 Okay, good morning and welcome to Encompass Live. This is a weekly webinar where we talk about all different kinds of things that apply or appeal to library personnel. And we're welcoming you all today, just a couple of days before the new year comes. This will be recorded and you'll be able to find that on the Library Commission web page, which is the page that's up right now. I'm going to minimize this so it's not in the way so much. And Richard Miller, Director of the Library Development Department of the Library Commission, is giving the presentation today. And I'll just turn this over to him. Okay. Thank you, Sally. Good morning. Today we're going to be talking about the Library Improvement Grants. And I want to show you that we're on our main web page here, our home page. There are two different ways to get to the Library Improvement Grants. Library Improvement Grants are funded by Federal LSTA, Library Services and Technology Act grant monies. And so there are some special provisions related to those as opposed to state funding from the Nebraska State General Fund. Let's start out right away telling you how to get to the Library Improvement Grant information. There are two ways. You can either scroll down on the website and you'll notice here that right here there's a sticky note, which if you click on it will take you to the page. But I want to go up here and show you another way of getting to it, which is go to the grants. And then on that fly out menu, if you move carefully over to the right, there are the Library Improvement Grants there as well. And that's what we'll click on to take you there today. But either way we'll get you there. All right. Now we're going to start off, if you look at the bottom of the page, there's a list of all the current links for the Library Improvement Grants. And we're going to start with the one from Rod Weigter, the grant message from the director, which will be down here. So you can just click on that. That's a live link. So anyway... The bottom, that part at the bottom there. To the right so we can get over there. Thank you. So we can look at that page. And this is a message from Rod Weigter, our director, in which he announced these grants on December the 4th. And notice, first of all, this due date. This is coming up, folks. January 28th, 11.59 p.m. Central Time. These things have to be in. They're all online. We don't want any paper grants. So keep that in mind as we go through the whole thing. All right. On this grants page where Rod announced these, there are a number of things that you need to be familiar with. Some of which are repeated elsewhere, but I think it's useful to go through them several times anyway. I mentioned that these are with federal LSTA grants because they're using LSTA grants. We have to have grants that respond to what are called LSTA purposes. You'll see that right there. Now, I've taken only five of the LSTA purposes because these seem to be most appropriate, and I've excerpted them. I didn't put all the full text here. If you want to see the full text, you can go down to our five-year plan and we'll go there just briefly. But I want to spend a little time talking about the LSTA purposes. If your grant application for your project does not fit within one of these purposes, you probably shouldn't be applying for these grant monies because it won't work. You won't be granted. However, as you read these, as you listen to them, you'll notice that they're pretty broad. You can drive a truck through some of these things. The first one says, as the LSTA purpose, facilitate access to resources for the purpose of cultivating and educated and informed citizenry. I'm going to read these. I know it's not the thing usually to do, but I think it's useful to read them, hear them morally as well as imprint. Second one, encourage resource sharing among libraries for the purpose of achieving economical and efficient delivery of library services to the public. The third one, promote literacy, education, lifelong learning, and to enhance and expand the services and resources provided by libraries, including those services and resources related to workforce development, 21st century skills, and digital literacy skills. The fourth one, ensure the preservation of knowledge and library collections in all formats and to enable libraries to serve the communities during disasters. And the last one listed is to promote library services that provide users with access to information through national, state, local, regional, and international collaborations and networks. Now, as I think back on the 88 public libraries that applied for accreditation this year, I know that in their strategic plans there were a number of projects and a number of goals that they have and outcomes that they're looking for that fit very well into these things. For example, if you want to have teach some basic computer literacy courses, that fits very well into the third LSTA purpose up there. If you're interested in promoting business in your community or in promoting better economic development within the community, that would fit into some of these. So think beyond just reading these things here. Think about your strategic plans or the services that you already provide in the community or the services that you'd like to provide in the community as you do this whole thing. If you can think in terms of broader sort of things, like in terms of your strategic plan, in terms of what the library wants to do in the community, rather than just thinking, oh, I have to choose one of these and I have to follow lock steps what's going on. If you can think more creatively and more broadly about what it is you want to attain, then I think this process will be a little bit easier. It won't just be, okay, well, I've got to do this. I had to do accreditation and I had to do board certification and I had to do library certification and we had to do this strategic plan. If you can think of how these things relate to each other, you're going to have a stronger project application form that you send in. All right. So those are the purposes. Let's click on the strategic plan, the five year plan that the commission has, and you'll notice when we go to this that if you scroll down to page five, you will see that that's where these LSEA purposes appear and all of them are listed there actually. And the full text of them are listed there also in case you want to see the full text. That's just for you to look at. Okay, let's go back here. Now, in these grants, you will notice that priority is going to be given to those libraries, either public libraries or state run institutional libraries, which we'll talk about later, which are planning to join the pioneer consortium. We'll spend more time later in this presentation of the pioneer consortium itself, but there is a link there that takes you to the membership page of the pioneer consortium, which will offer more information and we will review that later on. When I say priority, that means that if we have requests for more money than we have available, if there are pioneer consortium applications, they will rise to the top of the heap. So just keep that in mind. Doesn't say that that's all we will fund, but it is a priority of the commission. All right. Notice on this page also in this paragraph here that these grants do require a 25% match. Now, that also requires at least a 10% cash match in this whole thing. The other 15% can be in kind costs if you can make a case for them and so on, and you certainly can match greater than 10% cash. If you have the ability to do that, please do. That's fine. We want to have to haggle about whether this in kind match counts or not. If you have straight cash, that's great. Also, you may not, just to be sure about this whole thing, you may not use other federal funds as part of this cash match. That's just not allowed. You can't match federal funds, which these are with other federal funds. That's not allowed under the federal guidelines. Also, if you are doing an internet related project for this grant application, you must indicate that you have applied and are involved in the e-rate process for telecommunications discounts or show that you are receiving either the same discount that you would receive under the e-rate program, let's say a 60% discount from your internet service provider or a greater discount is eligible as well. So that's required as well. And I just want to tell you that for the Pioneer Consortium, because of how that grant has worked out, the libraries applying for that either may or may not be involved in the e-rate process. They don't have to be. That's not mandatory for the Pioneer Consortium because it's not an internet related project. It's by the definition that we're using for this. We hope that you do participate in the e-rate program because of the discounts that you can get. But if you're not for a Pioneer process, you don't need to worry about that. Richard, can people use state funds as a match like their state... What's the word I want? State aid. State aid. If they wanted to designate that... Well, I'll tell you what, you can do that, but I think that would be... I would say that the ideal would be for you to have local funds, whether that's part of your budget or whether that's from a foundation or a friend's group or whatever, that would be preferable. But there's not a mandatory you can't use those funds. The reason I don't like that a whole lot is because let's suppose that they received a youth grant for excellence. Well, that's state money. Well, let's suppose that the project that they're talking about is related to somehow youth or children in the community. I guess you could make the case that you have this money to match, but it's not really showing a dedication on the part of the local library. They really want this and they're really serious about it. That's the reason for the match is to show that the local library and the community really cares about this. So that's the best way, I think, to match it is with local funds. Thank you. You're welcome. That was a good question, Sally. All right. Let me go back to the SIPA compliance here, which is another thing. For those of you who were involved in e-rate or have been involved in e-rate for a long time, you know that SIPA compliance, Children's Internet Protection Act compliance, was required. Well, for purposes of these grants, again, if you have an internet-related project that you're proposing, there is a SIPA compliance form that appears on our website. I'm not going to go to that right now, that you have to print off and sign and send in and paper. That's the only thing about this whole process that you send in and paper. Now, again, is if it's an internet-related project. If the project itself does not need to be SIPA compliant, you just check this is not a SIPA compliant project and you sign that and send that in as well. So that's the other thing we need to know about. I've already told you that the applications have to be sent in online. I'm going to go back here to our main webpage, go to the bottom again. I'm going to go to... No, I want to go back where I was. I want to go back here, sorry. This link at the bottom here talks about where you should click if you want to go to the application. This is actually not the application form. This is another page that I wish to talk to you about because although there are some things repeated on here, there are some things as well that we need to go through. You'll notice that this information at the top is pretty much the same. It has those same five LSTA purposes from which you need to choose one or more as you go through this application. But I want to point out that there are a couple of other things on here as well. I already told you that accredited Nebraska Public Libraries are eligible. If you're not sure if your library is accredited, you can click on that and check. I also want to point out to you the list of 11 state-run institutional libraries that have patients and residents libraries which are also eligible to apply for this grant. It is rare when we see an application come in from the institutional libraries. If you're listening today or if you listen to this afterward, I am suggesting to you that this would be a really good thing for you folks to apply. I know you have particular hoops that you have to go through when you're applying. It has to go up the chain of command and whatnot. But these are meant for your institutional library residents as well. So please think about applying for this. All right. That's the go-to house we have here. This is a rundown of what is required from the applicant. We already talked about the 25% match of which 10% must be a cash match. That's 25% of the grant amount. Sally has helped us figure this out over the years since this 25% or 10% has caused difficulties in the past. So it's 25% and 10% of the cash of the amount that you're requesting for the grant. You have to meet all the requirements and there will be some documents that we send you to respond to as well. I guess there are some other paper documents which we'll talk about. The SIPA compliance is there. The e-rate compliance is there. And this last one I want to talk to you about has to do with the ADA compliance. That is the Americans with Disabilities Act. If your project is getting some technology in your library, you better make darn sure that it is ADA compliant. And there is a link here which we're not going to go to today, but I encourage you to go to it, which talks about two lawsuits that occurred at Sacramento Public Library and at the Free Library of Philadelphia, which is the main public library there in Philadelphia, that were brought by visually impaired people because both of those libraries got the idea that they were going to buy e-book readers and make them available to their patrons. But they didn't buy accessible e-book readers. They just bought regular e-book readers. And a visually impaired group, I think it was NFB, National Federation of the Blind, brought suit in both cases, and you can read the results of that whole thing. And it's useful because there's some useful information in there of what these two libraries did in order to comply with those suits. It's really very useful information. So even if you're not applying for a grant that's related to providing, let's say, e-book readers or some other sort of technology, you better make sure that it is accessible to visually impaired and other folks. If, for example, you were going to be acquiring some public access computers, let's say, you better make sure that there's software on there, such as the software that was demonstrated during the BTOP grants that provides large type, that provides voice output, that provides other things so that you do make them accessible so that you are ADA compliant with that. Sound good? Sounds good. I didn't realize that myself. Yeah. Good information. Well, this is federal money. And in fact, when you look at those suits that were brought for these two libraries, they specifically mentioned that these things were purchased with federal funds. ADA is required with federal funds, so you don't have a choice here. All right. Let me see. Let's talk about the priority for the Pioneer Consortium. And I'm going to go through a couple of documents. We did put a link up here, not to the main page for the Pioneer Consortium, but to the membership page so that you could see this. I want to draw this to your attention. The 21 public libraries and the one community college library are part of the membership of the consortium right now, are listed there at the beginning. But it's the five of the documents below there that I'm going to go through, set by step, not in great detail because you can read these all yourself. But I do want to point out that these documents will be useful for you if you decide to apply for a library improvement grant for joining the library consortium. This is useful information. There will be other information sent to your library shortly after this presentation I'll mention to you as well. This first one has to do with steps to membership. Most of these, I think, were written by Steve Fosselman, who is the library director at Grand Island Public Library. His library is now acting as the fiscal agent for the consortium for these libraries, working with the national company, PTFS, that provides the software and modifies the software for the consortium. So here's information about how to gain membership within the consortium itself. You'll send a letter to Steve Fosselman as the business agent. You'll fill in an application and assurances form. The executive board of the pioneer consortium, which is made up of four people, five people, I believe, will approve your membership. You'll execute a joint entity agreement, and that joint entity agreement is basically something like an interlocal agreement that would be signed between your village board or city council and the consortium itself. You would pay an initiation fee, an initial fee, orientation fee. You would have to review and clean up your bibliographic records, and most libraries, before they either join, decide to automate their collection or they're moving over from a different automation system, will probably do some heavy weeding before they do that because there's a charge per bibliographic record, per bib record, as they're called. So if you want to get rid of some stuff, this is a good time to do it. Pioneer will send you a quote for what this is going to cost, and you can use that quote either for this library improvement grant, or you'll see later on there's actually a tool on the Pioneer Consortium website where you can actually do an estimate of what it would cost you, and that is sufficient as far as the commission is concerned for determining what your costs will be to join the Pioneer Consortium. Then you'd work with Pioneer and with PTFS, the company I already mentioned, that works on the software for a schedule for when you will migrate over to the new system, and then you'll work with other Pioneer members already in place, and we'll talk about that later on since we have a couple of Pioneer members who are happy to show you how this works. Next one we'll go to is basic membership costs. This gives you a good idea of what the cost will be, the initiation fee, which I mentioned, or the initial fee. The amount that you're charged for bib records is based on how large the collection is that you're going to migrate, hang on a minute. The cost for data loading and for deduping of those records so that if there's already a record for that one particular book in the consortium, it's not listed again, there's one initial, one central record for that. There's a first year maintenance fee, and this is an estimate that Steve put together based on if you had 10,000 bib records in your collection. A number of our libraries that are smaller, let's say 500 or under population, usually have smaller collections than that, so you'll base it on the size of your collection. There's an annual membership assessment that goes to PTFS LiveLine, which is the, it's kind of nomenclature, or the name that they use, but PTFS is this company. And this offers, I think, enough information for you to look at this whole thing and to talk to your library board or your administration if you're a state-run institution about this whole thing. Let's go to the next one. Richard, if they have questions about the money that you were saying and they've done some figuring here, would it be wise for them to contact you? Call Steve Fosselman, because I'll be reviewing the grants as well as other people here. So there is Steve Fosselman's contact address. There's his email and his phone number. Feel free to call him. He is the business agent. He sits with the executive board and brings documents together and so forth for the consideration of the board. Thank you. Sure. I wouldn't have wanted to contact somebody before I determined that was the right number. Right. Well, here's the document that you might use with your board or with your administration if you're talking, if you're trying to convince them that you might want to join the Pioneer Consortium. This is a document that Steve put together to give you some idea of costs involved. And what he did was, which is really useful, is that instead of just giving you an estimate about what it would cost the first year, because the first year costs are going to be higher because you're pulling in all your BIV records and in subsequent years you're going to be pulling in fewer numbers of bibliographic records after that. But for the initial sort of thing, there'll be a higher cost the first year. He actually has shown you how to estimate what your costs will be over a seven-year period. And that makes good sense because it'll show you not just what happens the first year, but then you can plan for your budgets for subsequent years. Now, if your library were to be lucky enough to receive a library improvement grant, much of the cost, up to 75% of the cost, could be covered by the library improvement grant. So that first year hit that you're going to take would be somewhat softened by the library improvement grant. In fact, quite a bit softened by it. So look at that. That'll give you a good idea of how the cost estimates are done. And then there's actually the estimator itself, which is a tool that will show you... You'll just feed in some information here, which we'll see. You'll feed in your legal service area, LSA, that comes from... You know what that is from us here at the Commission. Your total operating revenue, your holdings, and the total circulation. Now, I'm going to double check this to make sure because you know that for those of you in public libraries who send in your annual statistical survey, which of course you have to be doing because you have to be in a credited library, I want to double check to make sure that those sections of the annual survey that you do are the correct numbers there. We'll double check that to make sure before you do this. When you fill those things out, then there's another thing that you can fill out if you wish to. If you want some on-site technology or tech consulting, you can also put in $500 into your budget, which will be figured. And then this will calculate what your costs are going to be. It's a really handy thing. So what you saw on the previous slide was a kind of a demo. This will be the one that actually is for your library itself. Okay, Sally, how do I go back? Do I just close this sucker? Yes. Okay, I don't want to lose it. Great. And close this. Okay. And finally, I want to show you the ease of use, which is something that you can use to justify the purchasing of this software and joining the consortium if you wish to. I won't go through all of these. You can read that on your own. I think it's very easy to read. Again, contact information is there for Steve Fosselman. Now, the one thing I'm not reviewing today, although it is there, is that there are withdrawal procedures. In case you are a member and you wish to withdraw in the future, there's some details there about how that has to happen. There certainly are some costs involved, because there has to be a taking out of records from your library and there's some costs involved. But we hope that nobody will have to do that in the future. Anyway, that's the information on the Pioneer Consortium website. And I do want to point out that there are two public libraries right now that are offering to demo this software if you're interested. They are Central City Public Library. And I think I sent out information to all of our public libraries, and I will be sending that to our 12 institutional libraries as well. But Central City Public Library will demonstrate this software if you're interested in seeing how it works on Wednesday, January 6th, from 10 to 2, and on Wednesday, January 20th, from 10 to 2. And since that offer was made, and that Sarah Lee sent that in, I thought that was nice. She's actually a member of the Pioneer Board right now. But also, Vicky Perry from Superior Public Library said that she'd be willing to demonstrate the software any afternoon if you'd like to contact her. But please call ahead of time. In the case of the ones at Central City Public Library, if you want to just show up between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Wednesday, January 6th or on Wednesday, January 20th, they're willing to show you how that works. So we thank them for that. You can also, of course, look at the list of other Pioneer Consortium members, and if you're closer to them, you might call up and say, hey, can I come and see how it works. All right. All right. Let me get to my next slide here. If you have questions about the Pioneer Consortium, you can contact Steve Fosselman, or you can contact Lorine Regissel, who is the current president at Beatrice Public Library, or you can contact me if you've got some questions and I'll kick you over to those folks or someone else if I can answer those questions. All right. Now, we'll be sending out a mass mail to all of your libraries after this is over from the Pioneer Library Consortium. I don't think I can show this on camera, but there's a multi-sheet thing that's coming out. It's nice and colorful. We will try to come in on it, but it's December 2015 membership invitation from them, and that has much more detail on this whole thing which you may like to read. All right. Watch for it. Okay. Now, let's get back to the library improvement grants here. I want to go back to that. And let's see. You can go to the house at the top. I think I can just do it from here. I want to get to the grant application form here. The grant application form is online. It is quite a bit different from any application form we've ever had before, and the reason it is is because it is now compliant with how we have to report to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. That is the federal organization that provides the LSTA federal monies to us to distribute to you. So, this is quite a change, and I'm going to try to go through this for you, but please reserve your judgment on this until we get to the end and until you review it a few times because it's really quite a bit different. I want to go through this and tell you a few different things that may be useful to you before we actually go through the process. We've been working very closely with the system directors, system administrators in our four regional library systems because, in fact, they had to send in their long-range plans to us using a new approach. And the new approach uses what you will see embodied in this application as well, so they could be very helpful to you as you fill out these application forms. Scott Childers from Southeast Library System and Sharon Osango, whose co-director of Central Plains Library System, actually we're looking at, as we were talking about, a new way of doing their long-range plans, they came up with something and Scott said, this is just sort of like learning a new vocabulary. That's what we're going to be doing here. We're going to be doing a vocabulary lesson to you. And Sharon said something interesting as well. Sharon Osango said, this is sort of like an outline format, and I think you'll see that as we go through. It's not strictly an outline format, but you will see that when we look at this that we'll come back to this after we go through it to show this. In fact, maybe what I think I'll do is, in fact, before we do it, I think I'll show these two links. This way, this way. Just go up to that one. All right, let me show you something here. I'll minimize that. This is what I'm calling. This is the one that I like better, because it's not so graphic. It's more verbal, and I'm better with verbal and graphic, because there are two things I'm going to show you here. This one and then the sort of graphic one. But the verbal one is like this. And I'm going to just go through this quickly because you'll see how this is reflected on the application form itself. The LSTA purposes, there were five of those. Remember I showed those to you? Those are the ones you're going to be looking at. And then within the application itself, you're going to see that there is a project intent. It's the intention of your project. Is it for lifelong learning? Is it for information access? Is it for increasing the capacity of your library? Is it for economic and employment development? Is it for human services or civic engagement? And these will make a bit more sense when you see how these are broken out on the application form itself. Now these are all sort of subdivisions of the stuff above. Kind of, but not exactly. So that's why I don't want to mix you up. But they do all relate to each other. After you determine what the project intent is that you're going to have for your grant application, then you're going to look at what activities you're going to be involved in. Are you procuring something? Are you getting something? Are you doing some planning or evaluation? Are you acquiring some content? Are you doing some instruction in this particular LSTA project? Then you need to talk about who's going to benefit from this. Is this the general population? Is it every age group? Is it everybody in your community? Or are there targeted groups? If they're targeted groups, we'll show you some age groups and some other groups to look at that you want to choose from. What's the format of the activity that you're going to be doing in this grant activity? If you're going to be acquiring something, if you're going to be acquiring the... Come on. What system am I talking about? The Pioneer system probably fits under procurement. You don't have to go to some of these other sections. But the other sections have different divisions. If you're doing some planning and evaluation, are you doing prospective or retrospective planning or evaluation? In other words, are you looking back or forward? That's what those stand for. Your activity has to do with content. Are you talking about acquisition? Are you acquiring materials? Are you creating content, perhaps online? What's the description of what you're doing? Are you going to be lending things? Are you going to be doing some preservation? Those are all divisions of content. Oops, I didn't want to do that. Are you doing instruction? Are you doing a program? Are you doing presentation or performance? Are you doing consultation or drop-in or referral? All of these things relate if you go back and back and back and back and back to what your intent is of the whole thing. And then you'll have to list what the expectations are of your project outcomes. And finally, we'll get to the project budget. Now that's kind of a verbal sort of thing. I'm more comfortable with that, but for people who are more comfortable with graphic sorts of things, this isn't as detailed as the verbal one, but the idea of here we're dealing with the LSTA program, you're going to be dealing with a project. What's your project? What is the intent of that project? What activities are you going to have in that project? What is the mode by which you're going to deliver it? What's the format? Does that say quantity? Quantity, you can't read it. Okay. Partner. Partners. And who are the beneficiaries? What does that say? Locale. What's the locale you're going to be doing? Sorry, my eyesight's getting bad as I get older. So those are two ways of looking at how you might describe your project. And once we get back to the application form itself, can I just minimize this? Yes. Krista will put these two forms will attach it to the presentation. So if you want to see these later, you'll be able to access them from the archived section. Krista will be back tomorrow. That's why Sally's here today. So Krista can be on vacation. I'll minimize this. No, I didn't want to do that. I'll just call the next one over. Thank you very much. All right, I want to go here to the actual application form itself. Can I blow this up a little bit, just to get me off the screen? Okay, good. Let's go then to the online application form itself. This is an interactive online form. Why is it so different? I already explained that a little bit. It's different because there are 50 state library agencies. They receive LSTA money. Everyone was reporting their LSTA program reports to the Institute of Museum and Library Services however they wanted to report it. Comparability was an impossible situation. So what the Institute of Museum and Library Services or IMLS has been doing over the last several years is that they've been having those of us who deal with the LSTA funds come to meetings and they have beaten into our heads for years a different approach to this whole thing. I thought they were just appealing to yours. Oh no, they were beatings. They fed us well too but they were also beatings. It was a sort of good cop bad cop kind of situation. Anyway, what we have done with the library improvement grant applications this year which of course are for those LSTA federal funds is that we are following their guidelines about how to do this. This is the first year we're doing this. I don't think it's going to flop totally but my guess is that for the funds for next year there's going to be some changes in this whole thing but this is what it looks like this year. The form itself begins with a part that you've got to fill out, your name, your library, phone number, email address, city, project director and your zip code. Then we get into the LSTA purposes. Now this is a reflection of those 5 purposes that we showed to you earlier that are listed on our website. They're now in this application form itself. This application form itself when you are through with it you will send into us it will allow you to print off a copy for yourself and you'll send it to us and we people at the commission will receive that. I'll receive a copy Linda will receive a copy and Vern will receive a copy so we've got 3 people here who will be getting these application forms. You'll receive a message that we've received it. So everybody will be happy to know that their application form went in because it's electronic so we can do that. I have to give a whole bunch of credit to Vern Byus who is our guru here of computers because he took my hand written sorts of things and translated them into this form and believe me it was not easy because all the links and everything else are in here. It's really phenomenal. I've tried it out and it works really very slickly. I like it. Now notice what it says here that you can choose one or more of the following. Please don't check all of them. We don't want an application for LSTA money coming in that checks all of them because we have about maybe $100,000 but we also have 12 institutional libraries and about 150 accredited public libraries that could apply for this so you can't have all the money even if you want to. So choose wisely choose the category that you think is most appropriate for the project that you're talking about and when you do that you'll click on it and it'll show up or you can click on another one. If you really feel that two are equally important that's okay. But once you start clicking all of them we start thinking this is way too large. Let's send this puppy back and get it more focused. Yes. Now the project intent in each of these sections we have definitions for you. Please accept the fact that you probably will not understand the definition the first two or three times you read it. That's okay. Read it again and read it again. In fact I would recommend you go through the whole application form itself before you ever try to fill it out. I think that would be foolish. Look at the whole thing first. Because I'm assuming Richard that you've read through the definitions quite a few times in the course of going to these meetings and talking with other librarians. I dream about them Sally. Some good dreams some that's a good dream. But read through these. The project intent I'm going to read these to you just so you hear it verbally and then you can read it on your own afterward. The intent is the objective. The intended results are the outcome of your project. Then notice you're only going to choose one of the following 13 boxes. The boxes themselves are kind of their categories here but only choose one from the whole list. So you'll fill out one of these bubbles like this. You just click on it and it fills it in. Not more than one. If you click on another one that first one will disappear. That's all you can choose is one. What is the intent of your project? What's the objective, intended result or outcome that you're planning? So let's read through those. Under lifelong learning you want to improve users' formal education or do you want to improve users' general knowledge and skills? So focus it. These will help you focus. If you know that information access is what you want to do. Do you want to improve the users' abilities to discover information resources or do you want to improve their ability to obtain and use information resources? So discover or obtain and use. Slightly different. Be careful about what you're choosing. This will help you focus your plan too or your project. Institutional capacity. Do you want to improve your library's physical or technological infrastructure or do you want to improve library operations? So you have to choose. Under economic and employment develops. Do you want to improve your users' ability to use and apply information for employment support or do you want to improve users' ability to use and apply business resources? Now these are not chosen willy-nilly. These actually are taken from the federal law that applies to LSTA money LSTA money, sorry I flip back and they are priorities that are chosen by the Feds and we have further narrowed those priorities to include these within this list here. For human services do you want to improve the users' ability to apply information that furthers their personal family or household finances? So there's one you might be interested in. Or do you want to choose one that applies to those people's personal or family health and wellness? Or one that applies to their parenting and family skills? These are very specific so your application should be and what you intend to do should home in on those things. And finally civic engagement do you want to improve users' ability to participate in their community or to participate in their community conversations around topics of concern? Those are slightly different so choose. Alright? Just one out of those 13 so this will help you focus what it is that you're doing. Now activity now here's our whole bunch of definitions which we're going to spend a little bit of time on. Because we're talking about mode and activity and some of those are a little bit strange. It has taken years for the feds to drum some of these definitions into my head but I think I finally sort of have them. They didn't give up. They knew some of us were thick headed and they had to keep beating it into us. So here they are. You can always go back and review these. There's an action or actions through which the intent of the project is accomplished. What do we look at up above? Oh! Project intent! There's the tie in. Okay so you better choose an activity and you better choose a mode that really relates back to all this stuff relates step by step. Alright? An activity accounts for at least 10% of the total amount of resources committed to the project. In other words, if you've got some activity that is less than 10% you don't need to try to mention it here. It may be part of the project but we're looking for major things that you're talking about. It'd be better if it were more than 10% quite a bit more than 10%. So you don't have to have everything but just the major points. You're going to find out this is going to force you to make choices and I'll tell you about that at the very end. It's going to force you to make choices that you don't have to make. You can really be and I love this because I was an English major I love to write whole lots of words and descriptions. This is not allowing you to do that. This is really crunching it down to you have to make choices on stuff. So an activity accounts for at least 10% of the total resources committed to this project. That's not 10% of what you're asking for. That's 10% of the total resources. Your local resources the resources that you want to grant. Choose only one. Notice how we underlined. Only one of the four activity areas below to indicate the primary activity of your project. Then you can choose one or more modes for the activity and we'll talk about that in just a minute. There's a definition. A mode is the characteristic of an activity. Now honest to goodness I have gone to at least three maybe four workshops and I think I understand mode and activity and intense and all that sort of thing, but you really have to it really helps to go back and review them. That's why we put these definitions at the beginning of each of these sections and we'll keep these definitions here because there could be a new person next year who's looking at these and saying what the heck are you talking about? So there's the definition of mode. A mode is a characteristic of an activity. Well then you have to see what activity is. You see how these link together? Okay, it's going to take a little vocabulary lesson for a while but believe me they make sense. I've had these beaten in my head for at least three years maybe more and they do hang together and make sense. So a mode is a characteristic of an activity. Okay, here we want you to choose what activity you're going to be doing. Are you going to be doing procurement? For example those libraries that are doing that are doing pioneer may choose this because they're getting some hardware software. Well if you choose that one you don't have to worry about some of the other things involved in here because it's not appropriate for that. But if you choose planning and evaluation which again it defines it there involves design development and assessment of operations services or resources what's the mode? When the information is collected, analyzed and disseminated, choose one or more of these. So you have to see this in a couple different pieces it's sort of a multifaceted thing. If you're doing planning and evaluation which involves these things, design development or assessment, then which mode are you going to be looking at? Are you going to be looking at a retrospective mode, in other words looking at the past involves the historical assessment or a condition of a project or services are you looking back and evaluating what you've got or are you doing a prospective one are you doing research that involves assessment of future condition of a program or services and those are two very different things but you could be doing them both you could be doing a review that looks back and you could at the same time for this project be looking forward at the same time that's very possible that's a larger project it's more intense but you can choose both of those if you wish to alright let's talk about another one another activity, this is planning and evaluation no we just did that, this is content which involves acquisition development or transfer of information so we tried to put these definitions in wherever they are the mode how the information is made accessible choose one or more are you looking at acquisition, creation, description lending or preservation for acquisition are you talking about selecting, ordering or receiving materials for the library which might also include procuring software or hardware for the purpose of storing or retrieving information or interacting with that information for example if you are applying for a pioneer grant you could perhaps put it under procurement but you could also put it under acquisition according to this definition so make a choice under mode are you talking about creation are you going to do design or production of information tool for resources which includes digitization or the process of converting data to digital format for processing by a computer I'm not going to read all of these to you because you can read them I mean they are up here on the screen are you doing description of that content and there's the definition are you talking about lending are you talking about preservation and read those definitions so that's all under content the reason I'm not reading all of these is that we have about 10 till I want to keep going through what about instruction are you looking at instruction for the activity that involves interaction for knowledge or a skill transfer how is that learning going to be delivered or experienced you can choose one or more are you talking about the program are you going to talk about presentations in your library are you going to provide consultation or drop in or referral for this particular project so choose one or more of those they might be one, two, or three if you want to although I think you might want to focus a bit more than doing all three let's go to the beneficiaries who are the beneficiaries of this grant that you're asking for definition of beneficiaries are the people who will use visit, participate, or otherwise experience a project activity indicate who will benefit from this project choose one of those listed below as the primary beneficiary notice we want you to choose one is it the general population or is it a targeted group if you choose general population here then you won't have to come down here and choose from this list because you're hitting everybody but you can do all ages if you want to if you have a targeted group of the beneficiary is it in an urban area suburban area or rural area if you have a targeted group activity choose the group that is going to be hit for this if it's all ages hit all ages if it's specific to seniors then maybe you want to hit 50 60, 70 plus if it's specific to younger kids you might want to hit 0 through 5 whatever it is that's appropriate if the activity is directed at one or more of those groups at one or more of those above then what's the economic situation and you can select one or more of those is it for people living below the poverty line for the unemployed or isn't this applicable for what we're talking about this is helping you focus on groups that you're going to be meeting the needs of and it helps us understand what it is you're proposing now if the activity is focused at an ethnic or minority population or more of these in here or click it's not applicable if the activity is directed at families hit yes if it's directed at intergenerational groups not including families hit yes the reason you don't include you don't hit it again is because you've already covered that up above the families up above if it's directed at immigrants or refugees if it's directed to those with disabilities yes or literacy or information skills yes or no and is it directed at groups that fall into a category not already listed yes or no if it's yes then you list the groups there the reason for these groups is that they are all target groups of this federal money that's why those questions are being asked alright format talk to us about what the activity is going to be now we're talking about format and mode here's some new definitions again format is a characteristic of a mode a mode is as you as you choose in question 3 above because this relates back to question 3 then indicate which formats you're going to be choosing here so we'll go back to question 3 for just a minute and I want to keep going farther because this is activity notice that a mode is a characteristic of an activity see how these all tie together not clearly the first time you read this honestly you need to go back and review this you may even want to print this out and take it home for homework and look at it don't worry about it though a format is characteristic of the mode use the same mode or modes as you chose in question 3 above and indicate which formats the project will be using that procurement is not applicable for this but if you're looking at planning and evaluation then you would choose whether it is prospective or retrospective you mean remember there were you can look back or look forward as far as your collection goes well is this in house you're going to do a prospective sort of study or you're going to bring a third party vendor in and the same for retrospective how about content are you looking at digital, physical or all of them combined digital and physical how about creation this is the format and I'm not going to go through all of these but these will honestly make sense I'm going to go through these and look back at what you indicated above they all relate to each other now instruction again you can be doing programs presentation or performance or consultation drop-in referral remember those are the programs that are listed above under this particular activity but are you going to do virtual in person or combined the same for presentation or performance the same for consultation and drop-in then you get to project outcomes and ripping through this and honestly we will have to look at it and look over it several times we want to know what outcomes you anticipate from this project in other words and for those of you who have done anything before what difference is this project going to make if you can't answer the question what difference is this project going to make maybe you shouldn't be applying for it so what are those outcomes what methods are you going to use to get to those outcomes are you going to survey the people you served are you going to review observation of the people are you going to review data that you gathered are you going to do focus groups or interviews of people or use some other way do you anticipate continuing this after the current reporting period ends in other words the money runs out that you're getting are you going to anticipate continuing it or not do you anticipate any changes you're going to make I hope that if you do one of these LSTA funded projects that you learn something and maybe you'll change the scope of the project do you anticipate any changes in the project in the project itself and in the scope of the project those two kind of relate to each other and there's the phew at the very end it's going to feel like that to you the first time you do this I want to go just briefly to the through the budget here I was going to fill in some things because it is interactive but I'm not going to do that because I want to see if we have any questions but you'll notice that as you put things in here let's suppose I put a hundred dollars in here there's there's a hundred dollars in here oops that won't work there's my backspace backspace backspace let me put it down here let me put it yeah yeah yeah let me put it down here hundred dollars you'll notice that when you click it appears over there into the total funds also so this is all related to each other what I say down here note is that usually it is not allowable to count personnel costs as part of your match that is required for this remember you need a 25% match at least 10% of that matches is funding usually not allowable unless you can show that you are actually going to dedicate some staff time to this project and you have to pull them off what they're doing and do that so then you can count it but generally it's not that now everybody ought to be able to come up with 10% of a cash match so for like the pioneer grant if you could indicate that one or two staff members are dedicated to weeding the collection as part of that process yes you can make that case absolutely absolutely that's a good one once you're done you're going to save and submit the whole application what you're going to find is that it will come back to you to allow you to print it and then we will have three copies as I indicated earlier of people who would get the application forms here we'll try to get back to you as soon as possible notice the due date 11.59 p.m. Central Time on January 28, 2016 if it's later than that we won't look at it there will be a list of applications that have been submitted as they come in you will have to send in your internet safety certificate if you need to separately and there will be some other documents that we send you as well the internet safety documentation does that have to be in here by the 28? not necessarily but at least shortly thereafter because we have a crew of people who are going to be looking at these things do we have any questions that have come in? not on here yet but maybe I just happen to be asking the questions that's fine and if they put in this budget form if they put in their amounts but the percentages don't come up does it indicate that? it does not but we'll be back in touch with you right away because you have to meet that the other thing that's not part of this as you look at our website it's still not part of it is that we will be we will be doing a final report that is not in here yet but you will have to submit I just have it on time to do that we will have to come in after the project is finished as well and if that do roughly a year yeah it has to be in so that we can use it we'll on the report form itself we'll indicate when that will come we'll put that up on our website as well okay it is now 11 o'clock so are there any more any questions remember that Krista will be back tomorrow and she will post both last weeks live session and today's live sessions up on our archive so you can sure come back and look at it again and see she'll add those in yes she'll add in the power point pages that Richard showed us and you can sure look at everything again zoom to that special section where you want to hear again what he was talking about on the archive which is one of the handy things about looking at it that way feel free to call me anytime or age under number and that number is 800 307-2665 oh you're so good Sally you're so good Sally and if we take yes please do I would just like to show you let's see the page this is also nice because if you've been filling in information and suddenly you go uh huh I can really ask you before you head out now let's see if I can would you type in encompass live sure just have a cabalic so I can go to the okay that's good space live you got it okay isn't that great that you can type it in and then your your best bet right there here are the upcoming encompass live sessions so next week I'll be back talking about the presentation I gave at conference in October what I'm calling the best new children's books of 2015 and then the other scheduled encompass lives after that and as you look at these right down here underneath that list is the archive encompass live sessions that you can access for any of the presentations that have been given in the how many years have it been I'm not sure where's this been here I'm going to say nine yeah she's been doing it for a long time anyway and they're all chronological so Sally may I mention one more thing we will be sending out to all accredited public libraries and to those institutional libraries that I mentioned earlier a copy of the pioneer consortium information that I mentioned that will go out today barring any kind of electrical storm but I think that would be going out today for your information so you can look at that and read it at your convenience but remember as he said that the applications are due January 28 just before midnight because of the electronic we can say that did we say what time did we say I think we said just before oh yeah you're right okay thank you I'm thinking so I still don't see any questions I'm sure people are just absorbing all this information you've given them I bet they're stunned I'll be calling you next next week after the new year when things start to settle in so thank you very much we really appreciate you attending our conference today for looking at it on the archive sessions happy new year get your apps in and we hope to see you next week as well thank you