 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 a show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We record the show every week as we are doing today, and then it's posted to our website for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can see all of our archives. Both the live show and 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 the topics we have on the show. For anyone who's watching who is not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the agency for libraries in Nebraska, and this is for all types of libraries. So you will find topics on our show that will be for any type of library, public, K-12, academic, corrections, museums, archives, it runs the gamut. Really our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries, something libraries are doing, tools and resources we think they might use. We do book reviews, interviews, little mini training sessions. We bring in guest speakers to talk on the show sometimes, and we sometimes have a Nebraska Library Commission staff talk on the show. Join us. And we have a mixture of that here today. Today we are going to be talking about the Nebraska Book Awards competition. This is an annual event, we're going to get all into the details back. And we have a group of people here, some Nebraska Library Commission staff who have held to run the program and have been judges of the book awards. And I think I'll just hand over to you guys to take it away and introduce yourself as you come up and meet your time to speak. I'm not sure who saw it. Tessa, if you are starting or. Yeah, I can start. So, if you've never heard about them. Excuse me, the Nebraska Book Award. Tessa Terry here, she's our communications coordinator here at the Nebraska Library Commission and she helps do the behind the scenes of the book awards I would say maybe. Definitely logistics all that fun stuff. Yes. We partner with the Nebraska Center for the book to make the book awards happen. I'm actually going to turn it over to Christy Walsh who is the president of the Nebraska Center for the book to just tell you a little bit about the few awards in general. That's good. Thank you. I'm Christy Walsh and I'm the current president of the Nebraska Center for the book. And also the assistant director at the Carney Public Library. The goal of the Center for the book is to support programs that celebrate and stimulate public interest in reading, writing and publishing all of the things that support or celebrate the rich literary heritage of Nebraska. We are so excited each year to sponsor and help with the Nebraska Book Awards because meeting authors is just kind of magic and so every time we get to celebrate one of them and and hear more about their book or their illustration is just a treat. I encourage everybody to come and attend the celebration that we will have on October 23. I think Tess will talk more about that a little bit later. The other thing that we do at the celebration of Nebraska books is several special awards. One is the Mildred Bennett Award, which recognizes individuals who've made a significant contribution to fostering the literary tradition in Nebraska. And the Jane Gueski Award, which is presented to a Nebraska organization for exceptional contributions to literacy books, reading libraries and literature. And you can nominate your favorite person or organization for those awards and we welcome those nominations, which you can find on the Center for the book website or through the Nebraska Library Commission. But it is a great partnership with the Nebraska Library Commission and we look forward to the variety of submissions every year that come in. We have a link up right now just for our Nebraska Book Awards page in general, but we're going to go to the timeline for our book awards. So this day is pretty much the same every year. We occasionally change the date while every year the date of the celebration of Nebraska books changes based on football schedules. They always open March 1 is when the first day you can start submitting nominations for books, and then we close them every year on June 30. We feel like that's plenty of time to have people hear about the awards as well as nominate their books and we'll go over that process as well. And then we try to announce the winners in early September. My goal is always by Labor Day. It's not always done by Labor Day, but at least a week after we have the winners announced and we're contacting them about coming to the celebration of Nebraska books. This year the celebration is happening on October 23. It always happens at the Nebraska History Museum or History Nebraska downtown. And it's a great event. I think everyone presenting today has been able to attend at least one celebration and get to hear winning others speak as well as those award winners that Christy was talking about before. So rules for nominations, they're pretty straightforward. Other than the fact that we would like your book to have some sort of connection to Nebraska, either in setting the authors history or current location. And or the publisher, those are kind of the three categories we usually look for. Books need to be published the year before so that this year for the 2021 book awards, you have to have a copyright date of 2020. And that makes you eligible. You have to have them professionally bound and published. They have to have an ISBN number. And these are the following categories are the ones we they can be submitted and you can submit books in multiple categories, you don't have to just pick one or the other. So nonfiction fiction, children and young adults cover design and illustration and poetry. And then how to nominate. We've tried to make this process as simple as possible. There is a $40 fee per nomination and per category that you enter. So that just helps us with the logistics and also with the award ceremony. You can enter in two ways you can either do it online and we have a submission form and we're going to see what this looks like when I click on it. Can you see that Krista. Yep, yep, that's good. Yep. So this just takes you to a very simple form where we ask information about the book. And so in this case, if I wanted to submit in nonfiction and cover and design. I would have to make sure those are selected and make sure all this information is filled out. This is very important we can't contact you about winning your book. You don't know how to also the book title and the author is important as well. And then you just submit. And that takes you to a PayPal page where you can make your, you can pay your fee, and that makes it as simple as we could make it for the online process. Okay, I'm going to go back. You also have the option of mailing in your form. So we have an online form that you can just print out and fill out the old fashioned way and send it in the mail with every nomination regardless of whether you do it online or through the mail. We do need you to send us three copies of your book so that our judges have a chance to read it. So can you clarify if there's multiple categories, how that affects number of books and price that's been asked in the past. Yes. It depends. I believe we only need one book for. If you are entering it in like nonfiction and cover an illustration like I said, we only ask for four books, because we can kind of ship them around a little, especially since with the cover design and illustration we are not. We're not going to read the books but we're not reading them in the same way you would for a nonfiction or a fiction book. We're looking at their aesthetics, not their content, if that makes sense. So, I don't know that I've ever seen a book submitted in like nonfiction and the fiction category. So that's not usually. Are you sure you meant that. So it's, it's almost exclusively cover and design, and one of the other categories is what we've seen. So then if they did nominate one book for both of those they would have to pay the entry fee twice, once for each category. They do. Yeah. Okay. Got it so $80 and if you're doing that. An additional book. Okay, you're right. Thank you. That does get asked. Thank you. Now, when I should ask this, and I know you can't jump to it because you didn't fill out the form. When you jump to the PayPal, does it know that you've checked more than one category or do you have to do that math yourself. It should do that automatically. Okay. I think we set it up a couple of years ago and now that you're asking that I'm questioning it, but I do believe. Yes. Okay. Our burn has set up the nomination form. So he's pretty amazing. And I think it gives you the option on PayPal actually to pick whether you entered more than one category. Right. So it does not you to let you know you may have to. Yeah. And I think that's a good idea. I think you got it. That's cool. And we have had people come in in person and drop off books with the check. So if you're a local or close to Lincoln and want to do that in person, you can avoid online. All together if you'd like. And during the pandemic just knock on our door and we'll let you let us know you're coming. We'll let. Yes, we're pretty flexible as far as how we get your books and your entry form, as long as we get them in between the nomination date. As far as mail goes, as long as the postmark date is before the end of the nomination period, we are, we want your books, we want to consider them and read them. And, you know, we're not trying to edge anybody out so we're as open as we can be about getting books and nominations. All right, I'm going to hand this over to Deborah, who is on our children's and young adults judging panel. Okay, and you can go ahead. Yep, there we go. Thank you, Tessa. And I am Deborah Dregos I do work here at the commission I'm the director of technology and access services, which you might say what does that have to do with I've been on this panel since about the beginning when I was cataloger, and I would help Sally Snyder who is our children's services. Librarian with a number of things so I got recruited and once you get on a panel you can't get off. You're allowed to have other interests besides your job title that's true. You have children's books for Nebraska Overdrive so. Yes, I do. I do selection of materials that way too. So, as a panel. Here are some of the things that we look for when we are considering books that have been submitted. Okay, as Tessa said, it does have to have all entries have to have some kind of a Nebraska connection. So writing, we feel as a group, our five member panel feels is very important because kids deserve well told stories just like adults do. There has to be a good sense of time and place. And really importantly, there has to be an appeal there for the kids and teens, not just for the adults who are reviewing. So I have to admit, several people on the panel have, you know, kids, spring kids, maybe nieces and nephews around. And there is some unofficial kid testing that goes along with the review process too. We hope there's some offer of discovery, you know, kids will learn something new out of an entry. And then we do consider book design also. Not just okay, is there plenty of white space, no text running into the gutter, things like that. But also, if it's a kid, if it's a book for teens, is it a size of a book, you know, paperback book that they're willing to take with them or is it this, you know, large thing that they won't even consider you know what is the cover look like is it something that's going to catch their attention. So those are the some of the different things that we consider for each and every book. Okay. Of course, are a slam dunk. I mean, how can you not say Rainbow Rowls Eleanor and Park is, you know, not going to be an award winner. But that aside, we read every book, we don't just say, Oh, this is going to be the award winner. We're not going to read or discuss every single book. Because every book, at least one person finds something that they really like about and hey, we're librarians and mostly in book lovers and we're going to talk about books. So we talk about everything. Okay, next slide test it please. So over the years, there, we have had, we have sometimes have very few titles that come in very few entries to choose between, and sometimes there's been an abundance. Sometimes we get a lot of picture books and hardly anything else. And sometimes we get a lot of chapter books and hardly anything else. So over the years, we've created some various categories where we have awarded different level or different. We have created different categories to award books. Some years there's just been one category where we have an entry that's been given an award. Sometimes we've had two or three. It just varies year to year based on what we have received. Sometimes we really can't come to a consensus. And we have split, for example, the young adult fiction and young adult nonfiction. One year we had what a lot of us considered winning entries in both so we split that category from just young adult to between fiction and nonfiction. And sometimes we have had honor books, just because we thought there was a really worthy entry. Maybe it wasn't the top one, but it, it should have, should receive some acknowledgement. So, and I have to say, one thing that we as a group have really struggled with and argued about over the years. And since it's mainly the same group, we, we feel very comfortable with arguing with each other. There have been a few years where we have not given an award, because we didn't feel that any of the entries met enough of the criteria that they, we could really consider them award worthy, and we do want this award to be something. So, one other perk with winning an award at the children and young adult level is every year, the National Book Festival puts out a list of children's books that features a title from all the states. And so one of our books gets on one of our award winners gets on that list every year. So an additional perk. Next slide please. So, we have a couple examples of books that have won the award in the past. The first one, Simpson's Sheep Won't Go to Sleep. I will say it definitely passed our unofficial kid test. It was very, it's a very appealing book. Bruce Arendt who is the author and illustrator is from Omaha. Stories about getting, you know, kids, animals, whoever to sleep at night are very popular stories. And this one is, I have to say it's just adorable. The different things they go through to get those sheep to go to sleep is very entertaining. So that one not only won the Children's Picture Book Award, it also took the cover illustration design award for that year also. The second title here is The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez, and it did win the Young Adult Award in 2011. This was a very interesting book. And even though it's from 2011, and the story actually takes place in 1961, I think it is still very applicable for our times today, and it would be a very good book discussion group. The main character, Lucia and her younger brother, Frankie, have grown up in Cuba. And it's 1961. Fidel Castro has taken over their middle class. They live in a town that has easy access to a beach. But people are being arrested and executed for even, you know, questioning maybe some of Castro's ideas or the method that he's using for instituting them. So a lot of people sent their children unaccompanied from Cuba to the United States, over 14,000 of them between 1960 and 1962. Some of them had family in the United States that could stay with others did not. Lucia and her brother did not have anyone in the United States. So they wound up on a landlocked farm in Nebraska, outside of Grand Island. So the story gives you a good perspective from the kid's view on, okay, you know, what are their parents, you know, struggling to protect them from. And here, you know, we wind up in this strange place with a totally different culture and language, and we don't know if we're ever going to see our parents again. What's going to happen to us. So I think it's just a really excellent book for kids to see that, hey, this is not a one time thing. It goes on continually. What can we do to help? So those are the some examples of our children and young adult winners. Thanks Deborah. So I am on the judging panel for the cover design and illustration awards, and it is probably slightly different than the other judging panels, we don't need quite as much time, because we're, we're just we're looking at the books. We're touching them, we're feeling them. So our judging process is just a little bit different, and the things that we consider a little bit different as well. So we always look for the Nebraska connection. But other than that we look for things like layout and formatting. What how much white space there is on the pages, how easy it is to read just visually the text and the font that's used, and the spacing so all those things are things we consider. If it is a children's picture book or a copy of a book is what I call them. You know, we look at the quality of those illustrations and the photography and how they've chosen to lay out those photographs. If it's a nonfiction book, like a textbook, which we've given awards to in the past, we look at how well they incorporate the text information with the visual information, and just its overall visual appeal, you know, it's made the images of judges made up of graphic designers and artists. So just if they look at it and they want to pick it up and look through it like that's a huge draw just how visually capturing something is. We also look for readability. If it is full of pictures, but find the text or you can't figure out how the text works with the pictures that's kind of an issue. We also look for that as well. And we also look for something that's cohesive. Something that isn't, you know, chopped up and jarring. We want a book's design to, you know, flow as you read it to kind of draw you from one page to the next. So we get all kinds of submissions for this category from, like I said, textbooks to coffee table photograph books to children's illustrations and poetry books. So it's kind of all across the map, what kind of books we're looking at. So we, we really try to pick something that we think is appealing. There's two kind of different ends of the spectrum. And these actually one in the same year, which I thought was interesting. Rodeo Nebraska is this really beautiful. I brought them with me. Really beautiful coffee table picture book. I say picture book, but it's full of these just beautiful color photographs, but they are also filled with great negative space around the text and the photographs. And we were just really impressed with its quality and the way it was constructed and the way it was laid out. So we thought everything about this book was just beautiful. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the fishes of Nebraska, which is a textbook and quite a text book as well. But the illustrations that they created to go in this book are detailed and just kind of phenomenal. Also, I mean, this is a book about fishes, which, well about fish, which in general is not really my thing, but just the illustrations and the details that they included in this book, we were really impressed with. So it won the award. It actually won an illustration honor. And yeah, just kind of all over the place as to what might win what we're looking at. And nothing's out of the running for us. So even if it's a textbook about fish, we will consider it. And in this case, it won. And they were so excited when they came for the awards. It was fabulous. Yes, all these professors from the university who had probably never imagined they would win an illustration award. I think you want a nonfiction award that year as well. That actually makes me want to like go and look at that book just to see, you know, what, you know, I want to see what's all about these fishes and see what these drawings are like. I know it's kind of amazing. I say this every year about the celebration, but hearing an author talk about their book and explain, you know, it's origin how they came about creating it always makes me want to read that book, regardless of what it's about. And that's one of the things I love about these awards. They are the books have no. There's no lane the books have to stay in. They could be all over the place. All right, I'm going to hand this over to Lisa, who is on the nonfiction judging panel. Hello, I'm Lisa Kelly and I work at the library commission with reference and interlibrary loan. My job title is director of information services, which means I get calls from technical salesman. So reference and library loan. And my team has been judging the nonfiction awards for quite some time. I can't recall about 20 years or so. But we really struggled to get a system for how to judge about 2025 books a year that are apples, bananas, compquats, oranges, papaya pineapple, it's cookbooks, it's genealogy books, it's textbooks, it's amazing books on every topic you can imagine and so the fruit salad is hard. And we for a while we were just picking one winner and one honor award and we felt we were shorting a lot of really great books. So if you want to go to the next slide, Tessa, we decided to judge them all and see what cream came to the top is the best way I can explain. So we go around our table and hold up a book, keep or discuss and discuss or not. And then all of those that have risen to the top, we discuss. And then these are the things that stand out for us and it's not terribly different from others, but a strong Nebraska connection. Sometimes that's just the publisher for us. And we look, we look very hard to see what that connection might be. The author's education one year one of our judges knew one of the authors, which was interesting it is a small state. The setting and material are all very important to us as reference librarians we need table of contents we want to index we want bibliography how did you prove this. So, amazingly, we have some books that don't have that. And for a nonfiction award that would be something that would be detrimental to the book. So we learned something new that's always the delight and Debra you brought that up as well. Was there a discovery did we know some oftentimes I've learned things about my state and I've lived here most all my life that I didn't know and already it leaps ahead in the judging process. Who would enjoy reading this book what age group. I've served on the one book one linking committee. And that's something we consider as well. What's the, what's the universality of this book or is it just going to be for about 16 people who are studying that as a doctoral topic. Would it be good in a library collection. Does it enhance a subject area. And again, would it be an excellent textbook on this. How well is it written, is it easily readable. Sometimes I think we dabbled for a bit in creative nonfiction as a category, and we've had some books like that that read so easily, and you forget that you're reading nonfiction. So it will appearance the beauty and the aesthetics of the book as test it is talking about to so it's not accidental that a book that wins our award will win tests is award as well the design award. So if you go to the next screen. We don't have set categories every year. Once the cream comes to the top, then we literally do assign a topic and a winner and it can be. We can have a winner and an honor book in the category depending if we're, we've got to and we're not sure, which is really the best. So sometimes we can have upwards of 10 awards in our category or four or it just depends what cream is in each category. So autobiography, biography, culture, essay, folklore, I think Roger Welsh has won that one. Historical biography, history, our immigration story award winners have been amazing. I can remember a couple of those that have just been really moving and so appropriate for us to learn now. Investigative journalism memoir natural history. Nebraska as place really says it all. What makes it this state what is unique to us. History, Nebraska spirit photography, and I think you know who are wonderful photographers are here in the state, their shoe ins when they enter reference travel true crime and wildlife have all been past awards. And so it doesn't mean we're going to have one of those each year it just means that's how we've designated books from year to year that have risen to the top is the cream of our category. So, next slide. So I do have a question. Oh, topics. So when you when someone nominates a book in nonfiction. They don't pick those subcategories, as we might call them they just say it's nonfiction and we think it's great. You guys decide it's going to become this category because of the content of what's been submitted. And I never know what we're going to have each year and I do think we have about 25 ish each year it's quite a stack to work through I don't know what your numbers are Tessa and Deborah how many do you have each year, roughly. It varies but we can get upwards of between 20 and I think usually it hangs between 15 and 20 but we've had over a couple times. How many do you receive annually, would you say, you know, I haven't been doing this as long as you guys have, but I would say on average, ours can fluctuate from just, you know, four or five submissions to, like you're saying 1015 so it just depends on the year and I think sometimes people forget about cover design and illustration as an award. So it occasionally is kind of an afterthought I think, but yeah, I don't think we get quite as many, especially not as many as nonfiction I know. Yeah, we get a lot and it, it always looks daunting every year every year I through the summer will all borrow and take home books and work our way through them and it. It always seems overwhelming every year and then when we get to the end I'm so delighted with what we accomplished and what we were able to achieve, but I feel the same angst at the beginning of the season when I send out my list of the team. And like Sally does we have an Excel spreadsheet with the categories so that we can check off what their connections are and their strengths are. So, you probably are familiar with Prairie Forge and unlike you I don't remember the years of these winners. But this is our current one book one Nebraska also, and the scrap metal drive of 1942 pitted county against county to help with the 1942 effort, because there was a shortage of steel. And Henry d'Orly, who we all think of as the man from the zoo was the man who helped organize this. Again, longtime Nebraska, and I didn't know any of these stories that already delights me and the other judges when we were talking about our state. So, Nebraska's gathered 67,000 tons of scrap metal in three weeks to help the war effort. And Tessa I'm not sure what you're hearing about this book in terms of one book one Nebraska but it was, it was delightful that we had already pre chosen something that was recognized by the state to be read. And we gave this the Nebraska spirit award. Now, because we really felt it exemplified something in addition to history that it showed something about the pluck of our citizens. And the POW camps. I knew that we had prisoners of war here, but I didn't know where Fort Robinson camp Scott's bluff and camp Atlanta during World War two again. The results and accounts are given in this book from soldiers and former POWs. And the way Nebraska treated these men who were held here is shown by some who chose to stay after the war was over. Quite a story for our state. And what what really delighted me was I had hired my handyman to do something. And it was this was highlighted in the newspaper said Lisa, have you heard of this book about POW camps. And so I thought it really brought home another vote for this book that he was interested in this too. And so this was an amazing book that we enjoyed learning about our history again during World War two. And then the New Deal bill, everyone's heard about that, but the federal writers project in the cornhusker state was quite an effort to bring together you'll enjoy this unemployed writers teachers and librarians to put together pamphlets and stories about Nebraska, producing guidebooks essay and promoting a national appreciation for America's history. And the people who came together to write these were famous people, amazing folks, and some that were just your maybe unknown to us by name, but what they did to put put together about our state and write about that as a part of the New Deal bill was quite amazing. And we gave this the Nebraska perseverance award because it really did take perseverance to get through this particular project and there were lots of stops and starts and are we going to be able to get it done. So those were the unique topics, and certainly others but three that I just picked out. So the next slide, Tessa. As a reference librarian I completely understand what it means to be a great reference book, but we have given this award and I remember one person who won that award not thinking it was cool at all. I don't understand when we said, This is amazing it's quintessential we hold this high and say this is the reference book on this topic, and he wasn't pleased at all. But for us, big honor. So the first and you can't really see but the Atlas of Nebraska is a big it's a huge book, it's stunning you would call it a coffee table book. It's making an almanac and an Atlas with beautiful photos. It talks about irrigation, Native American settlements, agriculture ventures voting records crime rates, all visually illustrated in this book. We all just sat there and looked at it hour after hour it's it's beautiful. It's from the University of Nebraska press, I believe, just a gorgeous amazing book. If you were looking for something from a wayward Nebraska to bring them back home. This would be it. The wildflowers guide to wildflowers by john for our who I believe is a game in parks employee does that sound familiar to you all, Deborah you recognizing that name. I know. Oh, yeah. I recognize as a photographer I think for game in parks. I don't know anything about that. It was published by the University of Iowa press, actually. But I remember the year we judge this. I held up the book and one person said, Why would we give this an award and every single one of us jumped down his throat and said, Are you kidding this book is amazing. I love it. It's arranged by color. So when you find your purple flower your pink flower your yellow flower, you're going to be able to find it because it's arranged all these flowers are arranged by color tabular format. It is amazing. It's the sort of thing I'd imagine in someone who does a lot of driving around the state in their car in the car door, so they can just grab it right there, because that is exactly the way that you would use it. So 174 wildflowers. Just a brilliant book. So if you have folks for whom this would be an interest. This is the book and it had been out of print for a while. And this came back bigger. I just looked him up in our, the Nebraska authors database. So I gave him a part commission and that Nebraska land magazine. He wrote as well. And yeah, this is that book was in 1990 original publication date, I guess, was it that old. His name would be known to Nebraskans which gives him some gravitas credibility to say of course I would trust him he works with these folks. And according to the database as well he just passed away. Oh my goodness. March 30 2021. I missed that. Oh my goodness. Well, as an honor to him he's left wonderful work behind and like the fish book the illustrations are amazing the photography, you would know what you're looking at. And again to the beautiful books the Nebraska post office murals which is a book I brought home. It's amazing it has fold out pictures of the 12 murals from 12 posts office in our state. Geneva, Minden, they picked 12 posts office for murals that were identified from again the WPA project to have murals in the post office and I don't know about you but when I think of my down down post office it has a smell. It has a specific smell like this book brings me right back there. These amazing photos. And then they're also published is how the artist transferred their work to wall to big wall and their sketches and all of the effort that they went to to get from small to large, which for me was beautiful to look at and see the style of the work on this cover. Many of the murals are in that style and stunning. And this was published by University of Nebraska or University in Nebraska press at the State Historical Society, a beautiful book. And then I just have one more slide. This just resonated with us. Ron whole the backstage was an autobiography he was, if you would recognize his name from any TV from those of us who grew up around here. When you're in rural Nebraska, at least when I visited my relatives any T is a lifeline, because my grandma only had two channels and any T was one, and we watched a lot of a lot of it. I think of any T is such a Nebraska element and part of our state. And so for someone who was involved in the history of any T to write his stories and his background. To me I found fascinating and he was born in a brothel in South Dakota and got off to a very auspicious start. He is a bit of a name dropper he's met a lot of celebrities he's worked with military television and other television. It's quite a story. And so on the basis of what I found this we found this quite interesting. The rhythm boys of Omaha Central is a story from 1968. And all black basketball team for Omaha Central. The first appearance at a state level and there were racial tensions when George Wallace made a campaign stop in Omaha, and things went terribly south and it's not as it's a story that doesn't sound different from the headlines today and it was 1968. The books and the that we review. For me, mean we haven't really come a distance that things haven't changed and to lighten up the new Prairie kitchen was a cookbook. So again the calm quads and bananas and oranges that we put together. This was a book that highlighted seasonal recipes from chefs in the Great Plains so Nebraska is one of the states included and it interviews chefs. The market, the products that they're using why they're using them and recipes. And this, this book made a big splash I think I remember other friends who love cookbooks talking about it. So we wanted to highlight what we have available in terms of produce and agriculture, other than maybe meet. It certainly involves a lot of produce. So those were three notable books and I know I picked more than the rest of you did. Again, I get more because nonfiction is a big category. That's been my experience judging nonfiction books and what I've loved is meeting the authors who've come to the book festival and talking to them. Any artist or writer wants to hear how their work has made a difference and I like to make that connection and say you moved us. We learned things. We so enjoyed your book. They just glow and that closing up that connection to meet the authors has been a real joy so I missed that last year and I hope we can do that again this year. Um, I had a question for you Lisa. So you in the nonfiction judges get so many books. Do you read every single book or do you divide them amongst yourselves how does that work. There are people who read the books that they know that they're going to be really interested in. I don't think I'm telling tales to say that we read every book start to finish it would be a monumental effort I think we do our very best to to touch each book, look at the content of each book, dig in I have one person who she reads several through the summer. I take some home, take some home every weekend and look through them. So to answer your question do we read them all cover to cover. I don't think so but we do our very best to familiarize I sell ourselves with the content. So we get a good feel. I cannot imagine having to read 25, 20 books just in that short, you know, what three month period we give you so that would be a monumental task. Right. So, it's less than three months. We basically have to lie in August. And then we start calling the judge or judges for their selections. That's what I mean I have such angst every year when I look at the pile and go how are we going to do it how, and we always do, but it is a testament to slogging through. Just to relate back to Lisa's comment on meeting the authors. We've had the pleasure at the National Book Festival to have two of our authors whose books have been featured to come and spend some time at the Nebraska booth. And they Nancy Plain and Paula Wallace, they have, they interacted with the kids who stopped by our booth so well. They're just so pleased, you know, to get the feedback from people, and to talk with their readers it's just really neat. Yeah, I agree Debra. Krista, do we have any questions we need to address before we, we only have about 10 minutes left. Right. Yeah, we got about 10 minutes left. Yeah. No more none at the moment. But if anybody does have any questions go ahead and type in your question section anything you want to know more about any thoughts you have on any of the books or any of the categories or anything to do with the National Book Festival. Yeah, we do have a suggestion that someone wants to know actually just gave me and of course they want to know what to award winners receive for the recognition. Sure. Yeah. We invite the winners in all categories whether it's a winner or an honor book to present and receive their award at the Nebraska celebration of Nebraska books every year. Last year was different we asked them for a video submission of their, I'm going to call it an acceptance speech. But so at that award they get a physical award that says they're a Nebraska book award winner they also get a certificate and then we always create these gold stickers book seals that say Nebraska Book Award winner that we give to the winning authors, and that they can purchase more of if they want to, but the recognition they get to put those on their books if they do a reprint of their book will send you a graphic that you can have as part of your printing process when you republish your book. So some of that. Yeah, I've seen that on some of them. Yeah. But yeah, we just want to make sure people know about these books from Nebraska authors or about Nebraska and from Nebraska publishers that's that's our goal is to just get the information out that these are what we think are some of the best books to write for that year, because I mean we do this every year, and there are always great books. authors can then promote the fact that they can use that and their marketing for their own books for years on and you know you see that all the time, winner of the whatever Nebraska book award. You don't have the opportunity to visit with these authors like Lisa and Tessa have mentioned, and purchase the books at the celebration of Nebraska books so you do get that opportunity to interact with them before and after the actual celebration. And that's always a treat to. Yeah. Amazon will list all the awards and I'm always pleased to see a Nebraska book award. I'm in an Amazon listing. I when I was looking my books up again there they were and I thought I helped to give that award. Very nice to see that. Especially if the authors have a connection to Nebraska. They are just, I think it just feels so good to have your state, you know your home recognize your work, and like Lisa was saying hearing about how it has influenced people or, you know just had an effect on them that I hear from the people all the time just how, especially those who have moved away, that they are just kind of tickled to have received this award from us because they, they love their home state and they, they're so proud. Yeah. That's all we had for comments right now but yeah if anybody just want to ask anything or share anything go ahead and type in the questions or raise your hand and I can unmute you and you can. I can ramble on a little while we wait for if anybody has a question type in. So, for more information, you can find a full list of past Nebraska book award winners at the link on the screen. If you have any questions about submitting a book if you don't think it fits the exact parameters or you're questioning that you can always contact us and just ask. We will look it up and we'll let you know what we think. It doesn't have to be an author or a publisher that submits a book. Okay, anyone can submit a book. It is most often publishers, or they're the authors themselves but as long as you're willing to send us three or four books and you want to pay that $40 be. You can. We're, we're completely open to anybody nominating books. And just lastly, I think that our literary heritage has been based on the monuments of our willy cather and john nighard and Mario sandos and, and I think this continues that literary excellence. I'm so pleased that we're a part of the Center for the book that that is an affiliation of ours, where I will friends have the IO workshop which sort of delutes where people come from and their or their heritage. And these are really Nebraska books and these are our folks writing these books, and it gives me a real pride, because when I travel I'll ask, Who are your authors, who are your folks, and they struggle, but I don't think any good Nebraska would struggle to say, who are literary heritage is based on, and these be a couple of names off the top of their head yeah, can use that tradition. I'm looking at, not all Nebraska natives here in this panel, but, but you, but I would be able to. I'm not I'm not a Nebraska native no I just I just moved here like 20 years ago but I know these names now, because I'm being here. Yeah, absolutely. Christie, where are you from. I'm originally from Montana. But I've been here 20 plus years to so yes I can battle off the names and it's so exciting to see the celebration of these books you know when people check them out at the library. If you have a humanities program that supports one of these books or highlights it that is just another way to reach the audiences and get people excited. So I love those partnerships with the libraries. So, we just keep getting the word out and it's, it's really exciting. Thank you for all that the Center for the book does. I play a small part but you all do much more and I think it stamps us again as caring about our writers and our, our history as writers. It's our pleasure to do it. So did you want to talk and a more a little bit about the celebration or what that usually entails or what it might entail, considering what we did last year. Sure. Yes, I know you talked earlier you just recently snagged the date on our football by week so Yeah, so you've heard a little bit about it throughout this presentation but every year we have an award ceremony and when we can do it in person we hold it at the History Nebraska Museum in downtown Lincoln, and they are they graciously allow us to do that and we're really excited to be hopefully back there again this year. Last year we did an all online celebration because we couldn't meet in person and just physically it wouldn't work. So we asked authors, they're winning authors to submit videos of them talking about their book and just letting people know about their submission and it was great. I've heard a lot of people say how much they enjoyed being able to, you know, see every single author, kind of talk about their book, when in the past maybe they haven't been able to make it to the actual event. So that's kind of something we're hoping to incorporate again this year, either a video submission if you can't physically be there, but also recording of the entire ceremony so that we could publish it later and allow people to take part that way. And I think was this also last year, Matt Mason our state poet did some of the award presentation so to speak, MC I don't know what we would. Yeah, we always ask that say, I'm gonna say a job or a fringe benefit I'm not sure what he would call it. Our state poet we ask them to MC this book awards and he did a fabulous job. While Hanson has had that honor in the past while when she was state poet and now it's math turns so he introduces the authors and gives a little promo to them and kind of hikes up their book a little bit and presents them with the award along with Christy Becky favor part of our Nebraska Center for the book board, depending on whether it's the guests key or Bennett award and things like that. Also at the celebration we always announced the next year's one book one Nebraska choice so that's kind of always a fun. That's our last thing we unveil what the next year's book is going to be. And we usually have a presentation about the current one book one Nebraska as well. So, kind of tie it up. The current year and the on upcoming year as well. And we did that to for the one what one Nebraska program. So, we didn't talk about just looking at the page here. You guys talked about the categories that you work with for the Nebraska book awards there is a poetry category as well. Yes. Yes, there's poetry and fiction. We couldn't judges weren't available to talk today about those specific categories. But I would think they would say very similar things. They might first slightly different things in their winners but the process would be the same. And so the videos from the 2020 event those are those are available for anyone to watch if they still wanted to go and look at them. Yes, those are still available on the Nebraska Library Commission's YouTube page, or channel, I think they call it. So, yep, those are still up and it's really great we've, we've got a, we've gotten a lot of good feedback from having that available. It doesn't look like any other desperate questions have come in while we've been chatting here at the end. If anybody does need to ask something right now go ahead and type it in. Otherwise, there's tests as contact info if you do have any questions or anything more about the book awards. Any last words from all of you that you want to wrap up today. I'm going to hop over to our Nebraska Center for the book web page. I'm going to just go to our awards page. So you can find out about the guest key Mildred Bennett, the Nebraska book awards, all on this one page, or you can dive into each individual page, but we do have this nomination page. You can see where you can see those nomination forms for each award category. And we really, yeah, we want to see your nominations. This is not about what we don't nominate books as judges we just look at what you have nominated so if you don't put that book in front of us, we can't. And so that's really the first hurdle is getting those books submitted so that we have a chance to, you know, look at them and give them their due. I guess that would be my, my parting words is. Yeah, you have to nominate them in order for them. Yeah, we wanted to talk about how many submissions you get there and everybody should know there are so many books published every year, we don't necessarily catch all of them just ourselves and to know that books exist. And so sharing with us is how to make sure we're aware of it and other readers are aware of them as well. We do recruit also sometimes I know Sally and I find books throughout children's books throughout the year and the author has some Nebraska connection but maybe they've moved away. And we say, they should be nominated. Well, no, we threaten to okay, take up a pool and you know, collect the $40 and make a submission ourselves but I would say hey, hey, you know, you're gonna want to do this. Yeah, Sally has contacted authors and publishers and publicists and sometimes it just gets us nowhere. So, yeah. I mean, yeah. If we see a book. Yeah, like if we see press about a book or an author will kind of keep those clippings and that information and we try to send out an email to those authors and publishers during this submission period that we're in right now. But yeah, we miss things and we don't have a list of every book with a Nebraska tie that was published 2020. So, we do really rely on people knowing about a book and sending us that information. All right, I think we can wrap up for today that if you guys have shared everything you would like to nails. All right. Thank you so much and I will mention here to I could have mentioned earlier, the slides that Tesla was showing, she already sent them to me will they will be available with the recording. And also we have links to the Center for the book web page here. I'm going to pull presenter control back to my screen so I can show you go. There's a page for our session here. You can see we have a link to the book awards here from the description this this page will become our archive page where we do link to the book awards and the recording. We'll have the link to the slides. So that will wrap it up today show. Thank you everybody for attending. Thank you to all of you for coming joining us this morning. Lisa, Tessa, Deborah, Christy, this was great. We'll have to learn more about our book awards. Hopefully we'll get more submissions. I don't know if you want more Book Street. Everybody always wants more books to read. So this is our main website for Encompass Live. If you just Google or use your search engine of choice to type in Encompass Live. So far, we're the only thing called that on the internet. Nobody else is allowed to use that name. So you'll find our homepage here or main page for their upcoming shows but I wanted to show you here is where our archives are available. We'll have the link to the recordings at the top of the list. So there's last weeks. Today's will be right there should be up and ready with everything processed by some time tomorrow. Everybody who registered for today's show and attended today's show will get an email from me letting you know that it's ready and available. We'll have a link to the recording on our library commission YouTube channel and a link to the slides. This is our full archives for a particular topic if you're wondering if we did do a show on something. You can search the full archives or the most recent 12 months if you want to limit it just to the current year. That is because this is the full archives of our show and I'm not going to scroll all the way to the bottom because that would just think we do. So these are full archives going back to when we first started encompass live which was in January 2009. So there's over 10 years where we attend 12 years worth of information of recordings here. But we are librarians we always keep things out there for historical purposes as long as we have somewhere to host these recordings they will be available. So, but just do pay attention to the original broadcast date when you do watch any of our recordings. Some information may stand the test of time book reviews. Some, you know, interviews maybe, but some things may become outdated or old resources or services may have changed or disappeared links may be broken because things have moved around. So just be aware of that when you are watching a particular show to what the original broadcast date was. Also post notifications to and you say I've got a link here our Facebook page and come to slide does a Facebook page here. You can give us a like over there if you want to keep up on what we're doing we post reminders his reminder to login today show information about presenters when our recordings are ready for previous shows so if you do like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. Otherwise, we do use the end comp live little abbreviated hashtag to post to various other social media, Twitter, Instagram, not sure where else we're at. So you can keep an eye on this there as well. So that will wrap up today show. I hope you join us next week when our topic, it is the last Wednesday of the month next week, which means it is pretty sweet tech day. This is the last month. Amanda sweep the library commissions technology innovation comes on to talk about something tech related. She's always the last Wednesday. So she will be here next week to talk about computers and libraries 2021. They actually was an online version of computers and libraries this earlier this year and she's going to talk about some of the things she learned there so if you're into tech want to see what happened at that conference. Thank you for that show. And any of our other upcoming shows you can see I've got some almost all the May dates filled in. Keep an eye on there for new ones being scheduled. So thank you everybody for being here today. Thank you all to all the presenters and hopefully we'll see you on a future episode of encompass live. Bye bye.