reflecting as tessa mentioned so we want to know you know the author in the book that affected them how it affected them how do they help what has changed in the way they see the world or themselves as she said and from my group this is more often lost in the excitement of having read this great exciting adventure book and the writers will say oh i love the part where this happened and this was so exciting and i didn't expect this to be the ending but boy you did a great job and they forget about the part where we said how did this affect you you know beyond third i'm so glad you enjoyed the book yes that's wonderful but we're really looking for a little bit more of a reflection in there and um so this is something that's like more in depth different than just a typical book report yes for a book report yeah it is not a book report you are right books are thrown out they're enjoyed the letters are enjoyed but they're set aside for the most part because that's why that box is there with you know how did this affect you and we've had some wonderful letters from i remember one from a girl who talked about her uncle and how she didn't really understand what he had been going through until she read this book that made it easier for her to understand what had been happening for her uncle he had post-traumatic stress disorder and from being in combat and she could get it from this book and that was such a wonderful way look this book helped her understand the world and also her uncle and so that that kind of thing is just very tearing up when somebody hits the nail on the head it really affects me yeah i think i think in the case i i look at letters coming on the third level which is nine through 12th grade i work with uh i have worked the last number of years with charles johanniksmire who is a professor at uno and who teaches composition well in my past life i was a ninth grade english teacher and i tend to be a stickler about grammar and spelling and he got me to relax a little bit more about that because not that you don't want to have the best grammar and spelling that you can but what is more important is this reflective sort of thing that sally is talking about how has it really affected you so we have really interesting letters that come in i guess the thing that i would see on the on the level three is that some kids tend to feel that they have to write in a professional manner and typically they will come up with words or structure that really is you can tell it's beyond their ability so we're not looking for people who are going to show off we're looking for people who are going to be reflective and say how it has affected them their view of the world and so forth and uh both uh tessa and sally mentioned those those boxes with sort of guidelines in them before i start judging letters i just read through these two to uh kind of focus myself when i'm looking at the letters that's really useful both for the students and for you if you're working with students for or kids in your library i think the reason we have the word students on the website is because we have those grade levels so that's reflective of of being students but we also have probably the greatest majority of the letters come in from teachers who are working with students but again we'd love to see other people send in those things as well some teachers in the past have done this as a class project and they've had the entire class do the letters they don't necessarily send all those letters in they do some winnowing i think and and that's certainly workable too i guess that's it on that topic one of the things that um when we were chatting yesterday tessa mentioned which i think is is a good point is we're not looking for a first draft in the letter it's not like you know the student is over there write your letter now i'm submitting it because the teacher can work with the teacher or the parent if they're homeschooled or or a friendly neighbor can help the the child or team work through their letter and better organize it or or if you know what do you mean by this because i don't think this is clear those kinds of things are not considered cheating so please don't worry about that yeah we we kind of assume that if they're doing this as a school project that a teacher has had a chance to read a first draft letter and help that student maybe edit edit it or hone in on something and better explain a point so yeah we we're definitely okay with that we we think that is a good process and that's a learning process for students on how to you know take their writing and expand on it and get make it better and better and that's one of the things i like about this program that they can be in fourth grade to 12th grade so if you submit a letter in the fourth grade and it doesn't win we really hope you keep submitting a letter every year until you're a 12th grader and just to see that child's writing ability and letters just grow with them um that's really one thing we love to do so keep trying if you submit it as a fourth grader and you don't win that's okay try again next year your writing's just going to get better and better and that's one of the really fun things about this program tessa could you go back to those resources that show the teaching guide and reflective writing assessment thing i don't think we've been there yet on the website so we have a lot of resources i wanted to point out to you in particular the resources there's one called teaching guide and another called reflective writing assessment both of these are quite extensive things to look at but you might like to scan through that for ideas as well the one called reflective writing assessment was written by a woman at the library of congress who used to be when the library of congress kind of handled this on the national level rather than kicking it back to the states she was kind of their their writing expert about this whole thing so there's some ideas in there about reflective writing in case you don't know exactly what we're talking about that might be useful to read through yeah but they're very long i will warn you they're both very long yes they're they're in depth but they're really good resources to explain the difference between reflective writing and a book report and and i know a lot of work's been done just about the the benefit of journaling for students and for mental health and to just get your ideas down on paper so this is kind of an extension of that of we want we want to hear their inner thoughts their emotions and how their lives have been shaped by the books they read so make it personal yeah that's a good thing and people journaling is a huge thing now you know libraries are teaching at schools are doing it it's it's big other i think that's that's because this seems to be the the biggest part that the writers the children seem to miss is that a you know self-assessment and you know reflectiveness of it um but they may have heard of journaling and done that and realize oh it's the same thing yes it's very similar to journaling um and we also think the letter portion of it is an important skill too how often do we write letters is it something um that the kids know how to do well that the communication skill of being able to put their thoughts down on paper and be able to send that out to someone is a really important skill that we want to encourage in students and i think it's been lost yeah to tell you the truth we do remember when we were in in grade school and high school they teach us how to do a business letter how to do a personal letter what you put in the heading where you put the date all that sort of thing i don't think anybody teaches that anymore to tell you i don't know what we all use it for anymore besides i mean the only kind of letter writing i can think of that might be a regular thing that we do as adults nowadays is um like cover letters for job applications or things exactly i helped somebody just a couple weeks ago applying for a job who didn't know the structure of a business letter Sally oh i'm sorry one of the things that some teen librarians are doing now is something called life skills classes and so they'll teach the group of teens how do you open a bank account how do you handle your bank account or things like that how do you rent an apartment how to balance your checkbook and this is one that they could have in there as you know you might need a letter for your job application you need to know how to write a letter and if it's the right time of year they could they could do it anyway but um they could actually work on letters about literature as their that's their letter that they written on that yeah i was going to ask you to talk about you did it we were willing to say there's something under this slide that i test has up here right now under persuade uh toward the end of this it says uh this is not a fan letter every once in a while we'll get a letter where they're just they're so pleased with this it's kind of what Sally was saying earlier they're so thrilled about this sort of thing reading this book and they want to tell the author how much they like them no we don't need that that's that's not what this is about do you want to talk about after they win yeah so one of my favorite parts other than reading the letters is after we've selected a winner and a runner up for each competition level we have um we have kind of a day where we honor them um and they they come to link in we have a proclamation signing ceremony at the capital where the governor last year was the lieutenant governor signed the proclamation and gets the students out um certificates that they with the governor's signature on it the test that has prepared yeah so they they get that home it's a great photo op for parents and it's just really fun sometimes students haven't been to the capital before and it's a really fun experience after that we go to Bennett Martin public library downtown which is just a couple blocks from the capital and we have a little luncheon where we eat students read their letters and talk about why they wrote them um they get their prize money and a note of journaling nopah and they just get to have a little downtime with their family and us and accept their award and a good meal and a good meal and then the last thing which I really enjoy is we go into the jane guest jane pope gesky heritage room at the Bennett Martin public library which has an entire collection of just Nebraska authors and literature so their letters are signed and then put into the gesky archive as Nebraska authors and that's a really fun we have a picture up here right now of them signing their letters they get a little um the librarian there gives them a presentation on what the jane pope gesky heritage room is and why it exists and how their letters are now a part of that you know long collection of Nebraska authors so they're Nebraska authors I mean that's what they feel yeah and um just the idea that you know if they go on to be authors later in life they we have this sample of their childhood writing um already archived for them yeah that's cool I think that's fun that's pretty exciting that you know that's becoming something it's not just oh I wrote this letter and won this contest it's it's becoming part of the archive there and something that really tangible yeah let me give you a little footnote uh last year uh we had some parents come with their with their kids to the Capitol for the side for the uh uh ceremony with the governor or the lieutenant governor and then uh they have to walk about four blocks or three and a half blocks to uh Ben and Martin public library uh one person didn't have very comfortable shoes on so if you have a student or somebody in your library who's a winner and you know they're going to be there make sure you tell the parents to wear comfortable shoes to get they will be walking a bit yes no it's a really fun day we invite the teachers of the winning students as well or whoever was involved in their submission process that that's a librarian or teacher and then their parents are also invited so it's a really good day and with this past year was the first year we gave them journals that kind of blinks in with what we were saying about journaling because they probably will want to do that especially if they aspire to be a writer so that was kind of they really enjoyed that I think oh we should tell them the size of the prizes too that's just what I was actually going to say someone did just ask what are the awards that you give out yeah $100 for winners $50 for the runners up and then there are gift cards from frenzy and finch yeah and there's also don't we have gift cards from the from the bookstore and sewer as well okay all right so so yeah they get a monetary prize and then they also get a gift certificate to a lincoln bookstore that they generously donate for this program so thank you frenzy and finch for donating a gift card so they can go find some new books to read and and chapters books at lincoln city libraries and and also uh we have forgot the ladies name oh you have a page oh good all right so we have a let's see during covid when we couldn't have that big ceremony in person we did an online one where the kids had a chance to read their letters for their parents and it's up on youtube and I think we have a little time I was going to play one of the letters that was really I mean they're all really good letters are these the videos linked from on the uh legislature website too yes we will get to them okay so you can watch the whole thing on the um letters about literature webpage it's called the virtual awards and it there's a link to youtube up there but I'm just going to play this is our level three alternate win winner from 2021 and they just wrote a really amazing letter so I hope we can hear this okay I'm just really a great honor to have been chosen runner-up um and I would love to read my letter for you guys um dear John Green I can't have I can't have the radio volume on six because it's not a safe number and I will get hurt I need to make it a volume and number ending in five or zero what if the devil is in me like my grandma said can others sense it am I a monster you may be wondering why I chose to start this letter but these are right thoughts but it is because those are just a few of the many thoughts they go through my head every day while I knew what anxiety you know Cv were I wasn't quite sure it wasn't until I read your book when I realized I should probably mention it to my parents and parents here it is a story and struggles and turtles all the way down while I need to recognize my struggles and I've been through the process of getting help society has created a stigmatism around anxiety making it seem like it's not normal or being exaggerated for attention because of this it's often hard to relate to others and understand that it's okay the institution of mental health explains that for a person with anxiety disorder the anxiety does not go away and it can get worse over time the symptoms can interfere with daily activities such as job performance schoolwork and relationships due to the stigmatism society has created not many people know this another common misinterpreted mental disorder that I deal with is OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder a generalized idea that comes when people think of OCD as tinnitus or color coding etc but it's more than that the international OCD foundation explains OCD as obsessions are unwanted intrusive thoughts images or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings compulsions are behaviors and individual engages in and attempt to rid the obsessions and or decreases or verb struck my triggers are numbers double or triple checking things and routines every day I find the commotion that con with the obsessive thinking of my triggers I tend to feel alone in my head because of how society perceives anxiety and OCD but reading these is a story helping me realize I'm not the only one who struggles with them or I know my ad friends and family tell me or tell me don't worry so much or you're overreacting three of these were incredibly invalidating and made me feel as if there was something wrong with me and that my thoughts were terrible or stupid when I read as a story it was an eye opener a particular quote in your book that stood out to me because it does a great job of explaining what anxiety feels like for me that quote is the thing about a spiral is if you follow it inward you never actually end it just keeps tightening infinitely for me anxiety feels just like what this quote is representing once my mind starts to worry it's like a spiral it gets tighter and tighter and makes me feel trapped it feels this too and helps me remember I am truly not alone her book does a fantastic job of explaining mental illness and the toll it can take on someone for all your book we see is a struggle with sharing who she is to David like when they first kissed he had a panic attack and left not talking to him for a few days she was so scared of all the mental organisms and bacteria she received and pissing in that she isolated herself I too have been there there was one time and I was driving around with my boyfriend he was taking me home but he wanted work he doesn't normally take and roots are huge sugar for me so I started to panic he cried when he brought me home I didn't talk to him for the rest of the night and took me some time but eventually he wanted to be able to sit down and talk to him about it just like it pays eventually it's because of her that I've made progress with made the progress I have with mental illness so I want to thank you for sharing your story with readers like I said it wants a significant impact on me and who I am today let me say just a few things about that if I could she is in the senior group she was the runner up in the senior group and you'll notice that the letter was not perfect like she'd say a stigma and stigmatism or whatever she was saying whatever instead of just stigma so it's not like the letters have to be perfect it's the fact that it's so personal it's really something so reflective she reflected in person yeah with it yeah very moving letter though just yeah and I mean this is what we're talking about today but it is band books weekend I think turtles all the way down has been banned and sure like the effect that book has had on this one girl so that's why it's important to keep books and libraries but yeah that's the kind of letter that really stands out to us and it doesn't mean that all the letters you know if you don't struggle with mental illness that doesn't mean you don't have a good letter to write in you um we've had people write about um the kite runner and just having that book open their eyes to other parts of the world that they've never thought about or experiences they've never lived and that is just um just as impactful to us to read about so you don't have to have um some deep dark secret you're telling us about you know like we we just want to know your thoughts and um how this literature has had an effect on your life is what we're really looking for let me go back to something tessa said earlier when she was describing what happens when the kids come together and they have a meal and they read their letters to me the strongest part of that whole thing the meals great it's fun to take the pictures but the kids are reading their letters there and so this year because they couldn't be there we invited the winners and runners up from last year and some of them came to the to the uh celebration this year it was kind of nice we're gonna have a platform however because some of the younger kids couldn't be seen above the podium it was so tall so barely learned that lesson right over it i just stand on a chair all right but yeah it's really nice for um these students who have written these letters to be able to hear the other letters who have won and listen to the other students you know talk about their letters and read them and yeah just see what these other students are writing about what they're reading and that's a it's a really fun experience do you have any questions christa uh let's see we just had the question about the awards um nothing else yet um if any we doesn't have any questions yeah go ahead and type into the question section have you go to webinar interface uh anything you want to know more about uh the program how to get it how to um get involved any of the requirements uh like said all the information is out there on the website thank you yeah christa i want to add one more thing which i forgot um this year we're making a special effort to try to include blind and visually impaired students and some of those some of that efforts has included uh gade kramer who's head of the talking book and braille service here making hot type with a teacher at the school for the blind i don't know if it'll happen this year and whether we'll have any students submitting them but we have made that effort they can use the regular things to submit them we've talked to uh steve prine at the uh national library service at the blind physically handicapped and he suggested we not do a special track for them just make it accessible and let them participate as well now we don't we don't know yet whether they will be participating but we're going to take it a step at a time probably should have done it earlier but that's one thing salie thanks for the reminder yeah so we would still like letters um submitted in pdf format but if your student needs some sort of accommodation get a hold of us and talk to us about it and we'll we'll try to do everything possible to make sure you know as many students can submit their letters as possible yeah because really the key is you want some sort of format where it like you said the beginning test it stays in the exact way that they wanted it not a word document that someone could accidentally change something in or something yeah right something that it's locked in yeah so that's why we love the pdf it also makes it easy for the judges to be able to you know read the same formatted letter and not have a lot of different formats to have to jump between so that they can score them and evaluate them all on the same you know level of things but like I said if you need some sort of accommodation or if you have questions about whether your letter was submitted or was uploaded into the Dropbox file just email me we have my contact information on here so you can get a hold of me the email ask and I will double check that for you immediately um we do have some more resources for you we've got um the center for the book page that we went through a little bit we have a resource page where at one point we provided grants for letter writing clinics we don't provide the grants any longer but all the information we gathered for those letter writing clinics is still online so if somebody wanted to host one themselves uh all that information is available on how they could do it and what that might look like we also have social media for a facebook page for the brask center for the book where we post information about the contest and yeah anything like that that people might be interested in about the center for the book we'll go on our social media I gotta look at some of those I haven't seen those that's good and then these are some of the organizations that help make letters about literature possible the main one is the nebraska center for the book and the library commission and we do get some funding from humanities nebraska and francy and finch bookshop who donates and we have some other donors that donate money for the prize uh prizes the students get and richard are some journals so we have a lot of people who make this program work I think we're gonna add linkedin city libraries to that also because they posted the the meal and they do the the tour of the guest keep room and all that sort of thing and I'd like to thank test out publicly for everything she does to get this organized because she gets the letters she sorts them she gets them out make sure they're in the proper order she of course is doing the arrangements with naked city library all that good stuff this couldn't work without her well we do have a question here um someone's interested in about what kind of uh what's the competition like as in specifically um how many letters do you usually receive pens each year um I think covid has kind of winnowed our numbers quite a bit especially with students being home or not in the classroom or not going to their library as much sure um I yeah last year I think each level had about some of them had more I think the middle grade usually has more letters so I think they had about 30 in level two and then I think Richard said there were 18 in the level three last year I'm thinking around 20 yeah maybe 20 for level one so the numbers have been closer to 50 so the judges have had to read a lot more letters but well hopefully we'll get more this year yeah now that um people are getting more um schools and libraries and the family is more um organized with how they're dealing with living in the pandemic that we're in right now that they know what they can do and how they can get out and I know we've also been trying to reach out more to libraries to promote this and to you know that they can be a place you know it's not just it's I think it's been stereotypically thought of as a school thing but no you mentioned earlier it could be anything homeschooling libraries yeah that's not actually a requirement that it's through the schools now we know a lot of um public libraries and school libraries have student book clubs so that might be a great group to reach out to since you already know they're avid readers and probably have several books that they've already consumed and could have thoughts about but I do think right doing these letters as a group with your with kids is a really great opportunity for them to learn from each other and hear what each one has been impacted by and yeah absolutely and I think Sally maybe you mentioned uh teen advisory boards that many libraries are coming up with now are a good resource get and get them involved to see who in the other just you know they are specifically for teens but they will know the kids older and younger than them potentially that they could also reach out to and help yes that's a good point thank you get on board with it yeah all right yeah I don't know if we have any other information do I don't think I want to show you so any other questions or comments I don't see any other questions if any doesn't anybody does have any questions go ahead and get them typed in there so we can get them answered right now if you want to um and of course you can reach out to tessa at any time while waiting to see if anyone does get type anything more in we just have some thank yous coming in and uh hello Richard people we are recording the show and the recording will be available um by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest uh it'll be on our income aside page and um on the literature page right now it links to the session to sign up for today's show but I assume you'll switch that over to when I have the recording up there tessa um and the slides will be available as well I'll get them from her so we can have that available um for you if you want any of that for your reference when you're uh working on this or helping any of the students in your area submit their letters all right I'm gonna pull presenter control back to my screen now so I can show you where all of this will be there we go on our website there it is there you go so here's the session page for today's show this will be um uh made a um on our recordings page if you um go to our main page we have our current shows and then our archives are linked right here at the underneath all of our upcoming shows and the most recent ones always at the top of the page so today's will be right here um everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show get an email from me I'll also push down on our social media we have a facebook page for encompass live if you like to use facebook give us a like over there we post reminders here's your reminder about today's show when recordings are available we post on here so um that'll be noticed notified there we do have a hashtag and come live we use I also push out into twitter and um as well when it's ready so keep an eye there if you want to I'll mention here there is a search feature if you want to look for any other previous episodes do we've we've done something on a topic you might be interested in you can search our archives you can search the full show archives or just the most recent 12 months if you just want something recently done um that is because this is our full show archives and I will not scroll all the way down because it's it's too long um going back to when encompass live premiered which was January 2009 um so what are we going on here 10 12 some lots and lots of sessions here um we will always have them on here um we all of our recordings are our house right now on our youtube channel for the library commission um but just to pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything uh some shows will stand the test of time still be good valid useful information but some things will become old or outdated and the information will be um if they're different now or services or products might not exist anymore um things may have changed drastically links might not work you never know um so just pay attention but you know we are librarians and this is one thing we do is keep things available for historical purposes and we will continue doing that um I did mention uh on our session for let it we do have a link on the session page to the letters about literature website so you'll be able to pop right over there um from when you get the information about the recording um for all the information anything you need to participate in the program so that's it for today any last words tessa richard or sally or just a reminder that the competition opens october 1st this year not november 1st so you have an extra month for your your submission you can wait till the end of december to submit your letter yeah go let december go by without submitting send in those letters yeah yeah so look for that coming up and then uh week and a half from now october is coming soon all right thank you everybody for being here today um and um thank you uh tessa richard and sally i'm glad we were able to get this organized and get you all on to talk about um letters about literature hopefully get a lot more letters this year yeah cool thank you everybody for being here for today's show um i'll help you join us next week when it is it's the last wednesday of the month uh september's almost over uh which means it is pretty sweet tech day last wednesday of the month amanda suite our technology innovation librarian comes in the show to talk about something techie related and she's going to teach us about excuse me programming a robot using voice commands so if you want to learn how to do that i just said first you have to have a robot well yeah we have yeah we can get some of the you can borrow them from the library commission um if you're a nabrasco library so and she will have some halloween themed um resources things we talking about because it is right um coming you know you want to plan for that a little um now all right so please do sign up for that and any of our other upcoming shows note october first or october fifth we do not have the show we always take the week off for the nabrasco library association annual conference uh people more are involved in that so there will not be an encompass live after next week's um we'll be back the week in that the week after that so thank you everybody for being here and we'll see you on a future episode of encompass live bye