 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 10am central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing this morning. And it is then posted on our website for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archives. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of our topics. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is a state agency for libraries similar to your state library. So we provide services to all types of libraries in the state. So you will find shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, museums, archives, corrections, anything and everything. Really our only criteria is it's something to do with libraries. We have many training sessions, demos of services and products, book reviews, interviews, all sorts of things. We have Nebraska, some sessions, we have Nebraska Library Commission staff do our shows talking about things we're offering through the commission. But we also bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. And as you can see here on the line with us is Becky Clark and Scott Clark, both from Lincoln City Libraries in two different locations. Good morning, Becky and Scott. Good morning. And they're going to talk to us about book talking, something libraries have been doing for a long time. And we are all in the still in the deep throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. No sign of slowing down. So the great presentation you're telling us how to do some book talking in our current situation. So I'll just hand it over to you all to take it away. All right. Good morning. And hello from Lincoln City Libraries in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm Becky Worm Clark. And I'm Scott Clark. And I'm currently the service supervisor at the best dots and Walt branch in our system. I'm actually the only original member of the staff still at this location and we are coming up really soon on our 20th anniversary next month. I can hardly believe that. Wow, awesome. And I'm a library service associate at Ben and Martin public library downtown the LCL headquarters. I specialize in research questions. I'm a former member of our reference department back when we had a reference department. And I also manage some of the library's web content, especially that for readers advisory information resources and programming, which we sort of gathered all together into a specialized website which we call book guide in 2004. We both began our library careers as library aides at different branches. And that was so long ago that between us we now have 85 years of combined library service. Wow. And for several years we did both work at the main library but in different positions and different departments at times. And that's been at Martin library. And for these past 20 years we've been at our different locations again, but we've both done a significant amount of reference and readers advisory work over our careers here. And Scott. And for those who aren't aware, we've been married for 31 years so we're one of those library couples. This presentation that we're doing today was originally given as a pre recorded video and PowerPoint at the 2021 Nebraska library association annual conference. And then when I originally made the proposal last spring for the book talking program we're doing. We were under the assumption that the pandemic would kind of be under control by the fall. So obviously we are not really in the after phase fully of what we're talking about today but we can at this point carry out book talking that is adaptive to ongoing changing situations. So we'll go to before. I can get my screen to go here. So, if you work in customer service in a library you've most probably engaged in book talking, even if you don't know it. Book talking is having an exchange with library users, and that includes coworkers and volunteers about an author genre, a theme, a subject, a series, or anything else that interests or appeals to one or both of you about books you have read or that you want to read. And it's that live connection between printed or digitized matter and the people who inhabit the library world specifically and literate universe in general. And this of course would apply to the book selling trade as well. Book talking promotes a library's collections. It personalizes a customer's experience. It provides information, suggestions and recommendations for individual or group journeys into the realms of imagination and fact. Book talking makes use of the library's facilities for in house programs or discussion groups, and it is also a way to perform outreach to specific groups or agencies and then the public at large. The content of books groups is determined situationally or by plan. It can be prepared solely by staff or in collaboration with the particular grouping served, such as for instance a teen advisory board. Staff can open up book talk content to the participants, either in advance or in the program. Lists of what is covered, which could include additional reading suggestions can be prepared both beforehand or provided afterward on paper online or both. With COVID-19 there were very minimal concerns with one on one book talking or gathering in groups for book clubs or live programs about books. Radio, television, audio and video recordings and the Internet had already been employed as alternate means for getting together in person to talk about books. And printed and online book lists of many types had been made available to patrons for a very long time. Also, though it is primarily geared toward children, story time programming is really another way of book talking, especially when adults and families are also participating. It exposes them to books that are owned by the library and are being highlighted by library staff. And at Lincoln Center libraries, we use the moniker library learning time nowadays, since we do more at a session than just read books aloud. Specific to book talking at Lincoln City libraries in more recent times, staff appeared on local radio programs on community station KZUM and commercial station KFOR. Lincoln City library's director Pat Leach has a regular spot on any T public radios all about books. Special readings and literary programs presented by the Heritage Room of Nebraska authors based here at the Benna Martin Public Library downtown were videotaped so as to be able to circulate. Many of these programs have now been digitized and put up on Lincoln City library's YouTube account. From its inception in 2002, the One Book One Lincoln program has enjoined community-wide participation and developed tie-in programming led by both staff and special guests. The book guide section of the library's website offers dozens of staff-generated book lists, several thousand staff recommendations, and also customer reviews and reader lists. Staff members get together and record short podcasts to be available through the Lincoln City library's website, and they recorded some of the ongoing public book group sessions for the same purpose. All of these resources were geared towards the adult and young adult library users. And speaking of book discussion groups, several library-sponsored programs provided regular opportunities to hear about and discuss books and media materials. Examples would be the weekly groups at the Gear and Bethany branches, and the monthly Just Desserts Mystery Book Group in the evenings and lunch at the library talks over the lunch hour. All right, so you're seeing some of those images from those book talks here. And heritage room talks. We've also had ongoing for a very long time. And there is the late Lita Powell Drake, who gave a presentation when her book, The Calamity of Calamity, Kate came out. And monthly lunch at the library sessions. And Scott, do you want to talk a little bit about having been on the radio for the book? Sure. KFOR, local commercial radio, basically had a host of a show called Problems and Solutions. Kathy Blythe hosted that show for many, many years, and she was an avid reader. She loved sharing literature, and she wanted to have librarians on a regular basis. And so she basically dedicated, at one point it was almost weekly, and then it sort of became a monthly thing where she would have anywhere from two to four library staff. As guests on a particular episode, and all they would do would be book talk. They would spend an hour with commercial interruptions, of course, talking about books that had recently come out or possibly old classics. Becky and I both had the pleasure of being part of the last team of regular reviewers that Kathy had on before she retired. But from 2002 to approximately 2019, we had hundreds of episodes where we were able to share the love of reading and share what was going on in the Lincoln City Libraries. Her show was actually syndicated throughout the Midwest, and so it was kind of interesting. We could promote our local stuff, but we also had to sort of tailor some of our commentary towards the fact that it was going to be people in Minnesota and Wisconsin that we're actually listening to the show. The other show that we were able to participate into a certain extent, so were several other NLC, Nebraska Library Commission people, was on KZUM. There was a book talk show on that, which lasted for several years, hosted by a few people from NLC, and they would bring on other guests, including several of us from Lincoln City Libraries, where for a half an hour, we would basically talk about one particular book. Oftentimes they would even have authors come on and be interviewed, so there were a couple of really good opportunities for doing that. Right now, although there's not a book talk show on KZUM, the community radio station, there are several of their music shows, which occasionally have library staff. And so the Scott Scholes, the music librarian here at the Bennett Martin Library and the Lincoln System, has a weekly radio show on KZUM, which he taps into a lot of the content that's available in the Polly Music Library for the Lincoln City Libraries. And Becky and I occasionally will pop up as guest programmers on the women's show, which basically allows us to make use of many of the music resources that are available in the library's collection as well. And there we are at KFOR, and there is Mr. Scholes. And then, yeah, go ahead, Scott. Pat Leach took over as the host of All About Books, which had been on the air for many years. Charles Stevens had been the former host of that, or actually one of several hosts. And as his time was nearing the end for being the host, they brought on Pat as an occasional co-host or guest host, and she has now inherited the mantle of being the host of that. And every week in the past, it used to be Wednesdays, I believe now it's Thursdays. She has a very short little bit, usually around noon, if I'm remembering correctly, in which she shares about a 10 to 15 minute talk about a book or possibly interviews an author, oftentimes focusing on Nebraska but not entirely, and also promoting literary events that are going on throughout the community and throughout the state, because it is a statewide program. So it's not just emphasizing Lincoln City Libraries, but literature throughout the state of Nebraska. All right. And then a couple of examples of our external presentations that we had been doing. Obviously One Book, One Lincoln. And Scott, how many years is that now? It started in 2002. So technically this is the 21st year as we're taking nominations, even as we speak, for the 2022 selections. Wow. That's awesome. That's going strong still. Yeah. And then on occasion we will go out to a church group or a private book club or things like that to present to them directly a book talk. Oftentimes those are One Book, One Lincoln related, but any book group can always ask the library staff if somebody would be willing to come and lead a book discussion on any book. I have been called into several private book groups throughout the city of Lincoln to lead discussions on things that had nothing whatsoever to do with One Book, One Lincoln. And so that is always a great opportunity to do some book talking and launch a discussion with a new group of people. Okay. And this is something that we had been doing at Walt Branch for a while and got inspiration from, I think, some other library system that we, and this is actually one of our volunteer tasks. We have a number of adult volunteers at our branch who will do specific tasks for us on a weekly basis. And we have one lady who comes in for like three or four hours. And just picks subject categories in picture books, and then puts together bundles of about four to five books each and then we just put those out on a big display rack. And so a parent or even the child themselves can come in and just select a topic that appeals to them and just take those pre packaged books, check them out and go. So, and we also have done easy readers kind of in the same concept, but trying to group those by their reading level at that point. And so other branches are now doing that as well. So there's an example of how we do them at this branch. We just have a little tag of what the topic is and we just rubber band them together. And there's some of our first reader bundles. And then story time as I kind of mentioned to me anyway seems like it's a great opportunity for book talking with people of all ages. So, at multiple libraries in the system, we have multiple sessions per week and this is we're still in the before phase what we're talking about. Each branch can determine and this is under the umbrella of our system youth services coordinator. How many sessions they hold and when what day of the week, for example, we were providing for regular 1030 sessions per week. We were holding an evening session once per month for a few years. And we had also been doing like double sessions some days, if the demand was high. And then we usually take off the months of August and December to kind of just chill out because the storytellers really have their work cut out for them. One nice thing about having a large system like Lincoln City libraries, however, is that you can collaborate with the storytellers in other locations. So somebody can create a story time kit at one location and share it with the other locations so not everybody is having to create entirely just for themselves. Exactly. And then our online content as Scott mentioned, we did have book guide started in 2004. We also have subscription services such as novelist and tumble books that we make use of for the public. Readers advisory and reference resources and Scott can talk to that a little bit more in detail. Sure, we make use of a number of different things. There's a site called fantastic fiction, which I think librarians around the world make heavy use of with regards to being able to identify series order of things. What the cumulative total of an author's output has been at least in the fiction category. We have a lot of people that come in asking questions about both good reads and library thing which are library cataloging sites that anybody can get a free account with. So you can catalog your own personal collection and what you may have checked out from the library and read. They're also oriented towards sharing through social media. So we assist people in setting up those types of accounts and showing them how to use both of those kinds of services. And there's a lot of other readers advisory sites out there as well but those are three really good ones that we usually sort of orient around. And then you can talk about podcasts. Sure. We started doing two different types of podcasts in our sort of canned script portion of this I referenced it before but here's the nutshell version. The podcasts are one of two different things they're either a recording of a particular program or group discussion that took place so that we can share it as an audio recording later. Or after we started having the experiences of being on the KFO our radio program where we were actually able to book talk for a lengthy period of time. We sort of decided why don't we just do that here at the library directly so we started a show called casting about podcasting about. Basically two to four librarians would get together talk about books that they read recently and also pump upcoming library programs and we would record these little 1520 minute things and put them up as a regular series of essentially book review show. So there's a very lengthy list of podcasts available in audio that are still available on the library's website. At the moment we're sort of retooling exactly what the future of podcasting is going to be in the library. It's still going to be a component of our readers advisory, but it's a changing landscape right now. All right, and there's a view of our webpage and then the book guide portion of it. If you have not visited the Lincoln City Libraries website we do encourage you to do so. There's so many resources available through our book guide site that the only way you can really become familiar with it is to stop visit and scroll through the options that are there. If you go to Lincoln libraries dot org you can either do the slash book guide or in the blue banner that's across the middle of our main site. You'll see a drop down menu called uniquely ours and you'll find book guide as one of the unique selections under that. And while we're talking about the link there on the slides and everything I'll mention to that. Along with the recording after the show is done and we have the recording we will also have the slides available for everyone to see. You will send those to me and I'll post them so you'll you'll be able to go through these if you didn't want to go look at the slides again. Excellent. What one of the biggest components on book guide is our staff recommendations literally since we started the book guide in 2004 and I started staff recommendations shortly after that. Every month we have a monthly page of new reviews and they can be very short they could be a couple sentences or they can be several paragraphs in length I do not ask people to limit themselves. So some of our staff are very verbose in their reviews and others just want to say hey this is a great book check it out. And we have a simple form. If you're looking for how to do readers advisory from behind the scenes for your staff and you would like to do something like this. We strongly suggest just setting up a real quick form that can harvest that information. So there's a simple way for your staff to submit a book review. So we have this type of form on our website and we are closing in on 4000 reviews that have been submitted in the years since 2004. All right and there's some of the logo pages for those other websites. All right now we're at the during portion. So once the provision of public service was impacted by pandemic precautions, and then restrictions, and then a two to three month closing of our physical buildings. Individual libraries or library systems like ours who remained open in some capacity needed to think about how to compensate for the temporary loss of all of our live in person book talking. Very quickly, our library system moved to online story times via Facebook. A few virtual programs for teens and adults were also provided as time went on in 2020. Even before the library was once again able to do more than fill hold requests at the door of which there were thousands of requests picked up. While the buildings themselves were closed, we would just pull holds put them in bags. Notify people that would be an automated notification. We would actually pre check them out because people couldn't come in and do that themselves. And hand them off at our door wearing masks, staying away from each other. So that was quite the affair. Our lobby was just jam packed full of book bundles ready to go out. So we did the online stuff. We put together book bundles ourselves to make available to customers upon request. So that's kind of a variation of what we talked about with the picture book and first reader bundles. So up to 15 young people's books were picked out for parents wanting a particular topic or character or author for their children's leisure or school reading. And for adults, we would get up to 10 or 12 books for them by the same curated service during the closures and for a time after. And still, if we have a customer who's really uncomfortable with coming in the building and knows what they want, we will go ahead and pull those items, check them out to them include that checkout receipt and then hand them off at the door to the person. And since we are still in COVID at this point and once again here in January 2022 or once again in a city mask mandate situation. We do occasionally have situations where customers are uncomfortable and coming into the library, or for one reason or another may not want to wear a mask. And as Becky said, we will we will do drive up service at each of our locations if you call us and tell us you want to have somebody bring something out to you at the curb. And we will deliver things to you at the curb so that is another thing that is still going on in the during phase of a pandemic. For at least two of the regular book groups led by library staff in this case just desserts the mystery book book group I lead and the Nebraska heritage book group which is a Nebraska author based discussion group. Zoom meetings were initiated within short order podcast obviously continue to be produced as staffing allowed, considering that a notable, notable number of our staff elected to either work from home or use emergency leave provisions for several months before the library is reopened to the public. Existing online content through things like book guide was added to such as our monthly staff recommendations list. So, honestly, even though the libraries were closed for two and a half three months. We were still here doing a lot of work and trying to keep people connected with literature. Move through a couple of these slides, catch us up here. And I think that's something to be aware of for all libraries, you know libraries were closed physically but there was so much going on behind the scenes still, all sorts of services still available. Well and it varied from area to area throughout the country I have library friends in other communities where they just shut down they didn't do anything. And I just that just blows my mind because we were almost busier than we normally would be under the circumstances seemed like it at times that's for sure. Right, you know families and your your people use your library. If their work or schools were shut down they were home and even more needing something to do. We had so many customers who in the days afterwards on even during when when we were doing that said we were their lifeline. I mean that that they would have gone insane with not being able to do the things that they love to do. If we hadn't been able to be there to provide the types of materials that we love to provide. And to still have that connection that personal connection with other people. Exactly. Yeah. So we were able to take some phone calls. It's not like we got a lot. But we were able to do you know some limited phone assistance as well. All right, because let me, let me see where I'm at. Oh yeah talking about the book bundles. So we've covered that. And we did give them a specific name for the ones that where the request came into us for like a specific type of book or a theme or whatever. And so we call those bound to please bundles. And then we've also done one for teen level materials and we're calling those teen treasure troves. And the nice thing is, since that's still an ongoing thing, it's not an after thing that we have a form on the library's website yet again. Anybody can visit the Lincoln City library's website and submit a request saying, hey, here's what I'm interested in reading. And basically, they'll take your recommendations and compile some sort of a custom little book collection for you as well. All right, so going back to story times. We, like Scott mentioned before, are storytelling staff at Lincoln City libraries kind of collaborate and share things with each other. So there are already some pre made kits from branch to branch that either the branch at that staff only will use among themselves, or they will share it with other branches. And so we kind of expanded on that to make kits available for the public. So that basically, there's just going to be a certain theme. And so it'll be like a handout sheet or they can email them something that would just give you suggestions of which books to use and some activities like action songs or rhymes or regular songs that would go along with that. And possibly even a craft that can be done at their home. So we kind of like I say we expanded on internal stuff to make it available to customers in that format. And I do a monthly outreach story time at a daycare in Lincoln, it's hospital employee daycare. And I had started doing that in late 2018. And then when the pandemic hit, we just, you know, obviously could not be doing that at that point. So what I was able to then start doing was to make up again a kit. So basically I had, I included about four or five books, a couple of sheets with action rhymes or songs on it and then I would just drop that off at the daycare. And they could actually keep that for the entire month and use it as they wanted to use it and then I would just exchange. So that went on for several months in 2021. From 2020 actually and then in March 2021 with the approval of the daycare and from the guidelines that we were using for the library programs. I contacted the daycare and asked if they wanted me to come back in person and they actually did. So it was basically an entire year that I had not been there in person, but had been trying to still provide them with the story time resources. So that was really a neat thing to go back and see the kids in person. But now this month, and I'm presuming next month, I will not be able to go in person again because of our numbers of COVID. Yeah, of course. All right, now we're going into after sort of but ongoing obviously. So let's see, I think Scott's up with this intro. Yep. Beginning in the fall of 2021, our library run book groups had resumed meeting in person on a regular basis. However, as a result of COVID 19 surging in January 2022, most of them have returned to the zoom online format. We're trying out various methods of trying to capture the content on recording so that they are available after the fact, although some things will just only be live in those zoom sessions itself. All right, let me back up a second here. So, during our 2021 summer reading challenge, we had conducted our story times outdoors so that staff and attendees could observe that distancing factor. We continue that in September and October of 2021. And for this summer's activities, we are likely to add some outdoor story times again. All of our summer reading activities are kind of in the planning stage getting things kind of nailed down as far as we can. So that you know that all can change kind of at a moment's notice. We hope we can get stabilized here sometime soon. Now holding a program outdoors does require some technical and practical enhancements. So you're going to need sound amplification. Try to have a really large picture book or even just enlarged book pages that you can show them. And obviously things like your, your action songs and rhymes stretching whatever ties in with your theme, you can always do those. But we had planned to restart our on site library learning times and that's what we call them here at Lincoln City Libraries. This month, but like a day ahead of when the first sessions were going to start, we had to cancel those because of the COVID surge. So that did include all in person programming at the libraries and also those outreach, any of those outreach events that were already on tap. And so we are actually now looking toward about February 12. So before we would resume any of those types of programs and we're just going to have to see what happens between now and then and let to let everybody know, obviously what's what's happening or what's actually not happening. Now since late June of 2020, our buildings have been open to the public, but we've had various levels of masking and visitor capacity, often on since then. But that does mean that we've been able to have those book talking interactions with our in house customers for all but three months out of the last 23. So, you know, that's basically that's the span for our area of the pandemic at this point. We are still accepting those book bundle requests for patrons who are more comfortable with that option. And of course our online content has been available the whole time nonstop continuing on. We're hoping that we can get back to a normality of individual group and public book talking and story times within a short period of time. In the meantime, any new programming that we are considering for Lincoln City libraries, we have been told basically has to be flexible we have to devise programming that can be changed to a virtual format on the fly, and back. So, because we don't know if you plan something for a month from now, whether a month from now you're actually going to be able to do live programming in person. And everything that we're looking at in terms of story times special presentations and things, all of that has to be modifiable very quickly into a digital format so. So there's some examples of when Scott had some live just sessions but now he's having to go back to the zoom. It's an interesting experience to see what will happen with a book group, just desserts as a group averaged about 20 people once a month getting together to talk about a particular mystery novel each month. And when we shifted to a digital format, the attendance on that, we still had a lot of loyal attendees but the attendance did drop down to 12 or 13, and it slowly was climbing back up. When we actually returned, we had just desserts, virtually from May of 2021 to the end of 2021. When we came back in January, or actually, that's not entirely true. The last few sessions like September, October were in person again. We actually had people who had joined us exclusively when we were digital only, and we're disappointed when we went back to a live in person. So it's a really weird and interesting juggling act that you have to come up with. I would love to hear if any other libraries were successful in putting together book groups that can be simultaneously digital and live our technical limitations were such that since we had been doing just desserts via zoom. When we went back to live, unless we had a computer at one end of the room with a video pickup, so people could watch what was going on on zoom. It wasn't going to work because we spread everybody out over a large room so that we had as much distancing as possible in person. And there was no way a camera set up at one end of the room was going to be able to pick up the audio of what people were saying at the other end of the room. There were other libraries that had success in doing a live in person and digital simultaneously. I would love to see a session about that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's interesting that you mentioned that I was wondering about that too. I've heard lots of libraries over the last couple years talking about how changing from in person sessions to virtual for both book groups, book discussions, story times has increased their participation too. And that people who could not make it physically to the library. Historically, we're now being able to participate. People who are homebound or people with children who don't do well in a very busy group setting, you know, with, you know, sensory issues or whatever that they did better doing it virtually. And just for the convenience of being, oh, I have to drive to the library and get there and park and then go in for the half hour thing and then get home, or I can just sit down and pop on my computer, and I'm there. And so that, you know, even got a lot more people involved in things, which is great getting more people wanting, you know, using your services. But yeah, that, you know, what do you do when it's when you want to do both you've got people that want to be in person and you want you still going to have the people that say like you said I'm so oh no you're not doing the virtual anymore. And we've done combo things here through the commission various times. But, and I feel bad that at this point I'd never thought about that the social distancing for the people in person is a whole different thing than what we've done before we would have people grouped at tables and you could definitely get them all in a view of a camera but when you need your in person people to be separated. Well, especially when you're dealing with a group that it is intentionally a group discussion it's not just simply a presentation where one person is talking at other people. It's not something like just desserts or the Nebraska heritage book group. It's basically, everybody has read the same book and is there to throw out their opinion so you've got people scattered over a large amount of space. They're wanting to talk to each other. And in addition, although social media, not social media, so virtual programming, like zoom kind of thing does allow you to see the faces and recognize and get that voice connection. It's not the same. It's not the same as being in the same room and being able to feel like you're part of a group necessarily so we, the one solution we did attempt. And this is something that other groups can certainly try with just desserts is we audio recorded the meetings, once we returned back to a live in person session, and those are being put up as podcasts so somebody who missed the meeting. It's not quite the same as sitting in and listening to it live but you can at least listen to what the discussion was if you were not able to physically attend the meetings. If anybody on the line is any thoughts anyone any of our attendees or ideas. Please do share in the question section. If you've done this at your library successfully or unsuccessfully and you have any, you know, things we can learn from. So there are software or hardware products that can be used to do better virtual things there's that owl is a type of web. Online meeting types program camera and audio that's made for more kind of a group type thing that's doing both in person and virtual audio video conferencing software. It's a special kind of webcam and microphone. So I wonder if that may be some libraries or organizations will need to invest in different kind of equipment now that might be out there, or this kind of equipment needs to be invented. Yeah. Yeah, we have tech information. I was going to say, you never thought going into the library work, especially dealing with books and literature stuff like that, that you'd end up having to deal with the cutting edge technology. I mean, Becky has a slide up that deals with a couple of other things. Just other examples of what's going on in a during and sort of segue into the after session. Our one book one Lincoln for instance continues to be a vibrant thing and obviously we're starting our 21st year. Last year, 2021. All of one book one Lincoln's programming was digital. I mean there was nothing that was an in person thing other than possibly book discussion groups. We actually had the author participate in a digital interview session so he basically gave a talk and people were able to pepper in with questions about last year selected winning title. So that's only like the third or fourth time in the history of one book one Lincoln that we actually had participation from the author themselves. But it was all digital and the people that attended enjoyed it and it was recorded and is available for viewing on our YouTube feed as well. So you'll notice in an attempt for people in a senior center, you know and there's going to be a lot of those. I'm sure they're, they're wanting to still have that access. And so we had somebody go to show them how to do ebooks from our subscription services. So that was, you know, like kind of wow we can still have that connection and get those materials. So let me jump ahead here that was last September. And I like to give the kids a chuckle so I dress up and I do voices and I do all those silly things that are part of a good story time. Tales and tales yep. Book lists reviews recommendations, any of those variations of book talking don't appear out of thin air. People create them people consume them and people are connected by them, even if they don't realize it at the time. So there's informal book talking that you can engage in at any point. You're not necessarily at the library some of these in the grocery store say, Hey, it's that library lady. So, so that's a way to make those connections and you can even engage them in book talking or talk about things that are coming up programs that are coming up. We're doing a winter reading challenge this month and that's for anybody to participate in. So there's an example of something to promote or just mention. So we call that an elevator book talk, because you know, think of how you can promote a program or talk about a book in just a couple of minutes with somebody. And Scott, if you want to chime in if you. Sure. The reason that's used in that terminology is you climb on to an elevator on the ground floor of a building and you're going up to an upper floor and somebody recognizes you as a librarian or sees a book in your hand and asks you about it. So we encourage all of our staff, if at all possible to be prepared to give a 30 to 40 second synopsis of why they're enjoying something. What else somebody might enjoy if they liked this particular one it's like, ooh, that's the latest Stephen King isn't it. I just finished that that was great. Yeah, if you like that hey, here's two or three other titles you could possibly look at and by the way I work for the library I can help you with that. So, here's the library Ellen K app, you can install that on your phone and place a reserve immediately so. Exactly. All right, we're going to end with something that Scott has been involved with over time. A few years ago, we tried something, speaking of the book bundle concept that is currently being used by the libraries. A few years ago before that ever was even considered. We tried something that I had actually found being done successfully by several other library systems including things like Minneapolis and I think it was Los Angeles, which we called pearls personalized adult reading lists in which we had a form that people could go to on our website and identify what their reading interest categories were things that were hot buttons that they wanted to stay away from like language sex violence that kind of stuff. And give us an example of the last two or three things that they really enjoyed reading and ask us to compile a recommendation list for them. And basically, it was a very, very popular service, we had people, we would basically come up with a list of anywhere from eight to 10 authors or titles that they might want to consider pursuing. We would not necessarily pull those materials for them and have them available for checkout, we just wanted to give them something to consider as their next reading possibility and they could then go in and place holds or stop in the library and browse if they wanted to. It was very successful at the time. And as we've continued to expand our book bundles concept. We're looking at doing that once again. At the time it was personalized adult reading lists and our, our staff who make the decisions have decided that it's going to be personalized reading lists for anybody at any age. So we're sort of retooling the software that we originally set up to do that but that should most likely be starting soon as well. And that for us for our main purposes that's basically a hands free, you know no contact up to the point at which they may come in to check something out. So that really would speak to the whole, you know pandemic I, I don't want to be around people sort of thing. All right, and if you guys have any questions after our presentation you can send us an email. And then we've got a bunch of tech information here. And Garen Huck Stettler librarian at the main library downtown is does a lot of this work and is familiar with all this type of equipment and software. So he's somebody you could also get in touch with. And even try to read all this or write this down we'll have the slides for you available afterwards. Even since Becky compiled this which was originally compiled at the time that we were doing this presentation for the Nebraska library association conference in October. Since then, we've added even more technology so this is this is not even up to date so just to show you that we are definitely dealing with cutting edge stuff here. So anyway, basically to conclude libraries are rich and reliable source of those connections with people, especially with the book talking. And that's so important to the education and enlightenment and enjoyment of people in our own communities, or service areas and beyond. You know, if you're online, somebody can find you and and use those resources that you make available and make those connections. Great. Thank you so much Becky and Scott. If anybody has any questions comments or any thoughts you want to share and go ahead and type in the question section. We do have a question here. We're not after the pandemic as we know although that was something we were all hoping this would be related to. So, but thinking for that time. Do you think that some of these remote type program services like the story time to go or the book discussions that are done on zoom would be something you would continue after when there's a real after we have a actually that's perfect timing here this afternoon I'm even attending a zoom session that is our virtual programming committee. After the past year and a half, we decided, let's be honest, we didn't necessarily know what we were doing when we went into having to do all this digital stuff and so it was sort of kind of slap shot is like certain people who had some experience using different types of software were just sort of thrown into the mix and said hey, let's start comparing creating stuff that we can share with people virtual story times virtual book talks that kind of stuff. We now have realized after having done that for a year and a half, but we need some structure to that so here at the Lincoln City libraries we have a committee that has been established the virtual programming committee, and they are going to be meeting on a regular basis to determine the guidelines for creating this kind of stuff and I think that the the long term plan is, no matter whether we can pull, pull, pull fully out of this pandemic to the point that we're really comfortable doing in person. I think virtual is going to be a component of what we do from this point on, if nothing else, things that we had been doing prior to this the video programs where we recorded a book talk, like like john h. Stories, or the podcasts. Those are all virtual services and so those are going to certainly continue into the future, but I think we're going to probably be adapting and making use of some of these newer things that we've done just in the last two years, as well as the things that we had been doing previously so yes, I think the future is going to be a combination of different formats. As you said, I mean, everyone was thrown into this and just headed by the sea their pants figure out how do we do it. But there were some things who are already already doing that way before there have been online conferences I mean we've been doing Encompass Live this show since 2009. So, this type of thing is not new, but some of the other things we're doing are so that's great I said thank you. And I think that the benefit to keep I keep thinking of this in terms of Lincoln City libraries because that's just where I am. But when you're dealing with say some rural library systems and stuff where it's harder to get people together, being able to do these kinds of virtual things is actually extremely beneficial to those kinds of environments because you're dealing with a different type of clientele than a Lincoln City libraries where you've got hundreds of or thousands of people within the radius of your individual facility. When you're dealing with a small town library you've got an entire county's worth of people, and being able to do something where you're all sitting staring at each other's faces on a zoom session is completely different than it might be for a big city systems. Yeah, maybe the best way for people can't drive for an hour to get to the library as opposed to here where it's five minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. Alright, well doesn't look like any other extra desperate questions came in while we were answering that one. That's not a problem. You guys, you all know where to find Becky and Scott and Lincoln City libraries if you do have any questions you want to ask of them and they want to pick their brain about any of this. So the presentation, the slides will be available along with the recording afterwards as well that has their email addresses on there too. So, I think I will wrap things up for today. Thank you so much Becky and Scott I'm so glad we have the command today. I know it's a short notice for everyone, because we did have to move around some things here due to some staffing issues here at the conference and so the session we're going to have today has been is being postponed new date to come. Keep your eyes open for that's our maker spaces session about our library innovation studios project that just wrapped up. But I'm so glad we have you both on for this. I had been, I watched the presentation the recorded one from the online conference and thought it was so good ahead on my list of, I need to get the money compass live to see what's happening since thank you for having us. Thank you so much. I am going to pull presenter control back to my screen so I can show you all to where these records to be there we go. So thank you everybody for attending today. This is our main and compass live page. If you just use your search engine of choice and type in and compass live we're the only thing called that on the internet so far, so nobody else can use that name. These are upcoming shows. And this is where our archives are this link just right beneath them that I'll bring you to archives. This is most recent one at the top of the list so today's show will be there should be ready enough by by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest link to our YouTube channel the recording a link to the slides back you can email them to me whenever you get a chance. Everyone who attended this morning and registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know when it's available. While we're here I'll show you there is a search feature you can search a show archives for any other topics you might be interested in, you can search the full, the most, the full archives are just the most recent 12 months if you want just recently done. That's because this is our full show archives as I just mentioned a few minutes ago, we've premiered in 2009 with the show and our are all of our shows are here you can see this is a long list I'm not going to scroll all the way down. But, so would you pay attention when you are watching a recording to the original broadcast date everything as a date. Some shows will stand the test of time and be good useful information still some things will become old outdated links might be broken services and products may have changed drastically. So just pay attention to what you're watching on here, but we are librarians is one of the things we do is archive things for historical purposes and we will keep them here available to you, as long as we can, as long as there's anything that can happen. We also have a Facebook page if you do like to use Facebook. It's linked from all of our main websites we were put reminders here here's reminded login today show information about our speakers schedule change when our recordings are available, everything is on here so if you do like to use. Facebook, give us a like over there. Otherwise, on both Twitter and Instagram we use the end comp live hashtag for the show. So you can see what we're doing over there. So that wrap up for today show and next week it is the last Wednesday of the month so it is pretty sweet tech day. It's Wednesday of every month. Amanda sweet our technology innovation librarian comes in the show and does something tech related. And next week she's going to be talking about web scraping. Trying to copy and paste things from a website. It takes a lot of work. There's an easy way to do that she's going to show us how to do that with web scraper one oh one. So do sign up for that show and any of our other ones. I do have things scheduled booked for the middle of February here and just waiting for some details of shows so keep an eye on our calendar here and to see what new topics we have coming up. Thank you everybody for being here with us thank you back in Scott, stay warm. You're in one of our areas that is a freezing cold as we are here today. See you on the future episode of encompass live.