 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 online event. We're a webinar, a webcast, an online show. The terminology is up for debate, but whatever we are, whatever you want to call us, we are here live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. If you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. We do record the show every week and it is available on our website for anyone to watch. And I will show you exactly where that is after today's show. Both our live show and our recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with any of your friends, colleagues, neighbors, family, anyone who you think might be interested in any of our topics. They can join us for our live shows or watch our recordings. We do a mixture of things here, book reviews, mini training sessions, interviews, basically anything library related that really is our only criteria, something to do with libraries. We sometimes do have Nebraska Library Commission staff do things that are presentations on topics, programs and services we offer here through the Commission, but we also do bring in guest speakers. And that's what we have this morning. On the line with us from Valley Public Library here in Valley, Nebraska is Claire Bouchon and Gary Brown. Hi, Claire. Hi, Gary. You're both there, right? Yes, we're here. Good morning. Good morning. And they have a presentation. They got a grant for this great program to have microscopes in their library. This is a presentation that was they did at our state library conference, library and school library conference in October. And I had a couple of different people mention to me that this is a cool topic and that we should bring them on the show to share with even a larger audience. So I will just hand over to you guys to Claire and Gary to take it away and tell us all about what you did with those microscopes in your library. Okay, thanks. I'm Claire and I'm the director here at Valley and I'll probably let Gary do most of the talking because he's the microscope authority, but I just wanted to welcome everybody and say thanks for attending. We are pretty excited about our microscopes. It's been a really good thing for us here in the library and maybe will inspire some of you to think about doing something similar at your place. Gary, you want to go ahead and introduce yourself? My name is Gary Brown and I've been around microscopes both in an educational setting and also professionally for quite a long time. And the last several years I had an idea that it might be fun to put some microscopes where the general public could see it. And the library was a good place to start, I thought. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we got started, but my motto I think with microscopes is the more I see, the more I see, there's more to see. And that's kind of a little bit of a run-on sentence, but it dawned on me as I was walking past some goldenrod in my backyard and I was kind of admiring the flowers, but I noticed that the goldenrods were humming. That's kind of an unusual thing. So I broke off a flower and shook it out over a piece of white paper and I was amazed at the stuff that fell out. So I captured a couple things on camera. I have a sold-for-beauty here and I got a capture that was residing somewhere within the parts of the goldenrod and took pictures of these things. And I got to thinking that the smaller and smaller you looked, there was still something that was smaller than that. And we go down to an electron micrograph here I borrowed from sciencephoto.com that shows how really small you can go. Looking around the neighborhood environment, the roadside ditch provided a lot of specimens. And I went out with my specimen collector one afternoon and captured a jar full of whatever it might have been and took it back and prepared some slides and took a look at it under the microscope. But this is a single-celled protozoan that lived in the ditch. And the beauty of this thing is that it's amazingly complex for no more than a single cell. The microscope was one that my father bought for me for Christmas and this is a good representation of what a kid's microscope in 1955 looked like and it opened up a world of fascination for me. Looking through the microscope, this is what I saw in the field of my microscope and you see it's not much there. I'm not too sure there was anything there. But to a kid, it was a fascinating look. It just kept me thinking, how do we move forward? So thought about the library and over and introduced myself to Claire and talked to her for a little bit about putting some microscopes in the library here in Valley. The plan was to get some kind of a permanent facility and Claire's been very generous with a very nice science table. So we have a place to call home base. I approached a science center and a couple libraries and everything just worked out very well. I got a little star there staying at science centers. I started out after college working in a science center and that certainly was an experience for me that showed you what was possible working with kids in science. The first place I approached was the Edgerton Explorer Center in Aurora, Nebraska which was very much like the science center where I had worked and it's a facility that invites students and general public in for science related activities. And that seemed like a great place to go. The gal was very willing to give us a table much like what we have here in Valley and we set up microscopes and got everything going. You probably have to be a bit of a microscopist to answer the question what's wrong with this picture, but you'll notice that the students looking through the microscope eyepiece tube and the other side should have a microscope eyepiece tube there and it's gone. So I always keep reminding myself that we have to kind of be vigilant when we have microscopes out for the general public because you just never know when something's going to take a hike. We don't have a lot of trouble with that, but you know they're just they're going to mess with them and fortunately Gary stops in now and then and tells us what's missing and what's broken and takes care of it. We've been pretty fortunate we really haven't had any problems. At the Explorer Center we set up a special microscope that's dedicated to a camera and you can see the large TV screen hanging above the microscope. The microscope has no eyepieces but it just has a camera. So for teachers who want to show things to a large group it's a great way to get the image on the on the television and then sitting next to it is a stereo microscope which is good for specimens that are not tiny, tiny, tiny but are just small. So if a student wants to look at a butterfly wing or a fly face or a piece of sand or anything like that the stereo microscope is a great instrument to use. The Explorer Science Center does not have a checkout facility but we do have it here. I don't know what happened here. It went crazy on me. So we're back to the Explorer Science Center and a student has a slide on his microscope and is just into the work but the nice thing about it is that they've got it set up like we do here in Valley that the students can come in and prepare their own slides and look at the things that they want to look at. We've had a lot of fun with science days where the kids go out and collect their own specimens and it's just fascinating to see what they return with. This is the table that Claire has dedicated to our microscope in the Valley Library and I think I'll let her tell about that because she's pretty much responsible for the way the table's set up and the daily watching over. Well this has kind of evolved. This is an early picture so we've been a little redecorating. This is just a fold-up table but we were careful to get one with legs that were really secure just so things wouldn't move around so much because people are going to bump into it and that sort of thing. The little stand that the television monitor is on is this box full of books covered in paper and it's pretty sturdy there and we've got power cords and petri dishes and collection of various things. This just shows the two stereoscopes and the one compound scope that's connected to the TV. We do have another compound scope on there now and a collection of books we keep there near the microscope so people who are interested in those can easily find them. We have an inexpensive IP scam attached to our small television monitor and again it's a great way to draw attention. If you have a group coming in to put a slide on the microscope and turn on the TV and it really pulls people over to the table to see what's going on. So for the general groups it's easy to stimulate some interest and for the large groups that come for science days or special activities it's a great way to share images that everybody can see very easily. This IP's camera is a real simple little USB camera that just plugs straight into a TV. It doesn't need a computer or anything like that and the only thing it does is projects an image. Our strategy was selecting appropriate microscopes and Clair Penne got the permanent display organized and has done a really great job in finding all sorts of related books and projects so our science table is really looking very good here. After we got the table set up then we had a little conference on how we were going to get the potential user interested in what kind of things we could do for them so that when they did check out the microscope they could use it effectively. And selecting microscopes I've been around microscopes for a long time I had quite a variety from which to choose a question in my mind forever has been is any microscope better than no microscope and there's always a discussion as to where you should start, how it's sophisticated or simple should it be and I think that I am in a position where just giving a kid a simple microscope is a great way to get them started. If you have something that's a little more complex it makes a little more preparation to work with the student but they get a little better image quality from it so I don't know that there's any hard fast rule that says you have to start here or there but just to have something is the place probably we would want to start. Now Clair's been working on our evolving display and it's really getting to be quite a science station. We have an official sign now that she had made the books and pamphlets and petri dishes and everything are out so when the people come to the library they can look at it and maybe you'd like to share how that works on a daily basis. I should say we've also replaced the library stool there with a kid friendly excuse me with a kid friendly stool so the people whose eyes can't quite reach the microscopes can take a peek there too. We just keep this close to the circulation desk and so it's in view as soon as people walk in the library and kids are very much drawn to it. One of the things that kind of surprised both of us is the younger kids are the ones who are most drawn to the table and we do require adult assistance. If the library staff doesn't have time we always tell the parents or grandparents that they need to be with them there at the table. But there's hardly anything that can really cause problems with a little bit of adult supervision they're probably not going to break anything. One of the things that we have done is to take the slides to the desk and those are available on request. We keep a number of specimens out in the Petri dishes for the kids to look at in the stereoscopes because those are really more interesting for the younger kids anyway and then anybody who wants to do a project with slides can always ask at the desk for some help with that and that kind of keeps down on the clutter just a little bit. It doesn't really require much staff time I think that most of the kids who are in here regularly kind of know the drill that they're supposed to wait for us to have a chance to go over and help them if they need any help and we don't find that it takes a lot of staff time. I should also say my sister is a recently retired middle school science teacher and so some of the things that we've added to the table are courtesy of her but she's also kind of guided me in the direction of finding other materials and I've done a little exploring on my own and worksheets and that sort of thing is available online and we've found quite a few interesting things just online. The magnifying glasses are good for the younger kids. We keep them out there at the table as well and a lot of times the preschool and early elementary age kids are just as happy to take a magnifying glass and take a look at something that they can recognize as they would be to stand at the microscope. It's a little bit less frustrating for them to be able to just hold that lens and here's a little bit of our collection of books there. I didn't add a bibliography slide but I'd be happy to share titles and authors with anybody who would like and like Gary said people are always bringing in things and I tend to do that that white moth was next to my security station at home was drawn toward the light I guess in the middle of the night so I have found that I am thinking now in terms of how things would look under the microscope as I go for walks or whatever. The kits were the result of the grant we did receive a grant, one of the youth grants for excellence to make these kits available for checkout so that is the grant portion of the presentation Gary put together the kits we purchased the carrying cases but he put together this nice little stand that holds the microscope securely in case and then it also has a drawer for some of the materials that we check out with them. The program portion of our grant was an orientation, we do other programs with the kits as well kind of augmenting our science station but we do require a brief orientation the staff can do that easily, there's not a lot to it just some of the basics of how to get the most out of it. Our slide projector has a mind of its own here this morning but if you're interested in what's in the kit the microscope is a swift student microscope and just a little bit about the Swift company they were around for about 70 years and dedicated their focus in microscope to the educational market elementary through university and this microscope is a typical high school level microscope so optically it's very good and mechanically it's well built it also has the adjustments on it necessary to get a good image we found some really nice nylon carrying cases that have been built for the purpose there for microscope storage but because they're so large we had root to build a little accessory drawer that we could put at the bottom and then set the microscope on top of it gave us a place to put the drawer with the stick also in the kit right now or a box of plastic slides that are blank with plastic cover slips so this the users can prepare their own slides and we bought 100 prepared slides and broke them into 10 boxes so we have an assortment of 10 different slides that they can check out independently that are already to look at we have Petri dishes that are I suppose 6 inches in diameter and we have plastic pad pads for collecting water samples and things like that that are consumable items so they can use them and if they don't come back we are too concerned we have quite a few to go with instruction manual we put together a little laminated sheet that tells a little bit about how to use the microscope and we also have a sheet that tells how to use the telephone camera mount we found a very inexpensive little camera that really works very well and can attach an iPhone or any phone to a camera or to the microscope and you can take some really great pictures really easily that's the project budget that I submitted that was kind of an estimate but we were right in there so this includes the consumable supplies the things that we don't want back and the things that we will keep here in the library as well as the microscopes and Gary's company donated two thirds of the cost of the microscopes for our local in kind match this is the instruction card that we made for the phone mount it's not when we first started trying to use it it was a little bit frustrating so we thought a few pointers would help and it really goes together pretty well with a systematic approach next slide some photos that we took just using an iPhone with that phone mount so this is just polarized effect of the grains of sand that we found just right outside the door these are some of our prepared slides and I'm always looking for an excuse to collect water one of my favorite parts of using microscope is to find plant or animal specimens so the TV screen comes in handy with the moving things because they move pretty quickly across the screen and it's kind of hard to capture those but the TV allows people to stand back and watch and as far as photography the plants are they hold still a little bit better one of the things we do with having a few more microscopes is to be able to have multiple scopes at a science table at a microscope table at one of our science days we have kind of drawn in some of our local professional scientists to do presentations Linda Gergen pictured here is on our library board and she has some non-microscope related activities here we have participated in the Nebraska Science Festival the last couple of years and that's been fun all you have to do to be a site at that is to just sign up on their website and we have done that twice and it's been a real fun activity for everybody. We've done a lot of people that really don't stop on the library. We've offered microscope activities for various little science day activities and we have a weekly after-school program and we have had some microscope activities there we usually with that we try to kind of divide the kids into groups by age and have different activities for the younger kids than we have for the older elementary school kids we've had a few special classes and we've run microscope activities during summer reading orientation sessions. We also took one of the microscopes to the open house that was held right before school at the elementary school this year had that on display too. One of the things Gary kind of alluded to already is that the stereoscopes are a little bit easier to manage for just walk-in traffic people going up to the table and seeing what they can see under the microscope the stereoscopes are a little bit easier to use and they also, when the kids can recognize what the specimen is before they put it under the microscope that's a little bit more fun than just looking at something on a slide that can't really be identified. The kids are easy to transport can take them like I said to the school or to the YMCA or where we need to run with them. Are we at the end here? Well this has been a most fast project. I hope it's just getting started. We've had unimaginable success and interest here in the Valley Library with our project and the ability to have a couple of microscopes that are available to be checked out is really an unusual thing I think for a library. I've been kind of going around and talking to various libraries and not too many have microscopes so we're kind of encouraging to get some more microscopes spread around. We included this slide Gary was commended for his work on this project at advocacy day last year Well we would like to invite you all to participate and we are sponsoring a grant where you can apply for a microscope for your library and we're just getting started on what we're kind of thinking about but your proposal can be for a circulating kit or a permanent microscope station like we have here in Valley. We'd like you to include a program component with some orientation to using a microscope and a matching component of $300 we thought which is about the value of the microscope kit that would indicate your interest in providing the support material like Claire's done here with the books and other accessories that would make the microscope a more intriguing addition to the library. At the moment I have two microscopes that are available and if you'd like to apply the deadline is March 1st of 2017 and we're going to put the application instructions on the library's website here pretty soon. I don't know if there are any more. The contact information I guess you'll see this all on your screen and feel free to call me anytime you have questions. This is the end of our presentation and if you have questions or comments or anything we'll field them. Great thank you Claire and Gary. That's awesome that you're doing that little I guess maybe called a mini-grant or whatever providing microscopes to other places. Definitely when you get up on your website I've linked to something I didn't mention in the beginning I do collect any websites or links mentioned throughout the show to include in the recordings page afterwards and I've got Valley's website up there as well so that you can go to it when it is available. Definitely let us know about that here at the commission and we'll help promote it out across the state. If anybody has any questions go ahead and type into your question section of your GoToWebinar interface and I can read them for you out to Claire and Gary. Obviously this has been a very successful program for you that's very popular. Do you have any sort of statistics on it or is just people are everyday coming in and using it so it's kind of doesn't really need it? Oh it's mostly anecdotal. Actually the circulation numbers on the kits are not very high. How long have you had them actually? I wasn't sure about that. When did you actually get the kits? Was that from just this most recent grant? Yeah it was the last the last year's grant. We hoped to have them ready for the spring school semester and it just took a little bit longer than we thought it would. I can't remember the date but it was maybe February or even March by the time we actually had the kits ready to go. I had posed some people in the local home school communities before I wrote the grant just to determine whether there was interest in that community and really got a very enthusiastic response but they haven't really come through with checking them out so much at this time. Once again the people who are most interested in them tend to be the younger kids and so we check them out to families usually with elementary school aged but we hope that maybe the availability will become a little bit more widely known and I think that the responses that we got when we initially contacted the home school community indicated that there really is a need for that out there and that if we connect with the right people they will probably want to use that quite a bit. Portability has made them easy to take out to outreach so we're using them but maybe not circulating them as much as we hope that we will eventually. As far as the science station, that's a pretty much daily, it gets a little bit of daily attention more so on the days when we have kid activities after school and one of the things that new allies immediately when they walk in and are kind of connected with. So just people come in the library basically and then we are able with the science station and the additional microscopes in the kids to offer more microscope activities when we're offering programs that are science related. I was wondering because you had mentioned your science station and I was wondering what exactly that meant for a science station but it's actually very cool that it's so simple, a table and some things in the table and it doesn't take very much to create a really good focal point that attracts people's attention. It's very simple and we can add to it along but really doesn't, like I mentioned earlier doesn't really require a lot of oversight by staff and it's just nice to have it up there and have another area of interest in the library. It's next to the kids computer station too so there's some overlap there with kids moving back and forth between the computers and the microscopes. Those Microsoft kids are very convenient. I assume Gary you knew about those is that something that you put together yourself or is that just a thing that exists that you were just able to, you knew about and just purchased? Does all that already come together? It's got the carrying case and everything obviously. The nylon carrying case is commercially available and is designed for carrying a microscope but the drawer was something that came up with as a way to store the accessories because there was so much room in the storage case rather than get a smaller case. I thought let's fill up the bigger case so there's a little sliding drawer at the table so that the microscope could sit above the drawer and all the accessories could be easily stored so it's a real nice way to have everything packed in the kit and it's not flopping around and just it's very handy. The kit is, like I said it's kind of semi soft side but it's got a plastic four minutes so it's rigid but yet it's not heavy and it's easy to carry and the microscope is strapped in so it's really conducive for carrying from place to place. I could see that if you didn't want to build a little cabinet like Gary did for us though that you could easily use a plastic box with the extra materials in it. It wouldn't need to construct a case like that. That would work fine. I think some small Tupperware thing or something like that plastic thing that would fit in there. Where do you buy this kind of things? The microscopes and the cases and what not if somebody someone did want to start something up themselves? Is there a particular websites or stores you would recommend? I didn't quite understand that. Our audio is pretty... Sorry, someone wants to know where you would buy these things? A website or place to order the microscopes and the kits and the packaging? A lot of that I can supply but it's online in a lot of different locations. The thing you have to do is kind of be aware of what you might be getting when you order it online because there's all kinds of stuff and some of it's great and some of it's the other side. They can call me and I can certainly help out with questions and then maybe direct them to a good reliable spot. The things that were commercial for us were the carrying case, the petri dishes, the pipettes, the slides and things like that and then the only thing I made was that little drawer but you can outfit these kits any way you want just whatever you think may be interest for your specific needs. When I wrote the proposal the things that I found to include in the proposal were I found on Amazon so a lot of that sort of thing is pretty easily available. Gary kind of led me in some other directions to get some... He had other sites where he did more retail. Anyway, he found some less expensive ways of getting some of those things. You go to commercial sites or something more direct. Right, right. Microscope supply places he had. Exactly. That's the kind of thing that I'm sure most people would not have a clue of what is a good microscope supply company or advice on what to buy. That would be why I would call Gary and ask. Well, I'd like to speak to anybody that has questions and I'll certainly try to help however I can but your imagination is your only limit so once you've decided what you'd like to try then just talking to people about which way to go is helpful but anytime anybody wants to call I'm available except really late at night. I don't think so. I'm doing regular business hours generally, yes. Alright, does anybody else have any last minute questions? I've gotten all the ones that we had. I'm glad you guys were able to get things going for this morning. Working computer, good to go and to present for us. Sorry about the delay. Everyone's stuck around waiting. I let everybody know that it happens. We have technical issues sometimes. There's been a few times we've had to cancel the show over the years for things like that or I think mostly the internet is down completely. It's been one of our much, much worse than just oh we need to just find a different computer or get something updated. Alright, well it doesn't look like anybody is typing in any urgent questions at the moment so I think maybe we can wrap it up for this morning. Unless you guys have any last minutes, anything you want to say? No, we just would be happy to answer questions if you think of them later and check our website out pretty soon. We'll have information about this little grant that Gary is offering and we'll be able to put you in touch with him. Yeah, that is awesome. Like I said, let me know here at the commission and we'll make sure we put it out on our blog and our places to get the word out to everybody. Okay. Awesome. Alright, well thank you very much Claire and Gary for being on the line with us this morning. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm going to pull back Presenter Control to my screen now. There we go. Should be popping up. So that will wrap it up for this morning's show. It is being recorded and will be here on our website, our Encompass Live website if you go to our main site and you go, luckily nothing else is called Encompass Live it seems yet. So if you just Google or search for anything anywhere you like for Encompass Live you should come up to our website. Underneath our upcoming shows we have our archive sessions links and this is where today's will be posted. We'll have to present it. We'll have the recording. The links actually I'll have a hint or two. This is two different things. The website I did, Valley's website, the Nebraska Science Festival that you had mentioned, I put a link to that and a link to the youth grants that we actually have here at the Library Commission which is what Claire had gotten the funding for for those kids. This is off of our Encompass Library Commission website. We have various grants available here and they're all listed here on the website but this is the youth grants for excellence ones. Let's go back to the schedule. This is where we can look up the different grants. The youth ones just wrapped up for this most recent year and just last month were announced. So if you are looking to do this through the commission potentially look again for sometime in 2017 as you can see here the schedule generally goes summer into fall for doing the youth specific grants. But we have other ones as well as you can see here. So the recording will be available on the website. I will let you all know when it is ready. Claire if you want to you can email me your PowerPoint presentation and I can include that as well. So whenever you get a chance to get off the line this afternoon and like I said everyone who attended this morning and registered will be getting an email to let you know when it is ready. I hope you join us for next week when our topic is books. Best new teen books of 2016. Sally Snyder who is our coordinator of children and youth, young adult library services here at the library commission along with librarian Jill Annas who is from Grandview Middle School here in Nebraska will be with us here to talk about new books that came out for teens, middle and high school ages. So if you are looking for new titles to buy for your library check us out. Sign up for that and our upcoming shows. We've got a couple of them scheduled already here in January and I'm working on a few other ones so you'll see more sessions coming up in there so keep an eye on that. Also Encompass Live is on Facebook if you are a big Facebook user please do give us a like and you will get notifications. We post when sessions are available. Reminders to log in on the fly here when the recordings are ready. I post on here so if you are big on Facebook do give us a like over there and to keep up with what we're doing here on the show. Other than that that wraps it up for this morning. Thank you very much everyone for attending. Thank you Gary and Claire for being for this morning. Luckily we didn't have too much trouble with all the technical issues. Only started a little bit late so I think we are good. Alright thank you very much and we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye bye.