 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar, we're a webcast, we're an online show, we're whatever. We're here live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. However, if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's okay. We do record the show every week, as we are doing right now. And you can always watch our show at your convenience later. And I'll show you at the end of today's show, where you can go to see all of those recordings. We do a mixture of things on Encompass Live, presentations, book reviews, interviews, demos, many training sessions sometimes. Basically anything library related, we are happy to have on the show. We do bring guest speakers sometimes from the outside, but sometimes we have Nebraska Library Commission staff do sessions. And that's what we have today is mainly commission staff. I guess, Anika, you'd be considered outside of the commission, officially. Sitting next to me this morning, and you can't see this morning. We don't have a camera going today, because we're getting things going quickly. Joanne McManus, who is here at the Library Commission, our internship grant person. Actually, you do a lot of different grants here. I think this is the one we happen to be working on at the moment. That's right. And then on the line with us is Mary Jo Ryan. Hello, Mary Jo. Hi, everyone. She's our communications coordinator here at the commission. She's not in the office at the moment, so she's here remotely. And then also Anika Ramirez, who is the director of our Three Rivers Library System up in northeast, northeast section of Nebraska is on the line as well. Hello, Anika. Hello, everyone. And they're going to tell us about the internships program, the internship grants that we have going right now. So I'll just hand it over to you, Joanne, since you're here in charge of the presentation. Thanks, Krista. And I just wanted to thank everybody for tuning in today, and those that will be tuning in later on the recorded version, because I think we have a lot of good information today. Mary Jo and I will primarily be doing the presentation but we invited Anika Ramirez to join us today from Three Rivers Library System because prior to her being the director of the library system there, she was the director of the Scrivener Library and actually had an intern through this program. And so if we get any tough questions from the audience about actual interns in the library, she has firsthand experience. I've had interns before but not in a library situation, but anyhow, we're happy to have Anika join us and to join in anytime she feels like doing so. I do want to mention before we click off of this first slide that the Nebraska Library Internship Grant Program for 2016 is supported in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act. And of course, that's administered through the Nebraska Library Commission. And that grant program we are doing in partnership with the Nebraska Regional Library System. So we appreciate their help and so thank you, Anika, for that. Okay. And, there we go. So we primarily have two audiences today. Most of you that are tuning in live are actually from the libraries funded in this round of 2016 Nebraska Library Internship Grant Program, but we have others on the line as well. And obviously you're here to hear successful tips for having successful internships in your library. And so we are going to really be concentrating on things that would be helpful to anybody who is having interns. But every once in a while you'll hear me say, and in our grant program, this. And so obviously those that are having a grant should perk their ears up for that. But we will cover the actual agreements and that sort of things toward the end of the session. Okay. So what is the secret to successful internships? Well, I think it's planning. And as you can see from a quote that we got from our last time we did internships, one of our interns supervisors commented that planning makes all the difference. And she had a detailed calendar of what they wanted to do over the internship and she found that extremely useful. So I think planning is a good thing and we're going to go over all the kinds of things you need to think about before your intern is on staff and then even afterwards as well. And Mary, don't always feel free to jump in whenever. So as far as planning, I just wanted to kind of bring your attention to thinking back on things that weren't planned so well. So did you ever have a job that when you are, you know, you went to talk to somebody about the job opening and they really had trouble describing the duties or did you start a new job and you've got to work and the supervisor really wasn't prepared to start your training, tell you about an orientation, even provide you with what their expectations were for the job. And on that first day, did you ever feel that you really weren't productive because you were probably sitting over in this office waiting for somebody to tell you something or show you something or just get you started? Well, in these short-term internships, we really don't have luxury to waste the intern's time by not being prepared. And of course, because that internship period is really not a very lengthy one. And of course, if you waste the intern's time, you're really ultimately wasting your time because you're not going to get as much out of that internship. So invest some time before the internship starts and that way you can get it off on the right foot. And you can use that same template the next time you do an internship. So planning now is important and I think it'll pay off in the future. So preparing for that intern. First of all, you do need to think of how you're going to be planning to pay that intern. Obviously, if you received an internship grant, you probably have $1,000 that's available to you. So you're good to go. But for other libraries, there can be some creative ways to find funding to support an intern. Sometimes your friends group might be interested in helping. You could have a fundraiser and I think that's a good fundraiser. A lot of even the students at the high school might be able to get involved because they're interested in getting that internship if you have one. And of course, local businesses in your community might be willing to partner on an internship. And I think when you look at $1,000 will get you more than 100 hours of an intern. You really can get a lot out of that. So there's two ways basically to provide payment to your interns. You can hire an intern as a part-time temporary employee and pay them an hourly wage. Or the other option is to use a stipend-based internship and provide the intern with one or more stipend payments to equal what you plan on paying. And we do recommend actually more than a single stipend because you don't want them to work. Let's say for instance, if you figured this intern is going to be working about 110 hours for you, you don't want to wait to the end for them to get their reward. And you certainly don't want to pay it on the first day because they might not come back. So I think you'd want to split that stipend up into two to four payments and then pay them kind of on a regular basis. One way that I don't have up here, but it's because it's really not a good way to go, and some people in the past have talked about paying their intern on a contract basis. And really, they don't have a business, so you can't do them on a contract basis. That's what you do when you want to hire somebody who's a business person and they're going to come in and do something on a contract basis. So how much do you pay? Well, if it's stipend-based, and I talked to the Nebraska Department of Labor on this, even though it's stipend-based, you still need to pay at a minimum, at least minimum wage. In Nebraska, that's $9 an hour right now. If it's an employee, again, you have that hourly wage and of course the minimum wage is $9 an hour. However, there is an exception if it is a new employee under the age of 20 and it's during that first 90 days of employment, you can choose to pay a training wage and that has to be at least 75% of the federal minimum wage. So that calculates out to a minimum of $5.44. So if you're really in those first 90 days and that person is under 20, you could pay as little as $5.44 an hour for the first 90 days. Remember, for those of you who are linked to your city government or county government, you're going to want to visit with them because they might have guidelines to hiring or paying stipends that they might want you to follow. So definitely check with them. Okay, so before you determine your work plan and intern duties, you're going to want to come up with some goals and outcomes for your internship. I think it's good, especially since most of you are getting grants through our Nebraska internship grant to first start with our goals and of course I think these are good goals even if you're doing an internship outside of our grant program. You're going to want to involve the student in real library work. You want to provide a view of the role of libraries, library operations, and the role of technology. And you want to ensure that the internship serves as a recruitment tool to help the student view the library as a viable career path. And obviously if it's going to be a recruitment tool, you're going to make sure you want to give them a good experience. Otherwise they're not going to want to work in libraries again. So give that some thought as well. Okay. And then after you start with those core goals that our internship program had, then you're going to want to add some of your own goals related to specific needs in your library. What do you need in your library? You might want to expand a program that you have. You might think that you haven't done a lot in social media so you might want to start that or expand that. You might be looking at an older website and you think it needs to be updated and jazzed up and maybe you can find somebody that has that expertise. Maybe a section in your library needs to be reorganized. There's just so many things that as you look around your library you might say, yes, that is what we need to work on. So add those to your goals if that's important to you. So now that you have your goals, you need to actually put together the work plan. What is the duties going to be of the intern? Now, those of you who have already submitted a grant application, you have described the duties that that intern will be working on. So you've told us that they're going to be working on the website or they're going to be working on adding to the summer programs that you have. So do you need to stick to that described list of activities or can you update that and take it a whole different direction after you've been funded? Well, we're going to talk about that. Well, it's possible that your grant application was successfully, partially because of the list of activities that you described. So you've got to think about that. But on the other hand, we do want you to provide a great experience for that student. We want to make sure that you use your students' talents and skills. So it's possible that you said, let's work on the summer reading program. But now that you're interviewing interns, you find out that you found an intern that has a skill that you could really use in your library. She knows a lot about websites and you go, maybe that's what I want to use that intern for. And of course, we want you to end up with a work product that really helps your library. So if as you are rethinking everything, interviewing interns, if you look at what you had put in your grant application and say, we really want to tweak it a little because we think we can do even better, we certainly are going to try to be flexible to let you do that. If you wish to make adjustments, our request is that you just go ahead and email me, tell me what's new about your work plan, maybe what you've eliminated, and then that would give us the opportunity to address any issues that we see. But hopefully you're going to make improvements and not just say, okay, no, we decided not to do anything fancy. All she'll be doing is checking in books that we probably won't be too excited about. So Anne, I would wonder if you could ask, or if we could ask Anika, if that happened when she had an intern, whether or not they changed in midstream or began to change what that intern was doing based on the intern's skills. Anika? Thank you. I'm actually really glad you asked. I was just thinking of chiming in because what I did in our timeline, I built in just a special project and had a list of things that we would like the intern to be able to do. But she got to decide, once we hired our intern, she got to help us decide what that special project was. So there's already time built in and we didn't actually say, this is what we really want the person to do. We just allowed that to be really flexible as it already was. So there was all of the duties that helped kind of orient the intern with library work, with your kind of basic day-to-day stuff, and then allowed our intern to work with us to develop a special project that she wanted to work on that also fit within our goal. So we kind of just left it to be determined until our intern was hired and we knew that it was someone that could work with us like that. Right. Yeah, and you just never know what kind of an intern you're going to find that you're going to really want to capitalize on their particular talents and interests. And of course, they're going to have a better experience. If they're doing something they want to do that's helpful to you, you're going to get a better work product as well. We also had a library a couple years ago that had a grant that soon after the intern started, one of the full-time staff decided to retire before they were expecting her to retire. And so they really started to train that intern on how to do day-to-day activities and that intern actually then started right after the internship as a part-time employee and was there for about a year and a half before they started to college. So sometimes an opportunity presents itself and you do need to think about a plan B. And we're good with that. We just kind of want to heads up on when that happens so we can see if there's any issues. We do have a question that came in a little after about the salary and paying them. This person says, for our city we would have to pay them out of salary, which is perfectly fine. Since they would technically be employees who would pay Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45%, is it okay that money from the grant goes to that as well? Right. And we will be going over that later on. But yes, they could spend it on stipends. They can spend it on salary and they can spend it on any sort of taxes, FICA, that's associated with that salary. Makes sense, yeah. Okay. So many of you had gotten a copy of the press release that went out and so you saw a lot of the projects that are 26 libraries who's been funded a plan on doing, but I kind of just wanted to go over some of these and I kind of categorized them in different areas. But this will start you thinking too about maybe this project or that project that some other library talked about might be of more interest than what I put on our particular grant application. So this is just to give you some thought process. So of those duties, those 26 funded libraries put on there, we do have some program related and we have everything from assisting, to planning, to implementing, to expanding, to actually leading discussion groups. So those interns are doing everything from a little bit less hands on to very hands on. But obviously there was quite a few that mentioned summer reading programs, story time, we had some lapsits, youth book clubs, teen programs, a lot of different event related, one time event related things like the annual book sale, art show, photography contest, 3D printing workshop, entrepreneurship camp, Lego club, all kinds of things you can see there. I think some of these are things that the libraries might do on a yearly basis. I think others of these are just brand new because they're going to have an internship, an intern to help them do that. We have people that said they're going to organize or reorganize things like the young adult youth center, a duet center and they had gotten that idea from the system directors at our last conference. Many of you saw that duet center that Anika and her compatriots put together and that was really fun. So one of the libraries is going to work on that. There's research projects that interns can do. One is going to be researching an alternative circulation system and actually going to another library to check out how that works at that library. A feasibility of portable makerspace using equipment that the library actually owns and is just sitting in the back closet and how they could actually put it out there and get those items productive. There was a lot of technology related stuff. One library was going to have them help with the weekly maintenance on the computers assist with creating the libraries technology plan that they were going to be working on this year and there was actually several that was going to have their interns teach technology classes and one was actually going to actually do not only teach the classes but develop the curriculum and in that particular library they were looking at hiring a college age actually a graduate student and so obviously maybe if you're getting a high school student teaching is certainly fine. I don't know if they'd be developing curriculum for you. A lot of social media and web type things and obviously students are young folks that grew up with all of these aspects so they are really very good at it. So updating the library's website updating the Facebook page doing things in Pinterest sending out tweets and then a lot of creativity outlets a lot of them was going to be planning craft activities we had some decorating bulletin boards creating book displays and I think young students are interested in kind of that hands-on stuff so I think those are good things to get them involved in and then of course public relations and Mary Jo do you want to talk about public relations? I'll keep going just in case you do. Yes I do. I couldn't get myself unmuted I'm talking away and no one can hear me. I think it's really important that you think about the talents and skills that young people might bring to your public relations and your communication materials some of them have got great ideas I think and also have some skills you might ask them what they've been doing in their art classes at school and just get a sense of that. The main thing is when you're working with anyone from outside the library on communication pieces just be sure to kind of stay involved don't just turn things over really to anyone outside the library because you are the experts on how you want to present the library's message and the library's story and even though someone might be very talented in terms of art or design or communication they don't necessarily know what the message of the library should be and a lot of times they come to helping you with the idea that books are really our only message and as we all know that's just one of our many messages so again use the students feel free to explore their talents and skills but keep control of the message keep control of the story and I've got lots and lots of materials and tools that can help you communicate with the student before the student starts working on communicating with your customers I'd be happy to share that Is that helpful? Yep, yep and I think too when you have a student working in your library just taking them with you to the local newspaper or what not that newspaper person is going to perk up a little bit so even though you're helping share that message and making sure the message is correct I think sometimes bringing somebody in it just makes somebody else perk up a little bit because it's just not you again so okay Dylan that's a good point to end the fact of the student working in the library that is a story and so that's again something you want to make sure that story gets out that we're excited about the young people in our community and that they have so much to give to our community and they're giving it right there in the library and in some communities especially the smaller ones it's hard to find jobs for the youth in the community and so this gives one more person a job and if anybody that can get a job in their local community might be more likely to come back to that community and work and that's important in rural Nebraska so it's just one more thing that you can do for your community by having this in turn okay and then there was a lot of things book related as well restock shelves unload and reshelf in the bookmobile process books both new and donated repair books, read, book selection you know these are all normal things that you do on a daily basis anyhow and of course assist customers it's really nice to have those students interacting with customers at the circulation desk helping people use public computers using devices and researching questions answers that they have to questions and then there was some miscellaneous things that fall into any of those other categories that I have listed here there's upload content to digital archives one is going to assist in the creation of volunteer training process for digital repository project that they have in Skylar they're going to be their hope assuming they can get a bilingual student then that student will be helping with Spanish and English translations in both verbal and written some of there was one intern that was actually going to be supervising some volunteers and activities so that was cool update program materials create tutorials and creating lists of kid friendly games and websites and that was to put on their particular website so there's all kinds of activities that you could do and so kind of give your list a look of what you said you were going to do or what you're thinking about doing and really kind of figure out if that's the right direction and as you interview students kind of keep an open mind to what they're talents are so timing in our particular grant program your intern could be on board as early as mid-March they could stay as late as the end of November so you really do have quite a few months to work with so when is the best time for your intern for you to have that intern at your library well you're going to want to consider the student schedule but even though even if you do it outside of the summer months that student does have some open time in the evenings and so that's certainly as possible to get started you also want to consider what the best time for the library is and generally even though a lot of libraries who applied say we want our student our intern there at our busiest time because that's when we need the student I don't think you want to start during your busiest time because I think you want to start that internship when it's not quite so crazy so you are able to devote time to getting that intern started especially if it's a special project now if you're bringing in that intern to work on the summer reading program then obviously that is your crazy time but still consider bringing that intern in prior to that so they can help with the planning and the organizing and kind of getting settled you can have time to give them more an orientation anything else on that Anika or Mary Jo? I think having that that period of orientation where you can kind of go over expectations I think our first especially our first week was just sort of becoming familiar with the library from the other end not as a patron because there was definitely a little shift for us because the intern we did end up having was a patron and so kind of shifting that perspective took a little bit and also just sort of talking about library principles and getting a little bit more kind of getting some of the philosophical things out of the way so that we could start off on the same foundation of understanding for what library work is and what our goals in the community are so I think definitely not during your busiest time we only had two staff myself and one other person so that was a little bit tricky but it was also a really good opportunity to help our intern got to shadow us a lot in that first week or two because we had to keep working you know while she was starting too shadowing was I think a really good way to kind of start off that orientation yeah I think so okay so recruitment I think you're going to want to think about the skills and attributes that an intern would need to be successful performing the task that you are intending to do so if you're saying that some of your tasks are to teach some technology classes obviously you're going to be wanting to look at those skills and making sure that you select an intern that has those skills you're going to want to think about what the best age range might be for a student for your particular situation do you want to recruit a college student or a high school student or do you want to be open to either and just open it up to both and see who applies but I think it might depend on what your list of activities are going to be depending on which one might be the better fit for you obviously a college student is going to bring more maturity to your library but a high school student is going to also be in the community for sure and they bring a whole new perspective as well so I think both can work for people but just give some thought to that and then if you're looking at high school students is there any age that might be too young we have had some younger students some freshmen at one point the only thing to be any high school student is fine but do remember that if the student is under 16 you do there are guidelines as far as how many hours they can work today a day and how late they can work during the school year so keep that in mind and if they're also under 16 then you also have to they have to have an employment certificate and those issues are not big issues but you just need to be aware of them if you do hire somebody under 16 so Joanne if they are considering hiring somebody under 16 would you suggest they give you a call and you'll turn them on to whoever in the community can help them with getting an employment certificate and all that and the Department of Labor has a good website and so there's some good information there but yes they can contact me and I will turn them on to the information that they do need to be careful so they know that if it's during the school year that they can't have them more than so many hours a day or so many hours a week and they can't be there after I think it might be eight o'clock but yes I can help them out with that so now you know whether you're hiring a part-time employer or a stipend-based intern, you know what the job duties are, you know what skills or ideas so it's time to search for that intern some of you might already have an idea for that intern and many of you do not but so how do you get that word out and I know Mary Jo do you want to just take this one or do you want me to? Sure I'd be happy to I think your best avenue would be with your local newspaper and we gave you a news release that you can use and they may have already even run it because it was sent out yesterday to our complete list of newspaper outlets but I definitely think for those of you that have an internship that you're opening up in the near future contact your newspaper right away ask them if there is anything they'd like to do to amplify that article they'd like to come out and take a picture at the library of an activity at the library if they'd like you to give them some additional quotes about what you specifically are looking for I really think your newspaper is going to be your best bet another secondary best bet is if you have a local radio station they still do any kind of local programming I know some of your radio stations don't I know they're just running tapes basically from a standard station but if you do have a local radio station with any local programming please do go ahead and reach out to them as well even though they may not be playing music or news or anything that the students are interested in and adult they hear it and your message is if you know a young person in our community that would fit that likes people that enjoys young people that likes whatever it is your special programming is for example that knows a lot about the internet whatever it is you'd like to have them working on because you can and get right out there and ask people to help you find your intern so you're looking for maybe you won't be able to reach directly to the student but you might be able to reach the high school counselor the school librarian someone at the community college there's just a lot of different people out there who would like to help you find your intern so ask them to and you can see some of these other ideas I'll help on it sign in the library there's a one stop for paid internships internnebraska.com or internne.com that's a really good place to list your opening Inika how did you find your student we made flyers that we put up in the high school and then we also put them up around town in some pretty common areas as well as the library we were kind of open to high school or college student you know whatever it was you know whoever would best fit so those are our main areas I would say if you're looking for one other ideas if you're looking for someone who can do technology specific duties maybe talking to your high school teachers who teach those specific subjects to see if there's any students that they have who might be qualified and Facebook and you know your website are also probably some pretty good places to post information about the internship yeah very good ideas and you know I think that as far as you know we want to use this as a recruitment tool to get kids going to thinking about being in the library someday visiting with that school librarian to find out their recommendation or to help spread the word because the students that are hanging out in the library at school might really have an interest to work in the local public library okay so when you're doing your selection and interviewing do you need to follow that same process that you would when you're hiring a permanent employee first of all I think if you're actually hiring an employee even though it's a part-time temporary you would again if you're linked to a city and county check with them to see if they have any interviewing guidelines that you need to follow because they might be pretty set on how you do things so check with them if you're having a doing a stipend arrangement you might probably can be a little bit less structured on how you do that interviewing but we actually suggest that you do take that process seriously ask every candidate the same questions and consider having maybe a second person on that interview team more than one this will just kind of help you look at different people in different ways because you have more than one person looking at the candidates always put your best foot forward a structured interview process do let the students know that this is a real work relationship they might be more likely if they went through a real interview process to treat the internship like a real job with real responsibilities and consequences and hopefully that'll help lead to a more successful internship experience but if you want to be a little bit less formal in your city officials or whoever you might be linked to is okay with that you know do whatever feels right for you but this is our recommendation we asked our applicants to also submit just a small short paragraph about why they were interested it helped to see one their writing style and all that kind of stuff but also just were they just looking for a job or did they have an interest in library world right because certainly you might have a lot of people apply because especially in smaller communities when there aren't very many positions that are open you know anybody wants to grab any job so you know trying to figure out how to find the one that's really more serious about libraries would be a good thing okay so as far as when you're coming up with your set of questions you're going to want to determine some things so kind of really think about what you're trying to get what kind of information that you're trying to get and that'll help you come up with questions so you know you're going to want to find out if they have the skill set that you're looking for so obviously you're going to develop some questions around that are they going to be dependable what kind of question can you come up with that's going to tell you that maybe it's asking about other things that they might have been in charge in at school or what not are they open to learn new things do they have the social skills needed and I think you're going to kind of figure that out as you're doing that interview are they interested in the task areas that they're going to be working on ask them some questions about you know tell them about what you're going to be doing and try to get some feedback on those particular tasks and do they have an interest or talent in other areas that might be a better direction for the internship so you know you might be set on a particular project but have some open ended questions where you're finding out what other talents they might have and before you really even know who's going to be interviewing kind of determine the criteria that you're going to be considering in that interview process so that way you can always refocus on what you thought was initially important now that doesn't mean things won't change when you find a good intern here but it kind of refocus you back on what you thought was important as far as a good candidate and then of course after all the interviews select your new intern and hopefully it'll be a good one now we've had experiences in the past where a library has hired an intern and they have not it was pretty clear early on that the intern was not excited about the job duties and it is fine if you have an intern and they find out they don't have that interest level that we can switch gears and rehire a second intern so if you're having an issue with an intern don't feel like just because you gave me their name and you hired them that it's too late to go to a new intern and of course they might get a different job or you just never know why an intern might decide to leave so you found your perfect intern and hopefully you're going to want to agree on a start date and before that first day you have some more things to do you're going to want to share your thoughts and plans with other staff in your library and other volunteers in the library so they know what's happening when they see this student in there for the first day you're going to want to take another look at the work plan and now that you know who your intern is are you going to want to tweak that work plan to capitalize on that intern's talents you're going to want to be organized have a plan write down what you're going to need to do for the internship and what you want the intern to do when they're in the library and then try to put that plan in a timeline and it can be a flexible timeline but if you have a timeline then you kind of know what's coming up next and you can get ready for it and then the intern also kind of knows what's up ahead and you can share that with the intern when they get there and so on that timeline you're going to want to make sure that you have in there how you're going to introduce the intern to the projects that they're going to be working on you're also going to want to have in there how you're going to orient the intern to the work of the library even though that intern might be only working on let's say the website or a couple projects you still want to orient the intern to the work of the library you're going to want to show them how to tell them about how you market the library and that there's budgeting counsel and there's this and just everything so give them kind of the complete picture of a library even if they're not working in many of those areas and then of course since we're using this as to recruit students hopefully to career paths and with library careers share information about education in career paths in library careers and Mary Jo do you want to chime in on some of the career paths available as far as education and of course we can help you get you this information to share you don't have to know know it we want to help you do that so Mary Jo do you have some thoughts on that I do and I apologize because I'm not sure how easy it's going to be for Krista to pull up this website but we have a website on the Nebraska Library Commission website which is called now hiring at your library and there's a segment of that website when you get to it it's now hiring at your library I'm sorry Krista I should have warned you about this no it's okay we can get it so it's one easy way to get there is to go to our website first and let's hope we're not having those internet problems again there we go I feel it right it works better and if you go down the flyouts on the left hand side there's something called jobs and careers and now hiring and then up on that second bullet at the top it says now hiring at your library and here we have a bunch of resources for mentoring and internships and scholarships but if you look at the learning tab where it says learning then here you'll see variety of different educational opportunities and you can go through this with your student and explain to them that there's different ways to start in library education and it's a ladder of learning and you can start for example Nebraska Community College classes and those are transferable to other schools so you could get a certificate or you could get an arts degree in library science and then that will transfer I'm sorry if you go up to UNO because they have undergraduate programs that would transfer to some of their undergraduate programs as well as they have a graduate degree which is a partnership with the University of Missouri again there's other options University of Nebraska Carney has a graduate program in library media so there's a variety of different projects or I mean options listed here ways for students to continue their education and there's really two people that I would recommend that you make contact with and we will send you their contact information they are both just excellent in talking to students that don't know exactly what they want to do and helping them figure out where they are in the learning process and what would be best for them next and one of them is Dr. Becky Pascoe at the University of Nebraska Omaha and the other is Dr. Cheryl Crow at the University of Nebraska Carney so both of them can help people find the path that's best for them but we've got some other contacts we can give you and we'll be sending those to you so that as you feel your student out and get a chance to see where they're at when they're thinking and if they're thinking about the possibility of going on to college that this might be an option for them so we'll be sure and send you that information but just to know it's right here on our website as well. Okay so the other thing we would like you to do is follow the interns progress and again whether you have a grant or not this is important to do in the grant obviously we'd like you to be prepared to report on the progress and there is a final survey that the supervisor will be doing that will be answering some questions about the progress of the student so if you kind of track it a little bit then it will help you fill out that last survey and of course important to you is to allow you to make adjustments and provide guidance if you're always checking in on the interns progress then you're going to see that maybe they didn't understand that assignment or maybe they're progressing faster than you expected and you're either going to need to get them another assignment or maybe they can go a little bit more in depth in that assignment that they're working on it's going to allow you to make a timely feedback so you can say hey wow that's really great or well that's pretty good but maybe you should do it this way it might be a little bit more streamlined or something and always checking in with the intern makes it easier for the intern to ask you questions so it helps open up those lines of communication and I'm sure there's just so many other benefits to kind of keeping up with your interns progress and I don't know if Anika if you had any situations that might be able to talk to this I don't know if I can think of any one specific situation I just know that for us once a week we had time scheduled to check in and it was really tempting to not do that because in our small library you could easily see how each person was working I could easily see how our intern was working but taking the time to sit down and actually have a conversation about what you're doing and if they have any questions as well as kind of that impromptu checking in I think was a really good way to build a working relationship and make it more personable and you know and sitting down and talking to them maybe they might mention hey I noticed that that over there needs to be done and I kind of have an interest in doing that so you just might find out things that is really beneficial to your internship so obviously we want to make this a good experience to both the intern and the library so what leads to a good experience for the intern other than that thousand dollars and we know that that's going to help but you know things that's going to help you get to a good experience for them is that they're gaining valuable experience and so make sure that they're learning something that's how you get to that valuable experience they can use the internship on future job and college applications and of course if they're going to do that then they're going to want to be able to describe some meaty project that they were able to do at the library if all they're doing is sitting at the circulation desk checking in books then yeah they can say they had an internship at the library but it doesn't give much to describe so make sure that you know they're really doing something that makes a difference to them what also makes good experience is that they feel like they made a difference in the lives of others so make sure that they even though they might be stuck on a project doing something in the back you know put some in the back room most of the time because they're working on something you know have them have some experience with the customers that are in the library so they can see that they're really doing something that's beneficial they might be making new friends that's with co-workers or even some of your customers and so if you have unless you're at a small library where you only have a single employee you know allow them to work with other employees within the library because they might have a real good rapport with one or two of those and if they never were able to work with them you know just connecting them with the right staff might help with that good experience so what else might lead to good experiences of course I should have said this earlier anybody is always welcome to just type in the chat box what you're thinking and we can even unmute you and get you in the conversation okay so we will just move on to what leads to good experience for the library and library staff because obviously this is a two way street we want this to be a good experience for the library as well one of the things they in turn may have skills that current staff do not possess so even though it's kind of hard to hire somebody for a project that you personally don't have skills to do not without anyhow some extra research and reading but you know it would be nice to be able to bring a skill into the library so if you can do that then it might be good for the library an intern can help make a stale project fresh because they have that new perspective maybe you've been doing the same program year after year and really when somebody else looks at it they could add some interesting things that you hadn't thought of because it's just so easy to do it the same way you might notice that there's room for improvement because as you're doing your intern things they're asking questions why do you do that and so you go well well maybe we should do it that way maybe there is a better way to do that you might be noticing that you're getting new customers because you have an intern in the office I mean in the library why is that is because they're doing something that's making it a little bit more exciting or is it just because they're seeing more people in their age range in the library so kind of take advantage of that and figure out well if that is getting new customers what else can I do to get some new customers and you might find that your intern would make a great part-time employee or even a volunteer so if that's the case try to figure out how you can explore some new funding sources to keep that intern coming back as a part-time employee so take advantage of if you find a real good intern that is really valuable to you figure out what you might be able to get that person back into your library and of course they've been working on a project they've been doing something for your website or they helped you expand the program or they did something similar so that's great to have in your library and that's also a great opportunity to market that new thing that you have so I think there's a lot of things that can be beneficial for the library are there anything else that you can think of or that you're hoping to do in your library? You can just use your question section if you go to webinar interface type any thoughts you have or if you do have a microphone you can just type in I have a mic please unmute me and I can even come on and you can marry Joe it's 11 o'clock that's okay if anyone does as Joanne just realized it is 11 o'clock which is officially our show is officially 10-11 a.m. we will keep going until we're through all the slides we've gotten everything taken care of and any questions you all have if you do have to leave because you only had this amount of time scheduled for this that's fine we're recording the show you can always watch the rest of it later I did want to mention some resources available to you we do have on our website now hiring at your library dot Nebraska dot gov slash internships timeline and schedule of intern activity so that's a great example for you to pull up and do your timeline and schedule there's a sample public library orientation plan for you to use if you need one also on the Nebraska Department of Economic Development's website they have a great employer guidebook to developing a successful internship program and that's also linked from our site any dot com also has good information from you so take a look at that sometime now I'm just going to not stop for questions and we're going to just go on to things that are definitely more important to those that received a grant you all have received two copies of agreement sign both and return one to us you received a request for agreement form sign and return that will trigger that check to your library so then within a month you'll be getting that thousand dollars or whatever grant you received again we talked about that internship window that intern can be on board as early as March 15 and but they do need to be wrapped up by the end of November but you can start to advertise an interview prior to March 15 those of you who are going to be fast tracking this and starting soon if you need something from me definitely get in touch since I haven't sent everything out to everybody these are requirements the intern must be a high school student or college student a homeschooled high school student is also permissible the student must not have been employed by a library in the past or currently and they never and you can't get a student that has interned at a library in the past or currently if it's in this grant program however there's no restrictions on past or current volunteers so if you have a student volunteer that you want to turn into an intern with our grant funds that is perfectly fine like we said earlier you can only use grant dollars for the stipends that go directly to the intern intern wages and for with the holdings associated with wages such as FICA and other taxes and at the end of the grant program the the library director will be asked to sign a form of testing to how those grant funds were expended so keep in mind spend them on those things and we'll be good and then we do have responsibilities for the supervisor of the intern in most cases the supervisor is the library director but in some cases other libraries do have other named supervisors they are to orient the student on the overview of library work track this interns hours and activities make that as we said before make intern aware of the library under path educational opportunities complete the supervisor assessments and report in a timely manner and then we also have a baseline survey that the intern does on their first day of work and a post internship assessment that they do on their last day of work and so that supervisor will make sure that the intern is instructed to complete those they do have a right to do not complete those but you do have to visit with them about completing them and of course you need to respond to the Nebraska Library commission when we have requests and most of those requests will come from the Joanne McFannis and then I think this is our last slide so we actually made really good time here at the end but I do want we are going to be open for questions all the libraries who received a grant received a copy of the press release I sent that to you last week the media received their press release on February 16th but in all publicity whether it's through this press release or if you want to have publicity throughout the year make sure to credit the Nebraska Library commission on all that publicity and we actually have the sentence that we prefer that you use on that publicity now even though you might put out a press release you can't always guarantee that the press is going to print it as you submit it but you can try we can try that's right okay so may you have your agreements we sent those to you you probably have questions and hopefully we have answers yep so if you have any questions let us get them into question section of your interface let us know what you're thinking comments or find as well any ideas that you're having for your interns any other can I just add a little something yes even though there was definitely some work involved I think it was a really rewarding experience for our library and for our intern we worked hard to make her feel a part of the library rather than just a temporary employee or something we were able to see what it would be like to have three people working in the library and could work towards securing funding for another part-time position so we were successful in that and she's actually employed at the library still now so I think it really opened up some opportunities for our intern and for the library so it was definitely a really good experience and worth worth the work that's a very good comment Anika yeah I think a lot of it is something to think about is that it is I think you said a two-way street it's beneficial to both you at the library getting someone to come in and do some work you need done get some new projects done but it's good for them as well and whatever they want to do in their future whether it is work for the library or go somewhere else it benefits them as well the intern and I might want to mention for those that are getting the internship grant the one thing we don't want to see is now that you have an intern and they're going to be working for you for 110 20 hours we don't want even though it's really nice to have that extra help in the library please don't have the intern because the intern is coming in on Thursday we can cut that part-time employees hours and not be there on Thursday it's not to replace hours that your current staff whether they're full-time or part-time is working it might be that you can do without a volunteer that day or maybe an employee called in sick and so maybe that's a good opportunity to have that intern work some extra hours but it's really not because we have that intern there on Thursday night we don't need that part-time person to come in and work a regular schedule this is in addition to who you already have on staff well it doesn't look like any questions came in anybody having or things they can think of to ask right now very good well anytime you can give me a call or send me an email and whether you received an internship grant or not we'd be happy to help great alright well thank you everyone thank you Joanne and Mary Jo and Anika for joining us this morning and thank you everyone for attending I hope you'll check out the website for more information about doing internships because we what's going on now getting help with your current one and any future ones you might have that will wrap us up for today's show it has been and it has still been recorded and will be available potentially later today depending on how long it takes to process and as long as our internet connection stays stable it will be available here on our Encompass Live website this is where we post all of our upcoming shows and right underneath all of our upcoming ones is our archived Encompass Live sessions and this is where this week's show will be listed as well both the show and the PowerPoint and any of the websites that were mentioned will be included as well I hope you'll join us next week then when our topic is linked data and libraries and overview link data this is a topic we've had on the show before but it's actually been a few years it turns out and so we decided to do that again Robin Hastings who's from just south of us Northeast Kansas Library system she's going to talk to us about link data what it is and how it affects you in your library and how you can use it so definitely sign up for that show and any of our future shows we'll have more added as we get them confirmed so there will always be new topics on our list also do if you are a big Facebook user you can go over on Facebook and like us like our page over there I post reminders of when new shows are coming up when recordings are available I put on here so you'll keep up to date on what we're doing over here on our Encompass Live page so if you are big on Facebook do go ahead and like us over there other than that that wraps it up for today's show thank you very much for attending and we'll see you next time bye bye thank you everyone thank you thanks for having me thanks for being on with us let us know if you have questions