 Hey, hello, and good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's okay. We do record the show as we are doing today, and it will be available for you to watch later at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our show recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries, so similar to your state library. So we provide services and training and resources and grants to all types of libraries in the state. So you will find shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, historical societies, blah, blah, blah. Really, our only criteria is that something to do with libraries. We do book reviews, interviews, mini-training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We do bring in guest speakers from all across the country to speak on Encompass Live, but we also have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that come and join us. And today it is, I can't believe it, it's the end of the month, it's the end of November. Where did it go? Where did November go? Oh my gosh. And so it's the last Wednesday of the month, which means it is pretty sweet tech day, yay. That is the last Wednesday of the month, every month Amanda Sweet, who is our Technology Innovation Librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission, good morning Amanda. Good morning. She joins us to talk about something tech related. We do have other shows on at other days that are also techy as well, tech focused, but you can always guarantee that the last Wednesday of the month will always be Amanda and something tech related. So if you are the tech person or interested in technology related type of things at your library, I guess type of thing related, keep saying that, this is the show for you. And today she's going to be talking about Internet Librarian, the Internet Librarian conference that just happened last month, yes October online conference, used to be an in-person conference in Monterey, California. We both have attended it previously, but has been switched to being their online version of their conference. I don't believe they'll probably be going back to in-person sadly. Well, Computers and Libraries is still in-person in, I think it's March this year. Yeah, it's usually in the spring, yeah, and they might try to do like one in-person, one virtual and get like best of both worlds, but exactly. Yeah, Internet Librarian and Computers and Libraries are both conferences done by Information Today and they're very similar. They were originally East Coast, West Coast kind of thing, I always thought about. Yeah. Internet Librarian was held in the fall in Monterey, California and Computers and Libraries in the spring in Washington, D.C. area. So kind of nice, I liked it was kind of a split down the middle, anyone on the east side of the country go to one, the west side can go to the other one, and we're dead in the middle, I can pick whichever one I want to go to, so I kind of bounced back and forth, but since COVID, you know, things went to being remote and being virtual, sorry, but they brought back Computers and Libraries in-person, but have stuck with the virtual version for Internet Librarian for now, which honestly seems like a pretty good setup just because, oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that they're doing, I think we need to, I mean, we've been doing this show 15 years now, around 15, 16 years, 2009. Can I take, yeah. Yeah, it's something insane like that. But I'm glad that places are doing either a hybrid or something like this. Yeah. The last few years have shown that people, not even during times of desperate need of it, it's just very convenient for people to have something virtual to attend when they cannot attend something in-person. Yeah. There's just too many people in the world that are librarians, I mean, in our field, in all fields, I'm sure, that don't have the money, don't have the time to go travel to somewhere. And so now that these virtual events have become more prevalent over the last few years, I'm glad some places people are sticking with them in some way because so many more people have been able to attend. People who can do those reasons couldn't do it for medical or health reasons, physically not being able to travel, social anxiety issues, things like that, not being able to attend in large groups and things. Or rural, like rural areas where the airport is just way too far to be able to get somewhere. Or you have to take like three connecting flights just because there's never a direct. Yes. Those yes. And the rural people, I thought you were going to say the rural people where you are, you're a single person library. That yeah, there's that too. If you leave and go somewhere, the library shuts down. And that is not something that you can take lightly in some communities, no matter what you're going to. So be able to jump on one of these or to watch recordings afterwards is, I think, amazing. And I'm so glad that places are sticking, sticking with virtual versions of things. Yeah. So now that we've gotten that out of our system. Let's talk about what happened at Internet Librarian. Amanda, you attended. I don't know if you I don't recall that you present this one again or. Yeah, as well. So I presented at this one. And if you do actually want to go to computers and libraries in D.C. coming up in March, I'll be doing two sessions and a workshop for that one. So good times. And I think we I think the commission offers a discount for you. Yes. Yes. And I think even for Internet Librarians, even though it's virtual, there is still a registration fee. Yeah. Yes, check our website when it gets if we haven't when it gets closer to I'll double check myself later. Susan, I already put that out or. I don't we do a discount over here. So there's always a discount to these events. I will look it up right now so we can make sure everyone knows. So I think it. Yes, we just posted about in the beginning of November, computers and libraries 2024 conference, March 12th, March 14th. Cool. It's in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia. I say Washington, D.C., because it's in that area, but it's Crystal City, Virginia. And to the like the Smithsonian Museum super easily. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So there is discounted pricing, yes, for the conference. Cool. I will so you can find that on our library commission website. Yep. So what before so so that'll be for next fall or next spring. But let's talk about what happened at Internet Librarian last month. Cool. So this one was coordinated by Jane Darce, Jane Diasart and Brian Pitchman. They do an awesome job of kind of like doing a good selection of different sessions and kind of mixing stuff up. Bride's been on the phone many times before too. Yeah, he's awesome. Then so this time every single year, there's always like preset tracks for the different for every single different conference. But because I kind of look at the conference through the lens of technology and like I'm a little biased. I do tech stuff. So I always pluck out like my own yes, right? You know, like no one can ever go to every session. And even when everything's recorded, you'd have to spend like your entire life just revealing through every recording. So I just kind of picked out the main kind of key topics that jumped out to me. So in this case, chat GPT was everywhere. It is. Yeah. Yeah. So there were quite a few sessions that were about chat GPT in different contexts, like a lot of different academic library settings, a few public library settings. And then it also kind of braided together with how a mixed reality is changing the way libraries are able to offer services. And there then that kind of blended into ways that other emerging tech like Internet of Things and virtual reality and all that fun stuff is kind of changing the way that we do things. But then that kind of blood into how do you actually deal with the rapid change? That's a result of technology. How do you help prepare your staff? How do you help prepare yourself? How do you help kind of explore and understand what's available, what's out there? And then how do you actually deal with that change over time without? And there were a few sessions about how this happened really well, a few sessions about people talking about whoops, my bad. I kind of screwed that up, but here's how I you might not want to do it. So those are always kind of helpful. And then so once you kind of figured out how to deal with the change of that new and emerging technology, there's also the kind of ever present need to upgrade your digital presence overall. And so there were quite a few sessions about libraries that have been kind of holding out and making the changes to their digital infrastructure. Like they have been hanging on to their old databases. They had been hanging on to their old website structure. Their social media was in a big need for a revamp. So I love the session about the library that just went whole hog into it and they went all digital. So I wasn't expecting them to actually just go full on digital. But that was I believe it was Bryant and Stratton College that they changed their their libraries over from having a print collection to a primarily all just being a learning space. They got rid of their print collection, not entirely, but almost entirely. I remember hearing about that. It was there. Yeah. And uproar and just major serious discussion about that. And other places have gone that lean that route as well. And there's a lot of side eye and like, oh, yeah. It's like, so sure about that, you know. Don't know if it's time to jump head first in there. Just yeah. Yeah. And so like that session was the Bryant and Stratton people. And but then I later on read a few articles to see if anyone else was doing that. And you're right that it blew up for a few people. There was in Virginia is where it was a huge controversy. Controversy where. It was the way that they framed it because the college, the university in Virginia said that we listened to all of our student faculty feedback and we decided to switch over to more digital resources and get rid of our print collections. But then all the students said, you didn't listen to us. You surveyed, you sent out a survey online and you got about 500 responses, which is like a fraction of the overall population, not enough for a full study. Then you just said, we listened to you and now we're going to be getting rid of this. And then we asked, we asked, OK, now we do it. We asked, yeah. And then the admin came back and said, well, it's also because we don't have the budget to stay open. And it's like, well, lead with that. And so then in Virginia, they actually got a the person who was leading the charge there got a vote of no confidence and like the entire like the students and faculty letter revolt against it. And so I've been tracking that. And most of the reason I've been tracking it is because from this session, I wanted to find out who else was trying to do it and to what extent libraries might want to remove their print collection if it's just not getting circulation, switch over to digital and find more of like a hybrid presence. So some of the other sessions were about how to incorporate more of those digital tools to build more of a hybrid experience because I mean, right now here in Nebraska, it's really cold outside. I mean, I went to school in Minnesota. I felt colder, but it's still no one wants to go out in that. So libraries just get less use when people just don't want to go outside in the cold. And so it's you can reach more people if you have those hybrid services where people have the option to go in and get their needs met of like actually seeing and talking to real human people. But if you just want to need to access resources, check out an audiobook or do your thing. Sometimes you just don't want to leave the house. And sometimes the sessions that were in this conference, a lot of them were talking about how libraries are getting more engaged in digital skill training, tech training and how a lot of the people that are taking those courses and want to learn Excel, want to upskill all their everything to get a job or get a better job. They either can't get childcare, can't afford childcare yet. Their schedules are haywire because they're on all different kinds of shifts. So they need to be able to have that online learning option. And the library is stepping up their game to offer that online learning learning option. Because schools are overloaded too and libraries are helping out a lot with that. And it's a whole thing. So the last little trend that I'll cover in here is a lot of people just want recommendations of different tools to try and they want to know like which when you're talking about like the artificial intelligence mixed reality and you want to try either implementing this in your own library by offering library services that use that or if you want to build a makerspace that lets your community explore this new technology, you just want to know which tools you should get and you want to know how to start implementing that. So that last trend is just a bunch of tools and awesome gadgety goodness. So cool. And my little robot chillin in the corner. See, he's not as scary as he looks. He's just tired. So the first one is that people are freaking out about ChatGPT. It's been in all the headlines. It's been in it's everywhere. So in a lot of the sessions that were in this they covered a lot of academic libraries. And there's a reason for that. It's because academic libraries and university libraries and really giant, huge libraries have more resources to experiment with this. Because right now, ChatGPT is relatively new and it's still in the experimentation phase. People are exploring, figuring out what works, what doesn't. And a lot of the smaller libraries, they don't have the staffer resources to be able to do a lot of that experimentation. So they're waiting for the bigger libraries and the university libraries and the businesses to start creating the tools and experimenting so that the smaller libraries can just use something out of the box, which it's happened with every single technology ever so far. It happened with databases. It happened with software as a service. Software as a service that happened with everything. So a lot of the sessions now, academic, they want to know how to integrate it into classrooms. They want to know how to integrate it into. And for those who don't know, I I'm willing to bet a lot of you have heard ChatGPT, but before I keep saying it like eight million more times, I should actually say what it is. So I can't just assume so ChatGPT is a tool that it is able to draw data from the worldwide web and wherever you tell it to draw data from. And it's great at summarizing information. It's great at sounding like a real human in a conversational style setting. And the only reason that ChatGPT works is because of something called natural language processing. And natural language processing is a type of artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning that uses a whole boatload of different examples of human language to be able to teach a computer to sound and talk like a real human. So it's the way your Alexa works. It's the reason that you can talk into your phone and ask for the weather and it will give you the information that it's looking for. And it's because all these different tools have access to millions of different conversations that have happened before. Millions of social media posts, millions of articles. So when you ask, you can now go on to the ChatGPT tool and just ask it, how do I set up a business? And it'll walk you through the steps very realistically about how you can actually start a business. But it's actually pulling the information from the World Wide Web. But that also means that ChatGPT sometimes lies because not all the information on the World Wide Web is accurate. So but and ChatGPT also just learns patterns. It doesn't pull. It doesn't always pull from specific sources. So a lot of the sessions that they were talking about, they talked about how ChatGPT is a lot more reliable when you tell ChatGPT, don't pull from the World Wide Web. I'm going to give you these curated resources. I know these are true. We're going to pull just from this. Ignore what's out there. And so that's how libraries have been using ChatGPT to make it easier for people to navigate their library catalog. Academic and research libraries have made it easier for people to locate and summarize articles when they're writing a research paper. Brian actually pointed me toward a tool called a 4AI. Don't ask me if that's how you actually pronounce it, but it's this really cool tool that's on AppSumo. AppSumo is a website where you can get new and emerging apps and tools for a lower cost because the developers want to try it. But a 4AI is a ChatGPT style tool that you can upload like, say, a series of web URLs or PDFs or documents. And then you can go into a search box and say, grab the resources for how to start a business or summarize this topic. And it will pull from the information that you tell it to pull from. But it will also spit out source resources. It says it'll summarize it, but then it'll say, here's where this came from. And I like that. So finding the tools that actually link over to where that source information is important. Because if you use ChatGPT just out in the wild, it doesn't tell you where it came from. It could have come from anywhere. It doesn't have to be anywhere. Yeah. So I asked it to summarize. I asked it to summarize artificial intelligence. What is artificial intelligence? So I got the summary and because I'm a weirdo, I've read all these articles and I built these like different tools to summarize it. I knew that that summary most likely came from these specific sources. So I read through that the articles of like the top 10 Google search results and that's basically the phrasing wasn't even always that different. The phrasing was incredibly, incredibly similar from like those top five, 10 Google search results. And that might change over time. ChatGPT might step it up. But it was more or less how we're supposed to adapt to as a library, leveraging this technology rather than just disparaging it because a lot of the public is probably going to say that we don't need libraries anymore. We can just use ChatGPT to find the information. But that's not true. Libraries are adapting and libraries also need to make sure that people know that you can't blindly trust ChatGPT and you can't blindly trust the Internet. So that's not a new problem. It's just a bigger problem now that we have this another thing. Yes. Right. Yeah. So on the note of ChatGPT. Why do you need ChatGPT also came up, which was the biggest reason for it was to make it easier to navigate a broad range of resources. So, for example, here in the Library Commission, we have Nebraska Access. And some of those are link over to business resources. Some of them link over to there's a bunch of different topics. So you could actually use ChatGPT and like a little chat box down there to summarize and connect people over to specific resources to make it easier to navigate that. So right now, one of the biggest problems that we have for using and promoting Nebraska Access is that it's a lot of stuff. And you have to be familiar with the topics and categories and resources already to be able to know all that exists there and then be able to get the most use out of it. But ChatGPT just lets people interact with a tool using regular language. To be able to find out if what they're looking for is in there and then pull open and link to the direct sources. So that leads to that top point, which is you only need technology if it actually solves a real problem. So we're paying attention to like all this different technology and every single thing that comes across the headlines. But unless it's a real pressing problem for your library or for your community, you don't need most technology. That's a standard thing. I think so many people need to understand. I mean, I know we're here pushing technology in your session and in your library, but don't use tech just for the sake of using it. You need to have a need for it first to go from that side of does our community, do our users need some need, are they lacking in something? Do we have a problem to solve? Right. Find the technology that may solve that problem. You don't find the technology. You go out and grab technology just because it's the new buzzword and then create a problem for it to solve. That's the backwards way of doing it. I've seen people looking for a nail. And now everything's a nail. No, no. Do you have a nail? Then you need to find a hammer for it. Yes. Right. So that's actually, I'll come back to the tech playground thing because I like tech playgrounds. But so you need to be able to understand which technology is available. So you need to know that virtual reality and artificial intelligence and all its flavors and forms exists. And you need to know that Internet of Things exists. But you don't need to do, you just need to know and understand the basics enough to explore. So people have been starting tech playgrounds. The session that I've seen it done really hardcore like and I've seen it done more reasonable introductory like. So the session that was in here and I'm just going to remind myself the title Studio X, Studio X was the one that did like this really hardcore virtual reality mixed virtual reality augmented reality mixed reality studio called Studio X that was baked into their university that university built partnerships with the, with the academic departments within the university and with community members and they actually baked it into the community. So they brought in high school students. They connected over to local businesses. They connected over to anyone and everyone who had like some sort of stake in mixed reality. And they talked about a lot of the, and actually we use a lot of the same tools. So they used the meta headsets. And here in the commission, we actually circulate those. So it's sort of a new way. It's two different ways of doing a tech playground. There's is like the giant baked in use of they have, they have some free and low cost equipment and they have some friccishly expensive equipment like the hollow lens to and like the new meta pro, which is it's a lot more costly. It's more expensive to maintain. It's for whatever reason, a nightmare to actually purchase. I actually looked at getting a hollow lens too, but they make you jump through hoops to even order it. And then getting the developer kit to maintain it is like $2,000 a year for subscription. At least it was when I looked at it. So that's the expensive way to do it. And that is really worth it if you know that there are enough problems facing your organization or facing your community that could be solved with mixed reality. But if you look at your community or your library and say, I have one session that I want to do with mixed reality, we're going to build a scavenger hunt. And we're going to have people go through and learn how to learn about sustainable building using this XR tool. Then you don't need a $1,000 thing or a $10,000 thing. You probably just need your smartphone and an app. And so that's where I kind of jumped down to the start free experiment and find funding later. Because most of the stuff, most of this, these tools, they have free options that people just don't know about. And people have this thought in their mind that says, if I want to use virtual reality or mixed reality, I need to save up a whole ton of money because otherwise I'm not going to be able to do it. But that's not true. You can experiment and prototype using pretty much just your smartphone. And if you're in Nebraska and you can actually check out a virtual reality headset and experiment with it for like 30 days. So you don't actually have to pay for it in advance. You can use that as an experimentation tool. And this is the way to test out. I mean, I just said earlier, don't just grab the technology because it's the cool thing, but figure out a way to test it out. Yes. Right. Don't force it into your programming just because it's the cool thing. Yeah. That's all these tech things we loan out from here. And our regional systems do. If you're not in Nebraska, check your state or systems or something. They might have a similar program where you can just borrow something temporarily to test it out before you do commit fully. Yeah. And. Yeah, right. So I use this as the example, the studio X that just did a session, but there's also other universities that have similar services like here in Nebraska. University Nebraska Lincoln now has the Johnny Carson center for emerging media arts, which I'm amazed that I remembered that because it is a really long title. But they have, they actually have a virtual reality. Augmented reality mixed reality studio. And they just launched this new service where they will do consultations with different organizations and they'll do consultations with businesses and they even have the option to like turn your project into a class project so that you can develop it, test it and kind of start building it out. And you can start interacting with their faculty and bring your students in to start experimenting with this stuff. So that's like that's here in Lincoln. I'm sure that there's like a whole bunch of other universities and other states that have similar things. So this is the one that was in this session. But look around, you might actually have something like that and not know it. How many people know that the Johnny Carson center for emerging media arts is actually even available as a resource here. I didn't. Right. Yeah. And so you the universities are changing a lot. They're adapting so that they're more community based. And like back when I was in school, the university was actually locked down so that services were only available to university students. You weren't and there are some university maker spaces where those policies are locked down where the public can't use those tools. It can only be enrolled students, but there are more places like this that are saying, you need to get out in the community. One, if we want more students, we actually need to make our tools available so that people can try it, know that it exists and know why they would actually need a degree or courses in this technology. And so making this open to the community is what recruits more people into the university. And the university is also the, they know that they're part of an ecosystem now. They know that if they, they need to be able to make this new technology available to local businesses and organizations so that those businesses will create more jobs using that technology, the more businesses that create more jobs and more students they'll have down the line. So you can, you won't have more students unless you have jobs that you can say that they're going to go into. And this all starts with the innovation process. So universities have to actually cultivate those relationships with businesses if they want more students later. If Johnny Carson actually wants to exist 10 years from now, those jobs need to happen. And people need assistance with the innovation to test and experiment and get those jobs going. And it all starts with start free, find funding later, which is half the reason that I started the tech kits of the mail because people use those for K through 12, but they also use them with adults. Like I've gotten emails from like STEM clubs that said, we use this for such and such, or I gotten them from, I got some people using them for cool stuff. I should have actually kept it all in a folder and organized it better, but I didn't. But so the last thing on here was ethics is a thing. So a lot of people were focused on how does this technology work? What is the capability of this technology? But then there's a whole new collection of jobs. There's a collection of people that are focused on how can we use this stuff in a way that does more good than harm? How can we make sure that we're reaching different demographics equally and no one is left out of the innovation process? How can we make sure that technology is representing all the voices instead of just a few? And how can we make sure that this design process remains human instead of just being all for profit or all for like a using humans like a giant hamster experiment? Which I mean, honestly is kind of social media. We have no idea still what social media does to people in the long run, but you have to use it and then study it, research it and find out what it actually did. Welcome to Hamster the Wheels. And so the other and actually I'll go to that one later. So after each one of the different trends, I also have a slide that shows that spotlight some of the sessions that I pulled a lot of this stuff from. Some of the same information kind of jumps across different, like the same like across different sessions. So some of it is just a summary. I mean, that's just kind of happens. And I'll, so if you're wondering about the tools and resources for this, I just put one big slide at the end just so you can have one. It's all in one spot. Right. And I'll, this would be a good time to mention that you will have access to, we'll have a link to these to the Google slides that Amanda has here when the recording is posted. So you all have access to that afterwards. And so the next set of this is that you in this side of it, we learned how this technology is creating change and the capabilities of it chaos of innovation and all of that. But now we know that technology needs to remain human. So we need to help people actually adapt to that change. And to be able to kind of reset what their basic skills look like. There's a, there's a new digital literacy, there will always be a new digital literacy, but now they're incorporating artificial intelligence and how to build an app and how to, how to understand how technology is impacting society. All of these are the new basic skills, but you can't learn everything all at one time. Nevertheless, what are the most important problems facing you personally facing your organization and facing your community so that you know what your library staff needs to focus on and what should be learned. And then understanding that as technology changes rapidly, you're probably going to have to unlearn a couple things that you just learned. Because stuff changes. Like, right now everyone's learning that chat GBT isn't always completely reliable. They're learning that chat GBT doesn't naturally link back to its source information. But five or 10 years from now that might be different. They might improve the tool to the point where it will be baked in that it links back over to its source information. And it may be like, they might find a way that chat GBT is less of a black box and more of a reliable source of information. So what we have, what we know is true right now may not be true five to 10 years from now, but we don't know what that looks like yet. So that means that quickly nowadays. Yeah. And so that staff training has to change. Because even now, the stuff that I learned in library school back in 2016, some of it's different now databases are different. The tools are different. Yeah. And now, like in now in library school, they're probably teaching people how to incorporate chat GBT tools into your database from the start, instead of trying to retrofit it later. And so it's a completely different skill set. And that also means that staff members, if they want to be able to move up into like up the career ladder or be able to do what they need to do, they're going to need to build the skills that will compete with people that are just graduated from these courses. So that means that they'll gravitate toward organizations that offer continual organizational professional development. And so that's kind of like, it's a whole thing. So it's more or less changing the way that you learn personally and changing the way that organizations support learning. So there was also a few sessions about how to make your training. I cannot count the number of times that I've gone to sessions that are just eternally boring or that I'm wondering why in the world this is applicable to me, because I was told that I have to take X number of courses or X types of courses in order to meet a graduation requirement. And then I forget half of what I just learned because it wasn't relevant. And then I go, then I have to go try to find that same material again because it's relevant a year later. And now I don't have access to the materials because I had to enroll in the course to take it. And so that's what they're talking about is trying to make training more engaging and make it more short form and on demand. Because, and I'm guilty of this myself, like I teach the tech basics class. And just because of the way the course structure works, I have to chuck everything all at people at one time. And part of that is good because people can explore what's possible so that they know what they want to learn later. But then when they, when later comes, where do you go to go find that information? You had to be enrolled in the course to be able to take it. And now access to that course is gone. So they're talking more about micro learning so that you have basically constant access to the same different tools. So for example, in the tech basic classes, I talk about all these different resources that libraries can use to build a skill repository on their library website. Most libraries don't have the time to be able to do that during the course because I'm chucking a bunch of stuff at them during the course and that's all they have time for. But they get to it maybe two months, three months, six months later down the road. So if there was another little mini platform where all this stuff was chunked out so you can just watch a video and then access the tutorial resources and referral resources to be able to just do that, then that's more helpful for people. And so that was, and then there was also a session that was about using hybrid training and static skill training so that basically you're just making it less boring and more interactive. And she had like this awesome set of tools to really revamp your Zoom training, revamp your Google Meets and like all these different awesome things. I have a link to it. Don't worry about it. And so that kind of made me rethink the way that I teach stuff and rethink the way that I do trainings and make information available. But then the added layer to that is that in the long run there would be, there would be so many different micro learning topics available that you would then need chat GPT to be able to help you navigate it. So that kind of just kind of closed the whole loop right there. So that was fun. And so then the other thing is that you have the staff that are actually learning how to, learning which technology exists and finding out is this technology. I just learned about virtual reality headsets. Can I use virtual reality to solve a problem that makes the library run better or that improves the library services? Can I build a virtual maker space and virtual reality using the spatial app so that people can constantly access our maker space, maker space highlights and what they people built out of a maker space so that this is like a long running thing that we can put library board members to make the case for more equipment. We can help people put people into the space so that they can explore what's possible so that they might want to go back to the library and use the equipment. And so can I use virtual reality to develop this service to improve library resources? But now do I want to circle back and also use virtual reality to make it available to patrons so that they can explore and experiment and find out how they want to use it. And that same virtual reality headset can have dual purposes. And that blows library staff's mind. Like it blows anyone's mind. Because it's like a dual learning curve. Because you have to learn how to like first you have to learn the technology itself. You have to learn what virtual reality is experiment with it. And then you have one course for improving the library services themselves. And then a separate course for how to help your community understand, learn, explore, experiment with this. And libraries are doing both right now. Public libraries, school libraries, academic doing both. But the training to support both is not always there. So. And just because of the way my role works, that's kind of a me problem now. But that's. So that's sort of like, yeah. And yeah, like you said, that's something you, you know, as since you are in charge of some, this kind of course work, you can maybe do something about or. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's more or less about. Going back to. Actually, that was the next one. So that shifts us over into revamping your digital presence. Which is how are you presenting this information and resources to the public? So revamping digital presence is not just improving your social media presence and not just improving your, like revamping your website. It's also building an in-house knowledge infrastructure. And then it's about building, like building out your in-house training. And in-house resources to be able to help people. Adapt and grow with these new changes. So I talked about that session about going all digital. But then it kind of turned into, maybe we don't want to go all digital. Maybe we should go hybrid. If we want to go hybrid, we need to be able to support staff differently. And we need to be able to support staff differently. And we need to be able to revamp our, the way that our website looks. And we need to be able to make sure that our website reflects our physical space. So we want to make sure that our digital branding reflects our in-house branding so that people know that they actually are where they're supposed to be. And if you have a color scheme in your library that doesn't match a color scheme on your website, that's jarring for people. And if you have like logos and infographics on your website that don't match anything that's in your library, like your physical library, it's also jarring for people. And so that hybrid is just becoming a thing. People are accessing tools on your website. And they want to see your branding reflected on your website and in your library. So it's a smooth, continuous flow because like the line between digital and physical is just super blurred now. Like it's barely there. People want just to, people want to know where they're at and they want to make it easier to find the resources that they need. And they want it to look pretty when they're there. So, yeah. And then on the back, end of that is with all of these new technologies comes new cybersecurity risks. And with all of these new ways of interacting with the resources comes new cybersecurity risks. Because if you up the front end of your website and make it all pretty full, you also need to up the back end of your website and make it all safe. Go with safe. And if you're embedding like mixed reality services into your library, like those augment and virtual reality scavenger hunts, or if you're training your, if you're training patrons, how to interact with library services using an augmented reality device, so that when people walk through the library, it'll point a little arrow left or right so that they can find the material that they're looking for. Then that's another cybersecurity thing. And that's another way that you have to make sure that your digital services reflect your in-person services, because now people actually are seeing both at one time using an augmented reality tool. So, augmented reality is when you put the head, like a little headset onto your head, and you can see a digital overlay in the physical world. So you're, you would tell your computer that you were looking for this book, you would put the headset on, and then you would see, you would walk down, your headset would recognize a special, based on a little QR code, and then a little digital arrow would pop up and point right. And then you'd know that you're supposed to turn right on the next aisle, and then a little digital, it would be your headset would recognize little QR code on another shelf, and your headset would tell you to turn left. And then when you got to your book, it would just be a little, you know, flashing down arrow that would say, book here, book here. I really, really hope it actually does say book here. It totally should. And I don't actually know if that, like that's, that service that I described, I don't know that it actually exists with just an example of how you could use it. To my knowledge, I don't think it actually exists yet. You know, you want to make it go for it, but it's another way that mixed reality and cyber security and all these different changes are taking effect. And with a new service like that, you need to be able to train library staff, how to use it, how to maintain it, and then train patrons, how to use it and how to interact with it. And I know that I said leverage AI, but it's really any technology. How do you leverage technology instead of competing with it or being afraid of it? And that's kind of the biggest challenge that we have right now is catching up with all of this stuff. So as always, there is a list of little smackdowns. So as always, there is a list of little smattering of the sessions that this came from. And some of it is just from what I've encountered, learned, read. It all blurs. It's stuff. And so let me go over here. I'll wrap up with kind of a review of some of the tech tools and resources. So I started with Brian. He's awesome. So cool. But these are some of the generative AI tools that he recommended. And I specifically say generative just because generative AI is all of those different websites that you go to where you put in a little text prompt and say, make an image based on this prompt. Or you go over into a video creation tool, copy and paste a script into the tool, and it will generate a video based on your script. And these tools are getting better and better. So you can still customize a lot of them. A lot of times you're not stuck with what the tool creates. You can still switch out images and do all that good stuff. And they also have like a text-to-speech voiceover tool and some like different AI art stuff. And he even tossed in like a little course creation, some of the social media tools that he uses. So if you want to play around with these, I mean, that's why you put it together. So the link is in the slideshow if you want to experiment with it. He also put together this really cool AI playground where he let the conference participants log into his site and just make stuff out of the, like using this tool that he put together. I don't know that he gave access to that to anyone, like outside of the conference, I'd have to ask him about it. But if you are interested in playing with his AI playground, just shoot me an email. And if you want to contact him and find out what his, he's pretty laid back. He'll probably like you. But, so let me close this. And then I'll jump into this one. So when I was talking about all the different tools that. Um, well, this is a different one, but I'll take it. So this is Gary Price is the cybersecurity guy. He put together a whole, he's awesome. But he put together a whole list of resources about, um, where you can go to get your news media coverage. He put together some database tools, productivity tools. Um, AI and chat GPT tools. If you want to experiment with it. And like, he just, he has like tools that kind of run the gamut. So basically you can just go by the category to find what type of stuff you want and then just start experimenting around. And let me go over here. Oh shoot. I'm going to have to fix that link, but I can do that. So I. Julie Erickson put together this link for all the different tools for how we communicate with each other, those video tools, different ways that you can use, um, Google sheets and Google docs to be able to improve your like workflow and different ways that you can use things like, um, you can ramp up your, um, learning and interaction. So if you're building out some different tutorials or some different ways that you want people to interact with each other doing it during a webinar. She has a bunch of tools for video creation. She's got some for, um, forums that people can go to and she's got some for, um, how to make education and learning less boring and then how to make communication between library staff members less boring and how to make communication between library staff and patrons like run more smoothly and be more interactive. So it's a cool list once I fix the link. And this one is actually one that I put together for, um, if you're looking for a specific, um, maker space tech. So I have it for robot circuit 3d printer laser cutter vinyl cutters, virtual reality headsets. I have to add in the Oculus quest three and the Oculus or the meta quest three and the meta pro, which are pretty recent. I don't know how many of you have seen them out, but these will all have little info sheets about, um, general price range, age ranges, the coding languages use skill level and then pros and cons to using it. Just from, um, what I've encountered. And this other one. So these are, if you want to introduce your community to specific. Industry 4.0 technologies like artificial intelligence, the internet of things, mixed reality. These are a collection of different tools, gadgets and resources that you can use that are categorized by budget range. So I started out with the free tools and then went up to low to mid range cost. And then more expensive on the bottom. So based on your budget or your level of experimentation right now, you can kind of choose from any of these tools. Um, Fair warning. There's like a whole ton of these that aren't on this list, but these are just the ones that I've. Tested out and that are. That work. So. You have options. And I'm still adding more stuff on here. So if it changes some. Good. A lot of stuff. In two, three years from now, some of it might not exist. Some of it might be new. Who knows. But this is what I got now. And so this is just a tool that. You can use to find out. What you want to try. And we're at 11. Oh, six. I know we started a touch late, but we are. That's pretty much what I got. Here's my info. If you want to ask any questions, if there are any questions, I will take them. We do have a question. Yeah. If anybody does have any questions. Yeah, it is a little after 11, but that's okay. Um, if you've ever been to our show before, you know, we will go as long as it takes to get through. Um, we don't cut off just at 11, obviously. But if you have any questions, we'll go as long as it takes for the presenter to finish. And if you all have any questions. So we do want to ask a man about anything she talked about or any, um, sessions, you want to know more detail. Type into the questions section of your go to webinar interface. Oh, we have one that came in. Um, someone wants some tips on how do I help my patrons use their technology more efficiently. I have had a few people come in to ask for help with printing and emailing. I have a few people who are already used computers to explore more on our website or use the digital tools that we have to offer. So get them beyond just the basics. So that's actually, um, It's more user experience research. So like the way that I usually recommend people, I use a tool called the day and the life. And I ask either the library staff or even the patrons, if they're really involved in the library. Um, I just write out what they do in the day and then write out what. You're basically trying to uncover the different problems and challenges that people face on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. Because the problems that people run into every day, usually it's, um, parenting, transportation, getting to and from work. And all these different things. People mentally gloss over the problems they can't solve. They say I'm not able to actually get to work every day. So I've just accepted that I'm going to be a stay at home mom. Or I'm not like the bus doesn't come over by me. So I've just accepted that I'm, I can't do this job. And so when you find out what the actual problems people are facing are, when you can start brainstorming different ways that people can use their technology tools better. Um, in the case of transportation, they may not know that there's an app that's available that'll let them know when the buses are coming. They might not know that they can go on the website of their local, of like the local bus depot and find out which routes are being added. So they need to know that they can actually request that more routes be added and that they can get people in their local community to all request it. And when they get enough requests, they add a new route. So they need to know that they can use this technology to actually solve the problems that they're facing every day. But you don't know what those problems are until you ask people, you think about it. Yeah. So, you know, you know, you can do local nonprofits or local businesses to like, like in Shadron and a lot of the cities here, we have a huge refugee population. This is a new for a lot of people. So if you even reach out to those organizations and just say, what are people facing? What are these daily problems that people are running into that they don't know how to solve? And then once you know those problems, you can start thinking about how your smart phone, how all this different tech can solve this problem and then design services around that and run marketing through the organizations that offered input and then the organizations that offered input have a greater stake in marketing your stuff because they help design it. Yeah. All right. Thanks. That's some good tips. Thank you. any other questions that came in while you were talking? If anybody does have anything, go ahead and type in. But you can also reach out to Amanda. There's her email address, of course. You know, know where to find her here at the library commission. While we're... Oh, we got it. Thank you for coming in. Thank you, Amanda and Krista. You're welcome. I'm going to pull presenter control the my screen to start to show you some things here. There it is. And if you have any other questions, go ahead and type them in. We will grab them while I do my little wrap up here. So at the beginning, we talked about getting discounts to attend computers and libraries and internet librarian. So I did look that up here on our blog. We do have, as I mentioned, computers and libraries conference coming up in next March. We do have a discount available through the library commission. So if you just go to our commission website, or this is through on our blog, I just searched computers in libraries on the search. It came up with this post from the beginning of November. So you can get a discount on attending the in-person conference through us here at the library commission. And we did do... I went back and looked. We did do a discount on the virtual internet librarian last month. So look for that for the next one that will come up in, I assume, this fall, next fall, fall 2024. So we do do a discount for both conferences. So keep an eye on our website for when those come up. Also something that you've mentioned before when you've done the internet librarian that they do have this replay pass available. I had a little trouble finding it on their website because up here it says replay pass and that it's not clickable. So off of the session page, I just clicked on internet librarian. I have a link to the conference website. But if you go in as if you were going to register for the conference, it will bring you to their feed loop site. And now that the event is over, the registration is for the replay passes. So if you did want to watch any... some of the sessions that were actually presented, you can now, after the conference, register for those. You can see these are available just to the end of December. So it's not a forever thing. So you'd be able to have access and watch any of the sessions that Amanda mentioned and others that were presented during the conference. Just a strategy for that. I usually, if you get the replay pass, I would go through and click through just about every session and start downloading the slideshows that are available. Because a lot of it, even if you don't get a chance to go through and watch the video, you can get a lot of info and resources just from that. Right. If they've got links to things or lists of websites or resources or books or whatever, download all the slides, get them while you have access to it. Yeah. And to save time, you can also, instead of full on watching the entire video, if a session doesn't have a slideshow available, you can do a quick link and click on the video every one to two minutes to get a preview of the slides that are in it. And if the slides are relevant to you, watch the video. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of doing a little teaser for yourself. Is this got something? Yeah. Yeah. That I will actually use. Is it really worth my time to watch the whole thing? Yeah. Right. It's like build your own trailer. Yeah, trailer. Yeah. We have a question that just came in. Let's grab this while we're here. I don't think my library is at AI level, but can I ask how to protect our website from bad links and bugs? Actually, that's probably a better question for Sherm. He'd probably be able to answer that way better than I could. And that's kind of, are you, so if you're in Nebraska, he can help with that. Yeah. We have a staff person here on staff, Andrew Sherman, nicknamed Sherm, who handles a lot of doing tech assistance to libraries. And oh, well, actually, I will show you something that will help you. My brain is slowly working. I have been drinking my coffee, honest. Let's talk about the recording of this. So our archives. So I'm going to go back to our Encompass Live main page. As I said, the show is recorded. If you use your search engine of choice and type in Encompass Live, the name of our show, we are the only thing on the internet. Nobody else is allowed to use it. I haven't made that official or anything, but you'll find links to our main page into our archive page. So this is our main Encompass Live show page with our upcoming shows. But at the bottom underneath them, there's a link to our archived Encompass Live shows. And this is where today's recording will be at the top of the list. The most recent one should be up here by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know when it's ready. There'll be a link to the recording on our YouTube channel and a link to Amanda Slides. This is also, I'll show you over here, this is our full show archives. You can do a search if you want to look for a particular topic to see if we've done a show on something you're interested in. You can search the full show archives or just the most recent 12 months, you want something very current. That is because this is our full show archives and I'm not going to scroll all the way down. If you look over here at the scroll bar, you can see it's really huge. This goes back to an Encompass Live first premiere, which was in January 2009. So we're on what, 15 years, 16 years now? And we have everything here. Yeah. Yeah. And so do pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything you do watch because many shows will stand the test of time. But as Amanda was just talking about, some things will become old and outdated. Resources have changed drastically or no longer exist anymore. Links might be broken. People will work at different libraries or different organizations than when they presented for us 10 years ago or whatever. So just pay attention to that when you're watching any of our shows. But sure, Andrew Sherman did do a series of workshops or a series of presentations for us. Oh, let's just do this. Oh, I see it right there. Internet filtering for... Oh, there. No. So heated a session in July on Internet filtering for e-rate, SIPA compliance, and cybersecurity. So this is coming at it from the point of view, because we have libraries that do e-rate, but you can use the same resources and the same tips and everything in here just for general cybersecurity on your computers. So I would direct you to this presentation that Sherm did, who's a guest presenter on Amanda's pre-sweet deck. The recording's there and his slides are there. And he did a previous one. What was his other one? I'm trying to remember... Oh, security, public use, the previous one. That one I think would be more helpful for you specifically, if you're looking for specific tools, because this session was great for that. Yep. And so this one too, secure computers for public use. So this is probably what you're talking about from bad links and bugs. Yeah, definitely. Watch this or look at his slides. Sherm's slides are really good, very detailed. Some people have different styles of slides. You could read through his slides and get almost everything. Get a really good list of steps you need to take. Here's the resources you need. So you could just go through his slides, but his recording, it gets a lot more explanation of the why's. The details were good. Yeah, so I definitely would recommend if you're looking for help this. And like I said, these are recordings. They're free and open to anyone. It's just on YouTube, the recording, and the slides are his or on SlideShare. It's free for everyone to get and download if you want them. So I would recommend looking at Sherm's presentations, this secure computers for use in internet filtering, if that's something you need more information about. And they said, thank you so helpful. We have been struggling to figure out all the bugs and hacks lately. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Sherm can help you out without those two presentations that he did. Absolutely. We love Sherm. Alright, so as an addition to pushing out our recordings or the announcement recordings to you all in emails, we do have a Facebook page up here for Encompass Live. If you like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. We do reminders. She's reminded a login today show this morning. When the recordings are available already, we post them up here. We do, I didn't share yours. I forgot to do the one for the speaker for this week, the presenter. So if you're into use Facebook, this is the way you can keep up with what we're doing. We also use the hashtag Encompass Live for the Encompass Live show and pretty sweet tech for anything pretty sweet tech related. So we post also on Twitter and Instagram using the Encompass Live if you follow Library Commission or those that hashtag out there. You can keep an eye on what we're doing as well. And we push it out onto our, in Nebraska, we have mailing lists as well. But our show is free and open to anyone to watch. So you may see posts about it on other libraries or state libraries, lists of upcoming free sessions or webinars or training opportunities. You will find us linked as well from all across the country because, yeah, anybody can attend. So do keep an eye on us out there. All right. I think that wraps up everything I need to say. All right. Amanda will be back as usual at the end of December. Don't know if we have a topic yet for that or an idea of what we'll be doing for our December pretty sweet tech. It's a good question. Yeah, plenty of time to figure that out. No problem. So when she does have her specific, which is going to be talking about there, we'll update that session page. These are upcoming shows for December and into January. I've already got some things in January. Next week we will talking about using creativity and Justin is going to be with Justin, who has been a librarian here in the US and then New Zealand. And now I think he's back in the US. Yeah. He jumps around a lot. Justin librarian. Yeah. He's been talking about using creativity to grow and develop. And this was, I believe, a session he did at computers and libraries this year. Sweet. Trying to remember how I found, I got him on the show. Anyways, so please do sign up for us next week and for any other of our shows that we have coming up on the schedule here. And keep an eye on our January dates. We'll get more filled in. I've got a few things I've got to add there at the beginning of January shows. So thank you everybody for being here. Thank you again, as usual, Amanda, for joining us on our last Wednesday of the month. Where did November? Oh, it's been a month. Yeah. Anyhow. And we will see you in a month. I mean, cool. And hopefully see some of you at any of our future episodes of Encompass Live. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye. Bye.