 system with the very generous help of Robin Bernstein from Bellevue University. Please stand Robin. So we're delighted. This is our first time here in Omaha at Embassy Suites and I hope you're having a good evening. It's so nice to see everybody and Red and I are hoping we can do another one of these in the streamline that we've been doing before. I am so excited about our speakers tonight. In fact, when I told a good friend of mine and Red and I were having lunch, I told her that we were coming for the club plan. It was amazing what she said at the top and she would get her. So, I'm going to send you a note so that you can use to the end of the class and where she still was. She's done a lot of good and a lot of work. She's done a lot of good and a lot of work. She's taken a lot of things and you may have read about her. And my favorite person I saw is Joe Mother. She's taken them on. In fact, the friend of the name of her tonight, she called her the one stone cow. So, she could also ban the deputy director in Bellevue University for that. Of course, she's a director now. So, you might have read about her. She's tackled some of the babies. Overdrive? Yeah. Right. And what I always liked about Joe, because I can remember, we would go to her and say, Charles, can we do this? We didn't get to know. What we got is, let me think about that. I think we can do it. I love that type of enthusiasm and cooperation. So, without any more, I'm going to give you Joe Butler. I'll try not to move around too much. But I was really thrilled when Kathy called and asked if I would come. It was like coming back home, coming back to Kansas. Coming back to the Midwest was kind of like coming back home. Sure you're going to put him to sleep now. He told me to do it. Yeah. It's okay. When she asked me to talk, I thought, well, the best thing for me to do is talk about what I learned from you. Because we are really probably the most cooperative state in the union, I think. And I say we, because I'm here again in Nebraska, it's probably the most cooperative state in the union as far as I'm concerned. I was going to just, I'm trying something new tonight. I'm going to talk a little bit about experimenting. So I'm experimenting here. If it doesn't work, we'll just learn from it. Okay. But I did start by, if you go to the next one, I started by kind of reminding everybody where I've been. And this is my history. It does look like I can't hold a job. You're kidding around about that over there. But this is just kind of my history and thank you for going over it. But the 10 things that I've learned that I know about library and cooperation, I really did learn from you. So the first thing I want to talk about is the need to collaborate. You really taught me what the collaboration, and I'm going to have to go to the next thing. One more. I remember when Becky Baker told me this phrase, many hands lighten the load. And she used to say that all the time, and she's still at Stuart Public Library, I hope. But we can do a whole lot more, and you proved it. We can do a whole lot more when we do it as a group. The thing we did here that I did at other states, but not quite as cooperatively was easily, was when we did the statewide group purchasing that first year, and all the academic libraries in Nebraska pooled their money, and we did a first search. Do you remember that? Is anybody here from that academic? It was just great. And what we did was we started with a group of databases that were first searched. And because we did that with the academics, we were able to add about half a million holdings from the small libraries around the state. Do you remember that? That was really great. And that meant that the small libraries, because their holdings were added to WorldCat, of which the Union Catalog was the subset of that, now they could be real players. That's so unique that we did that in Nebraska. I can't tell you, you're so used to being collaborative and cooperative that you spoiled me, because then when I went on to the other states where I did, that was not the case. And I'll talk a little bit about that. But the thing I want to say to you is we can do so much more. Right now, because of the financial situations that we all find ourselves in in every state, some states more than others, it's even more important for us to be collaborative. It's really important for us to be speaking with one voice. It's absolutely necessary. It's always important to do that. But you have to be advocates not just for your patrons and for the services that they need and want, and what will improve their lives, but also for yourselves. And I found that librarians are very bad about being advocates for themselves. You are a very modest as a group. You're easy to work with. You don't brag about yourselves. You're easy to brag about because you do such good work and such good jobs. But you really do need to be advocating for yourselves. And you need to talk about how important libraries are. Libraries are more important now than I think they've ever been. And a lot of it has to do with what everybody's talked about, which is the digital inclusion. That's a big word now. It's the digital divide, of course. But the digital inclusion and the digital literacy that our patrons need. When I was in Ohio, one of the things that happened was we had 13% unemployment rate, which is much higher now, but we hit 13% unemployment. And a lot of those people that were finding themselves unemployed were the people that worked in the auto industry. And a lot of them had never, ever used a computer. So now they were unemployed, they had to actually go to a library because they didn't have access to the internet. They had quite a lot of unemployment online because that's what we were forcing them to do with the government. They had to apply for jobs in order to keep getting unemployment. So they had to apply for jobs online and they had to create a resume online. These are people who worked in factory lines and did not really know how to use computers. They found a real home in the library where they were accepted and they were taught these things. The one thing that I heard from the librarian was when she was teaching someone how to use the mouse. She said, point that, point the cursor at whatever it was. And the person picked up the mouse and tried to use it as remote control. Now that, you know, it just makes you sad when you think about somebody who's unemployed and trying to find work. That's the kind of important work that you do. And that's what the story is that I think we need to be telling. So I'll go into the next one and then probably one of, yep, that's good. You taught me this. You taught me that I need to keep my eye on the customer. You were my customers. And keep my ears open for new ideas. Right now, I think that it's really important for us to tackle things about the actual situation that we're in. We can't do more with less. We can't even do this with less. We can do less with less. The other thing we will do is change the way we do things. So for instance, in Kansas, we're looking at how we do statewide resource sharing. We're using, right now, we're looking at how we might be able to do that using the open source statewide resource sharing that the collaborative is creating. There's a collaborative that I restarted when I was in Ohio. And we're looking at actually creating something with a group, the Equinox group that created the Georgia Primes. And we're looking at actually coming up with a statewide resource sharing that's based on open source. That's the kind of thing we need to be looking at. Can we do something differently and save money? But we certainly can't do the same with less money. So the thing I always like to say about change is I love change. I really like things changing. I really like it when I'm in charge. And when I'm doing the changing, when I'm saying what change is going to happen. So that's what we have to do is really make sure that we are in charge of the change. I can't be in charge of the change when it's my budget that I'm being forced on me. But I can be in charge of the changes that I do that are reactions to the budget. So one of the other things I think that we're challenged with is we don't want to give things up. And there are sometimes there are sacred cows that we have that we really don't want to give away. What we need to do is look at what is unique to us and really do what's unique. And not do the things that other people do even if they don't do it quite the way we want it to. So that's my challenge to you. Take that away with you and think about that. It's hard. I'm telling you things that I have to tell myself all the time that I'm not always successful at it. So let's go to the next one. The third thing I learned has to do with ideas. And that's basically, I'm going to mix metaphors here like crazy, okay? Bring metaphors to the table but don't be married to them. Pretend they're just a date. And it's not something you're wedded to. When you have an idea, be ready to change it up. If it's a recipe, be ready to go to a totally different dish. And I said here, remember the non-emory ideas are a good idea. And that's probably not as accurate as remember non-emory ideas time is now. Now sometimes when you're going to have a great idea, but now is not the time to implement it. And sometimes it's more appropriate for somebody else to implement that great idea. And that just kills me when that happens to me. I don't like that. And I'm going to give you an example from Kansas right now. We have an entity in Kansas. It's a state agency part of the Board of Regents. It's called CANED. And CANED supplies broadband to schools, libraries and hospitals. And what they provide is a T1 line, which quite frankly is not broadband. But that's what they provide. And if you want more than that, you have to pay for it. CANED is now in jeopardy because of some mistakes that made with the legislature. Not being as transparent, not answering their questions, not being responsive. You know all the reasons why that's not a good thing to do. Because by the way, the state legislature funds them. So this year they cut them by 40%. And they give money also to the state library for databases. So they cut the funding by more than 50% for the databases this year. But the bigger problem that we have is that if they are eliminated, the services that they provide to our schools, libraries and hospitals will be gone. And we need broadband very desperately in Kansas, as you probably do, also in the rest of our rural towns to really survive. And that worries me greatly. So when a legislative post-audit is looking into CANED and they ask us to come over and talk to them and give them some input into the process. And what kinds of services do they are really essential? And we go and talk to them. And I'm there for about two hours. And they say, well, how would you provide broadband if you were in charge of it? And you know when I was in Ohio, we had Ohio Public Library Information Network, OPEN, which is just fabulous. OPEN doesn't just supply a T1 line. OPEN actually supplies a line that is adequate to meet the needs of that library. So every day, OPEN goes out and runs tests against lines in the public libraries to see if the pipe at 3 o'clock in the afternoon is 8% full. And it is like up the broadband. Now to me, that's a real broadband provider. But, and of course I told them this at the legislative post-audit thinking, would it be great if we could do a Kansas Public Library Information Network? And it would be really great if we could do that. But quite frankly, the time's not right, the money's not there. And if OPEN were starting today, that would be the case in Ohio also, I think. And the other thing is that you have to have, you really need to have in a state like Kansas, you need to have the libraries, the hospitals, and the schools coming together to kind of make the demand for broadband and get the cost down. Well, even though it's a great idea, and I think it is a great idea to have OPEN in Kansas, that's not going to happen. And we're going to have to just find a different way to provide the broadband. And it breaks my heart because I would love to have Kansas Public Library Information Network. That would be cool. You know, we could do even better than OPEN. But it's not going to happen. So I think that's the kind of thing you have to really be willing to give up those great ideas and let somebody else implement it. I'm hoping that somebody else can implement it because we really can't go without the broadband. So let's go to number four that you taught me. And you kind of mentioned it, Kathy. I think it's important, and I learned this from you, to say I think we can or tell me more rather than no straight out of the gate. I think that builds a community. I think it also opens communication. It means that we can expand possibilities. It's really a good way to, how many of you said no to a lot and go back and ask again? I'll tell you honestly, when I have somebody tell me no a lot, I'm really less inclined to go back and ask them because I kind of know what the answer is going to be. So you're shutting out some possibilities that are really, really essential if we want to move forward. But having said that, I have to admit that sometimes no is the right answer. And what it is, it's hard to take. I have a hard time with no. But I think it's really important for us to go ahead and get over that. And maybe do what I mentioned to you before, partner with somebody else to provide that service. So I'm convinced we're going to be able to partner with somebody else to provide broadband in Kansas because we can't let our small towns die. And that's the thing I'm really worried about most. So maybe we can, partner with somebody, we can be successful, achieve our goal. So let's go to the next one. Number five was you taught me how to experiment. And I think it's really great to be able to try something new. And I think, and what I've heard you too is, and I've heard this over the years, it's really important to let your staff experiment and give them permission to do that and also give them permission when they fail to just go ahead and get over it. We celebrate when we succeed, but we also just learn from when we make mistakes. And as long as nobody dies or a small children are hurt or animals, we're okay. And we learn from it and move on. But one of my staff members now is looking into quick QR codes and trying to figure out how we can apply those. And she's really excited about it because she doesn't have to do anything that's techy. And there are not a lot of perks in state government right now. And those of you who are in state government know what I mean. There are no raises in Kansas. We're losing staff members. So you can give somebody a perk on letting them play and experiment. I think it's great. It's a cheap perk. And you can benefit greatly from it. So here's something that I learned the hard way. I think you have to be willing to take a stand when you need to. And even if it does turn everything upside down. And I think that we learned this the hard way. Well, it's happening in Kansas right now. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the situation. So I'll just briefly describe it. We have overdrive for since 2005 as our provider of the platform for the e-book. Download the e-books. And excuse me, last year, about a year and a half ago, they came to us and said we wanted to renew your contract. Well, first of all, the contract wasn't up until December of this year. But they had a whole bunch of new terms in it. One of the terms was the increase in price from $10,800 to $25,000 year two to $50,000 in year three to $75,000 in year four, which is a 700% increase. But that wasn't as upsetting as when I look more closely and compare the contracts. There was a clause, 11.4, which actually removed our ownership. We've spent about half a million dollars, which isn't a whole lot on content, but it's half a million dollars. And what the new contract said was that if we left overdrive, we lost our content. The old contract that we still have until December 5th this year, said that we owned the content. The content was ours. And if we left overdrive, they would, and I quote, cooperate with us moving that content from their platform to another platform of our choice. I think it was in there because of the term when it was written. There was no other platform. And in fact, a year ago, there was no other platform either. So what we did was we started to think about, after the negotiations failed with overdrive, we started to think about who would maybe create a platform. And I actually literally opened my role text and started calling vendors that I knew, like Learning Express, Playaways, Autographics. Nobody wanted to. They all said, oh, what a great, interesting proposal. No, we're not into that. And Playaway came close to thinking they might, but they had their hands full. They're doing that new video Playaway thing, which is kind of cool. But anyway, we already talked about the vendor after a consortium, after a consortium. We have to accept that it would be a great opportunity for us to start conversations with the vendors, the publishers. And it has turned out to be a good conversation to be spending five of them. It's now gone over to our attorney general, and he's going to be sending the fourth letter real soon. I'm not sure, probably when I get back, he'll be in the process of getting that out. It's a lot more legal and not as plain icy as the ones before were. So we'll see what happens. I love it because there's one little line in there that said, please be aware that we believe this is our content and we take this very seriously, something of that effect, but it's much more legal than that. So we've been really impressed. We've been happy with starting conversations with publishers. We were happy to find new platform providers. The problem was trying to make sure that our patrons, because we patrons all around the state that are using this service, making sure that the library is number one. The librarians knew what was going on. Number two, the end users, because we're unusual in that we have someone on the state library staff who actually answers questions about downloading books. The libraries don't answer them. They send them all to us. And we have one person who does that eight hours a day. She's fabulous. She knows how to answer every question you can think of. And we bought her all the new devices, which is kind of cool too. She likes that. But she is fabulous. So when she gets calls from people saying, I can't download, and by the way, I've heard that you guys are cutting off this service. She tells them what's really happening. And we're gathering all the nice letters and nice comments we're getting from people about. When they hear about the 700% increase, it's really pretty cool, because they get really upset with overdrive. They think it's outrageous, of course. And they think of us as a little David, and overdrive is the big one. Isn't it wonderful? The other thing that they realize is that if we pay the $75,000 to overdrive, we have no money left over for content. So they're not done. They know that, and they're really glad we're not doing it. So that's the good thing. The problem is that things are changing so quickly that as soon as we put out some communication, we put out something about the 3M. It's going to be ready at the beginning of November. And I think that same day, later in the day we found out, no, no, no, it's not going to be ready until December. So that's the kind of thing that's happening. We're trying to communicate as quickly and as thoroughly as often as we can. And things are changing too fast. But I do think that there are a lot of opportunities for us. I think that the conversations with the publishers are really kind of promising. We were actually talking to some publishers about doing a different kind of purchase and lease, a hybrid. So it would be kind of interesting. We're not sure how it's going to end up, but it's kind of a fun journey. It's just a little bumpy because we didn't plan it. And I think planning, plan change is always good rather than when it's forced upon you. So I have one more, three more lessons. So let me go to seven. And this is something I had to credit Nancy Bush with when I was in the library commission. We were having a conversation one day. I was talking about winning and losing as the win-lose situation. And she said, I don't think it's better to talk about game-game rather than win-lose. And that's always stayed with me. So when I negotiate, I always think that it's got to be a game-game on the way around. It's got to be a benefit for us, the library community. It's got to be a benefit for the vendor. Or they're not going to be around to help us in the future. And we all know what happens when there's a monopoly. Can you say OCLC? Can you say overdrive? Those are monopolies. And that's not a good thing. We don't need monopolies in our partnerships. So we cannot game-game-game on the way around. You can have as much game-game-game as you have partners. And I think the more partners we have, the better off we are. And I'm not talking about just vendors. Because I think, you know, we've partnered with OCLC on a lot of things. We partnered you all with, where I was here, partnered with OCLC in a pilot of the Cat Express, which I still think was the best thing that OCLC produced for small libraries ever. But that was a really great partnership. But I think when you have a partnership with a vendor, you've got to have clear boundaries. And if you don't have clear boundaries, that's when people get too wedded, like mentioning weddings. But I think you can't be too much in bed with a vendor and do the best job you can in negotiating or in finding the best product for your customers. The other thing I think is really important is to make sure that when you're doing these things, looking for game-gains and bringing ideas to the table, that you do leave your ego at the door. It doesn't matter whose idea it was. But it does matter who gets the credit in the end. And I become a firm believer in MLUs for that reason. Because I told you that as librarians, you are very, you're easy to get along with. You are cooperative and you're modest. And a lot of times that means other people can take advantage and you may come up with the idea and you may be putting a lot of work into it, but somebody else ends up with the credit at the end and overfunding. And we've just realized that what we need to do is from the beginning set up the expectations and make sure the MLUs are in place and everybody does have the same understanding. So let me go to number eight. You taught me the importance of communicating open and freely. And knowing when it's appropriate. And I put up here the example of budget information. I had the governor, no matter who it was in Ohio, had a strange way of giving us our budget. He always, and then we both, he's when I was there, he gave us our budget ahead of time. He would give the budget to the heads of the agencies and then he would say, you are not allowed to tell anybody about this until I release it. Because I'm the one who releases the budget. Well, that's fine except, of course, the staff all knows you got the budget and your board all knows you got the budget. And my board there was a policymaking board. So they, oftentimes, would really like to know what the budget was. But there were lots of reasons not to, for one, you don't want to take off your governor and for yourself or for your agency. So it's important, and the way I handled that, of course, was I would say, yes, I do know what the budget is, but you all know that until he releases it, my notes are sealed. I would love to tell you. But anyway, no matter how much you communicate, there's always going to be somebody who didn't hear it. We have had, you know, the overdrive stuff you've seen in all the magazines. Well, we've not only just had it in the national magazines, but a lot of our papers have picked it up and they've been running it and they've been editorial. And just today, I got a call from the governor's office and they wanted to talk about boards and appointments and things, and I started to explain to them about the overdrive situation and talking a little bit about that. And the person in the governor's office, the governor's office has gotten all this communication in case they get complaints from their constituents, but the person in the governor's office said, really, I've not heard a thing about that. The e-books are going to go away, so no matter how much you communicate, there's always going to be somebody who didn't hear it. And you may not, really, if you communicate, you're not going to eliminate criticism. It's going to be there, but at least you'll have own channels and you can maybe improve things as you're going along. And remember number three where I said, don't be married to your ideas. Make sure that you're willing to make a change. And number nine, the ninth thing I learned from you was how important it was to be an advocate. My husband always last, he one time turned to me when we were at a social function to see how long it took me to get the conversation around to libraries. And I think that you should never miss an opportunity to talk about libraries, about how important they are, about how different they are now from the way they were when we were kids or grandparents or anything. Talk about the library of today and the library of the future. What you do is really important work. How many of you are familiar with Geek the Library program, the OCLC program? We're doing that in Kansas as a statewide initiative. We all have t-shirts and every Friday we all wear t-shirts of work. And then people in the capital ask us if they could buy t-shirts from us. We can't sell them, we give them away sometimes. But I always think they'll come talk to me so I can tell them what they have to say if they wear a Geek the Library t-shirt. And I always say, I geek Kansas libraries. And so when I went to the grocery store people would like to ask me what that means. And it's a great way to start talking about number one libraries and what libraries, what does Geek mean? That's what they want to know sometimes. But once they know that then you talk to them about the funding. Libraries don't ever say they're free. They're not free. There's no charge to people. But they're not free because when you say free people think that there's no cost. And there is a cost to a library. And it's a dear cost. It's their tax money and that's why you don't charge them. But don't say free. That's just a pet peeve I have. But we do, we're doing it too for our t-shirts. But we also took the Geek the Library program to the First Lady's Book Festival. And her husband run on our geek board. And we had we had it all filled and we went back to the library, the state library. We are, I have to tell you we're not in the capitol right now because capitol's being renovated. So the legislators used the state library a lot. They didn't want us to be off-site. So they brought in two trailers that they chumped together and they built a little extension a little hallway out to the trailers and that's where we are. Our collection's in an annex down the street aways and we go there every day to get material. But those legislators are in our library all the time. I think it's fabulous. And when the staff was complaining about oh my gosh we're going to be in a trailer for about 53 years I said but you know it's really terrific that they didn't want us to be gone. So I think it's a blessing. I think it's really a great thing. And they really do come. I always said it would be wonderful if a legislator came to me with that question about libraries and this year I had two legislators come to me and ask me questions about the databases that we provide and about K&N connectivity. What help is K&N to broadband in libraries? Is it something we can live without? And of course I said no. But they came and asked our opinion which I thought was fabulous. So we're doing Geek the Library we're going to put up a new geek board because I know the legislator is going to be coming in soon and I want them to write on the geek board. The geek board is way too full. I've never seen a geek board and it's just usually what you do is you just put up a piece of phone board and you put out a pen and you put stickers all over it and you tell people, yes, people when they walk in or walk up to your table like we did at the First Lady's Book Festival would you please write on the geek board and they said, well, I don't know. And then you said, you know what geek means it's like I geek knitting and you must be passionate about something then after that you can't stop them from geeking. We had some kids that came back two or three times to write on the geek board. They knew, on the example the best library I think that the best stories were from Dodge City. Dodge City jumped right in to geek the library and they did it at their rodeo days and you all know how weather is across the plains. Well, they have pictures of their geek tent and their geek board before the storm and then they have pictures of it after the storm and it turned that wind turned their chairs twisted and almost into pretzels. But the geek board survived and that was their thing. They were real pleased about that but that is really a great if you want to look at who's doing a really great geek the library campaign look at Dodge City, Kansas. And finally the last thing I'm keeping you up, I know I am the last thing is that the thing I learned from you is that you get on the stars and the work you do is really important. I really think it's important for you to be advocates. You really need to get out there and make people aware of what you can do for your communities because you know, I listed all the things, your economic development, life long learning, you know all of this. Digital literacy, that is really important. If we want to be competitive in the market today and I mean the global market and also in our local markets, we've got to get people to be digitally literate and we've got to make sure that people are not left without electricity. I mean it's just like that when the government went in and made sure that rural communities had electricity back in the 20th century it's the same thing now. If we let the market price drive it there'll be a lot of people without and we can't let that happen. Homework help. You are the answer to Googleization. I use Google all the time, I love it. But when I want health information I don't use Google. I use our databases because I want dedicated sources. And you know I mentioned the unemployment and the employment assistance that you provide. It's really important. You provide a quality of life. You really help people get a better quality of life and I want to thank you for it and I'm really happy to have been here tonight and I thank you for the opportunity to talk. I'll take questions now that stand to mind what I learned from you. No more questions. We have David Roode from I think he's messing with what he's doing in his system out there and he's going after publishers to allow him to keep the files and so they can have value that enliven ourselves in the hope story. I mean that's a great idea. That's something that we really need to think. The thing is we pay you, the libraries those books just aren't in the paper and you are a new you are at the same value and they don't have any incentive for you. Right. The publishers are the ones I've talked to you know maybe four dozen of them not a lot but the ones I've talked to are just petrified that what has happened with the music industry is what we are planning to do to them now and you know when you talk to them and you explain it you talk, talk, talk, talk, talk they I think they have a better understanding of where we're coming from but you can't blame them you know the Napster really did leave them with that of fear and the fact of the matter is that even though they can deliver it easier it's probably not reasonable for us, remember that game game I told you, it's probably not reasonable for us to think that because a digital copy can be used by an unlimited number of people that that's the price that we should only pay for one I don't think that would be really reasonable of us but having said that I really think that there should be a slight scale and what I've asked them specifically is what if we were to buy I'll use Twilight for an example what if we were to buy five copies of Twilight because we're sure that there are going to be five people in Kansas who are always going to want to read Twilight for some reason but the first time when Twilight first comes out we have 100 people 200 people on the waiting list what if we bought these two other copies for a period of time so we don't have to buy 205 copies just to meet the waitlist demands and they're listening they're not buying it yet they're not saying we're going to do it but again it's that thing if we're patient we can show that the model will work we're thinking about doing something with one of the publishers where we can show how this would be beneficial to them and would not actually break the bank but actually make the money because that's what they're about I think that's the only way we're going to get it I think we've got to be reasonable I agree that we should be able to sell content we may get there but I don't think it's going to happen right away I keep talking about he wants us to help him work to the publishers the problem is that the publishers contacts that I have are the CEO the permissions people not the content providers not the people that sell the content they're huge these publishing houses it took us to the third letter sometimes to get to the right person it's kind of an interesting process it's very educational for me I really thought it was going to be much similar to what it was but Jamie and I keep talking about things because he wants to work together and I do too I'm really worried a little bit by the way though about the Adobe ebook reader because it's based on a CIRC cost so I don't know how your CIRC has been but we went from about 28,000 CIRCs to about 208,000 CIRCs in one year and part of that is because people became conscious of the fact that we had downloadables and also we were buying more content more stuff to CIRC at 8 cents a CIRC which is what the Adobe ebook reader platform is based on when you go from 28,000 to 208 that's a huge cost increase so we've just got to be careful that we don't create something that we can't sustain yes that's my big question that's also a justification for a sliding scale for a sliding scale for the Adobe yes or the Adobe giving us a flat fee and we start more, we start more it's not costing them anything anyway on-time and recorded books for downloadable audiences is that right? everybody gets that absolutely absolutely absolutely the question was will everybody in Kansas have access to the 3M and to the recorded books and we put LSTA dollars library services and technology into these and my belief is that if you do that as a state librarian I think it should be available to everyone in the state so that was my argument with overdrive that didn't come out in the articles but one of the things was that Steve Portes and I know each other pretty well but when we talked he said we can't support something that is for everybody in Kansas and we always had and that's why we could put LSTA dollars and if you can't then we can't so that was one of the things that happened but we really do believe LSTA dollars are for statewide and statewide should be true statewide we also have done something I was talking with Robin about this a little bit ago before we ate dinner we're doing something with the internet archives and it's called in library landing and we have some we're sending books to them we sent I think about 87 or so books to them and we as a state will then be able to participate in their program what they're doing is they digitize the books pre-2000 print date so you send it to them, you send them the book they digitize it, they put the book in a dark archive and then they actually you can download that book one at a time from them and your library patrons can we have something called the excuse me, Kansas library card so anybody in the state can get a library card from the state library it's not from the state library, it's from any library in the state and it gets you the digital and the databases so we're doing the internet archive too if you're interested in that you can look it up did you notice some sleep when you started this with Overdrive? no for you? no, no, I didn't notice any sleep over it, you know I really do believe as long as nobody dies from these things okay, you know I knew that people might be upset but when we're doing the best we could and I don't mind a challenge it's just I really had some hope for being able to negotiate something but lost that right away then we just moved on so I don't think I lost sleep now I can't remember, it's been so long ago any other questions? yes, I think they are regretting the whole thing you know, I think that I think that if we had to do it over they might have negotiated differently I think that it hurt them it hurt us you know, we didn't want to move as quickly but I think it actually held 3M because as we have been talking to publishers they've been picking up the publishers that we talked to so they moved much quicker on being able to make content available because of our conversations with those 160 non publishers so yeah and you know, but they weren't backing down they've been approaching libraries in Kansas asking them to go single onesies with them and they even said they do a consortium but not a statewide consortium or a little library but anyway, they have been but they will not remove that 11.4 clause they're saying any content you buy you either stay with us and you have it or you leave and you lose it which I think is really crummy by the way, we are not letting that clause that 11.4 as it is now when our overdrive is going to be another contract we have from now on and the good thing is that our attorney general agrees that that has to be so we just now back down on that anything we buy we're keeping it's our content any other libraries doing what you've done do you know moving away from overdrive I don't think so I think there are some libraries that are trying it out and honestly we might not have moved as quickly if we hadn't had that disagreement with overdrive but because it probably if it had been on my terms my change, I probably would have planned it out better I worry about some of our especially at the Christmas time any of our library patrons not being able to access downloadable when they're buying their nooks and they want to 95 of the publishers responding to your letters what about the other ones if they don't respond what happens to their content do you still just take it anyway you know that's a very good question and I don't agree necessarily with our attorney general but our attorney general says it's ours so his letter in his letter he said basically you know that then I told you but it's much more legalese basically saying we're serious about this we believe this is our content and we will take action so I'm not sure what that action is I don't know that he's telling anybody he is very serious about that's our half million dollars worth of content and from the beginning I made sure that he was with us I'm not aware so I went that contract and I thought I know what this means but I really sent it over to him and said am I right and he said yes so then we proceeded I would have never done it alone but I think he's saying hey that's our content we got one really really really nasty letter that was from a lawyer you could tell of us and it said we do not give you permission and if you do we will prosecute you and whatever to the full extent of the law and I immediately sent that over to him and he just laughed he said oh that's fine and it's only I think what he's going to be doing is looking to see how many titles we actually have and he'll gauge whether or not he wants to fight that particular battle and then for that I got like three titles and he said to get it and I don't think they circulated very much we're really keeping track we have some of the really big publishers I really can't remember now Harper Collins I know signed and Random House maybe there should be a list in one of those articles that Mike Kelly wrote that lists all of them and some of them he called it Big 12 and I don't even know who the Big 12 were he had it real to me but some of them are the big guys we're really excited about that and the reason we went with 3M just so you know is one of the publishers one of the big guys said we will only let you move your content if you move it to the 3M platform I don't know why maybe 3M talk to them but as soon as that happened we removed ourselves from we said we're going to move it to 3M we're going to do 3M because otherwise we won't be able to move this huge chunk of content so it also meant that we didn't have to offer an RFP will they have overdrive and 3M? and the question is I'll try to repeat that the big why one is in the state looking at overdrive and when they have both Johnson County is coming in with us on our beta test of 3M I don't believe they will go I think they'll go with the state Topeka is looking at overdrive because they were funny there's going to be a gap and they're worried about it so they might for a year the problem is that whatever content they buy they will move and the other thing is but I don't think they're thinking about is that they will have to support their own overdrive we're not going to anymore Johnson say I can't download Leanne who's my guru on this will say are you using 3M recording books or overdrive overdrive you'll have to call the library and we're not going to be supporting our overdrive anymore it's going to be a rude awakening I'm afraid because it's phenomenal I hear her on the phone because we're in this trailer together and she's really patient and she's very very knowledgeable she made me laugh one day when we were talking and she said this woman you just called and she was really angry and she said I keep hitting the button and it's not doing what I want and she was telling Leanne what she was doing and Leanne said I keep saying now let's go back to step one because what she was doing obviously was not doing the first three steps most patient person I know and she's you know she doesn't she never loses her cool oh actually it's very interesting because there's no physical move of the content the question was am I worried about the content are they going to give us the right content right what it is is that it's going to be turned off on overdrive and turned on on 3M and recorded books so there's no transfer it's just a matter of everybody they each have the files and so what we've done is sent a list of all the permissions that we've gotten to move the content and that content will be turned on on day one recorded books and day one at 3M whatever day one is from them kind of a two part question one there's been some criticism about how overdrive and the kindle content was implemented if you had an opinion on that and then is your 3M platform going to work with Kindle and will it be a similar sort of deal so what's the criticism of I've not been following overdrive at all so I one of the biggest ones is that now Amazon knows what you're checking out and is sending you e-mail and offering you to purchase the book and we're not getting we're not involved in that we weren't necessarily told about it in advance I hadn't heard about that but I don't know I don't have an opinion about overdrive so I just really try not to even think about them anymore but we do, we all have conversations with 3M about the Kindle I don't know, we haven't gotten very far I'm really concerned about that they've been really great about involving us in the entire plan I think it's because they're rushing it to meet our timeline and so we've been very very highly participatory when we put it that way and it would surprise me if we weren't with the Kindle as well we're going to push them hard we want it, we want it December 1st because overdrive is turned off December 5th so we'll see we'll keep watching I guess yeah any other questions the candidate challenge is really, really consuming me I really worry about that a lot we also had a Bill and Melinda Gates grant opportunity on the line I think you all did too we did not have connectivity with that because we had candidate and we thought that was going to go over swimmingly so we've done some advocacy workshops across the state which would be really successful the next challenge really is what happens now to candidate services and how do we provide those I'm not really worried about candidate itself because they made a lot of mistakes and I don't want to get involved in their management issues but I'm really worried about the library's hospitals the school would be with that broadband but we need real broadband we don't want just a team one we want serious broadband but I kept calling it skinnyband when we were talking about it and they always laughed at that anyway this has been fun it's really been great to see all of you I appreciate the opportunity to come come back home and I especially appreciated the time I was with you and did learn all those things so I'll share I'll leave my PowerPoint if you want it and this was experimenting so it was kind of fun thank you thanks Joe Joe thanks so much and of course you're welcome back in the state anytime and you always make collaboration at least to me and negotiation and advocacy for libraries sounds so matter of fact and I know it's not always that simple so thank you for sharing that message and thank you for the credit you gave to Nebraska for efforts we've made in the past but it's been a delight to have you here come again riding on a horse riding on a cat that would be great bell buckle and thank all of you for coming it was kind of fun to be in Omaha or the Vista Park change I do want to mention that Kathy and I and the eastern and south systems are really committed to trying to keep the colloquium going and to try and have two of these events a year and Nebraska Library Association and Nebraska Library Commission have also helped with funding in the past and will continue to seek that out and Robin with Bellevue University has always just said okay I'm in and we appreciate that so much and then Michael Saros tonight said hey could I take the program so we were like thank you very much we'll check with Joe so we will have a recording too and I just think it's a great message then that we'll be able to share when we need a little pep talk or a rally when we need to be reminded to check in December on December 5th or 1st to see what's going on thank you all for coming and have a safe trip back home and please continue to mingle and enjoy and finish your chocolate cake that made me dizzy it was good so thanks