 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. It will recover 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 fine. You can record the show. We do record the show so you can watch it later at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open for 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 anyone who's not here 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 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, really our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries. We do book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We sometimes bring in guest speakers from across Nebraska and across the country to do presentations on cool things we're doing at their libraries. We also have Nebraska Library Commission staff that do presentations. And that's what we have today. Today you have me. I am the presenter for today. In addition to doing Encompass Live, our weekly show, I am also one of my duties is I am the state e-rate coordinator for public libraries in Nebraska. So I help all of our Nebraska public libraries provide to get their e-rate funding. I do training, consulting, hand-holding, whatever is needed to make sure our libraries get their e-rate. And today I'm going to be talking about the basics of the program. This is going to be hopefully a short session, just our one hour, as we usually have our Encompass Live shows being. So just an intro, an overview of the entire program and everything you do in it. Later in the year, I do longer three-hour in-depth workshops. So sometime in November or so. So that's where you will go through step-by-step doing all of the forms. Today is just going to be an intro to each of the forms and an introduction to the program and the process. So if you have our new to e-rate, don't know anything about it. This might be a good intro to you. If you're just trying to get a refresher on what all the different things are that goes on with it, this would be good. But if you want that more step-by-step in-depth look for workshops coming out of the, from me here at the Library Commission for our Nebraska Libraries later in the year. All right, and if you do have any questions about anything e-rate related, I want to be able to answer any questions you may have, anything you're confused about, concerned about, don't understand, type in the questions section, and I will make sure I can get all of your questions answered before we are done this morning. All right, so what is e-rate? I'll just read off their official description here. E-rate is a federal program to ensure that schools and libraries can obtain high-speed internet access at affordable rates and keep students and library patrons connected to broadband by providing a discount on eligible services and equipment. So e-rate is a discount program. It is not a grant, it is not a loan, it's nothing like that. It is you just get whatever you're paying for your internet service, you get a discount on that. And it will give you a discount on the actual monthly cost of your internet, so whatever you pay for each monthly. And if you happen to ever have to purchase any equipment to make that internet work, so servers and cables and routers and all of that extra physical stuff that makes the internet work. The funding for the e-rate program comes from the universal service fee. This is a fee that is on charge to service providers, so your internet service provider, your telephone service provider, and to you as well. If you look at your own phone bill, your library's phone bill, your personal ones, you'll see something that says sometimes USF or universal service, sometimes even says e-rate fee. And so we all pay into a pot of money that helps our schools and libraries be able to afford the internet that they need. So the program is run by the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. They oversee the program. They set all the rules and policies. Every now and then they come up with what they call their reports and orders, where they do updates to the program. It's always being modernized and making sure it keeps up with any new technology, so there are always things that come out that are changes to us. The FCC is in charge of that high level stuff. And they set up the Universal Service Administrative Company, or USAC, sound that's pronounced, Net for Profit Corporation that runs the day-to-day program. So this is who you all deal with and who I deal with when we're doing, actually applying for and doing e-rate. USAC also runs some other programs as well as the e-rate program, e-rates for schools and libraries. There are some other discount programs for healthcare facilities and low income people and people in high cost areas as well. Today we're talking about the schools and libraries program, the SLD. That's the section, the subsection, subgroup of USAC who handles e-rate, which is for the schools and libraries. E-rate runs on a funding year. This is our main, what you want to look at when you are thinking about e-rates is when you are going to receive the funding, it's going to be from July 1st of a year through June 3th of the next year. So you are applying for e-rate in the fall anytime after July 1st of a year for the next year, so you're always looking forward. Right now you can apply for the upcoming funding year, 2024. Funding years are labeled based on the starting year, the year they start in. So right now you'd be applying for funding year 2024, which will start July 1st, 2024 and go through June 30th, 2025. And so you will sometimes be doing things on e-rate wrapping up a previous year while you're applying for the upcoming year. So right now so many libraries are getting their funding for the 2023 year and working on their forms to accept that funding and get that money going. So you do have sometimes funding years crossing over, but just look at that date of it to figure out which one you might be working with. So who can receive e-rate? Libraries and library systems are eligible in schools and school districts. And if you have consortias of any sort, groups of these that work together as well. The way USAC and FCC have determined who is an eligible to do this is they must be eligible for Library Service and Technology Act funds. That's the funding that comes from the IMLS, the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And what they have done is they have given the state agencies, state library agencies the authority to determine who is eligible for LSTA funds in each state. So here in Nebraska, it's the Nebraska Library Commission, US. So they say you all decide who you think is eligible and then those are the institutions, libraries and schools who are eligible. In Nebraska, all legally established public libraries are eligible. There is no other criteria than being legally established. It's pretty easy to do. This is because all libraries in Nebraska who are legal can receive resources and funding and use services that we provide here at the Library Commission and we use the LSTA funds to provide these services to you. So you are eligible to receive something that uses those funds. This also includes tribal libraries and I'm going to get into that in just a second here. And then the schools and school districts, I'm just going to mention that briefly. As I said, I am the state e-rate coordinator for public libraries in Nebraska. For our schools and school districts, they go through the Department of Education and for all of their training and assistance and applying to their applications. So what I do here is I'm talking about libraries mostly. School applications are very similar, not very different, but I'm the person charged with that and there's people in the Department of Education who handle all our schools. So as far as the tribal libraries go, this is something new. This is something that was just, we weren't sure, so they made it official that the FCC officially may have ended the definition of library in the e-rate rules to include tribal libraries. This was done as of January 2022. So in order to be a tribal library for e-rate purposes, you have to be designated by tribal council and you have to have regularly scheduled hours, staff on hand, and materials for library users to check out. If you have those three things as a tribal library, then you are eligible to apply for e-rate. This is only public libraries, college libraries, there are many tribal colleges. Those are not eligible for e-rate funding. So if you are a tribal library and you do meet just these criteria, then yes, you can apply for e-rate. How much of a discount can you receive through e-rate? It's a pretty big range, anywhere from 20% to 90% off of your bills. Like I said, your monthly bills, monthly internet bills, or anything you have to purchase. And the discount depend is calculated based on your school lunch program, the free and reduced lunches that the students in your school district receive. So this would be the school district where your library is physically, geographically located in. Now you may serve students and people and anyone from other school districts, and that's great because people can just stop the school district line for using your library. But as far as e-rate making these calculations, they just look at where is your library physically sitting, and that is a school district that you look at those school lunch numbers. And then they take whether you're considered urban or rural based on U.S. census data and come up with a calculation for that. Now this is the first thing I always tell libraries to do is if you're not sure about e-rate, you don't know should you go through all the work of doing this, figure out what your discount is if you've never done it before. And here in Nebraska, luckily, that's pretty easy to do. Our Department of Education actually posts all of the school lunch data on their website every year. It is anonymous. It does not say who the students are or anything. It just says how many students are enrolled in the school district, how many of them are eligible for the school lunch program, and then what is that percentage. And something that is the key here too, and I want to be clear about is the number of students eligible for the school lunch program, not the ones who actually apply. There may be extra students, new families that don't need it, even though they are eligible. So it's not necessarily all the ones that apply. It's just how many are actually eligible to be in the, participate in the program if they wanted to. On the our Department of Education website, when you go there, there is a spreadsheet and it has multiples pages on it. One is every single individual school listed, but there is a sheet that is the school district as a whole. That's the one that you want to look at is the school districts page because they do the math all for you. If there's like an elementary, middle, high school, they add that a lot, but do just one big total. And that's what you need for your school district. You're in Nebraska, I don't know how other states do it, but check this out. Check yours. But this is how we have it in Nebraska. And then you take that and check your urban or rural status on the USAC website. They have where they have it by county. You can just look up and find out what yours is. This is based on US census data. As of now they are still using the 2010 census. Not the most recent 2021 is not been updated yet. I don't know when it will be. And it is urban is areas with populations equal or greater than 25,000. And rural is everything that's not urban, so less than 25,000 population. And here in Nebraska, most of our areas are rural. We do not have a lot of large cities. So that's good because you get a little extra discount being rural. Once you have these two numbers, then you look at the discount matrix that USAC has on their website to determine what your discount percentage is. And here I have it right here. So you can see here the percentage of students eligible is down the left there. And then there's two different categories of services. And we will get into that in a minute. Category one is your basic monthly service. And category two is your equipment. And I'll get to more details on that. And you can see there's an urban discount and rural discount. And for some of the low up to 49% of your students being eligible, you get a little bit more for being rural. But you can see here with only 50% of your students eligible for the school lunch program, you can receive 80% off of your bills if you apply for e-rate. That's huge. Here in Nebraska right now, the average this year is 73%. Discount rate. So most of our libraries are getting at least 80% off. So this is what you can then bring to your stakeholders, your board, your city, whoever might be wondering, is this worth it? Should we do it? Is the time worth the discount? Is 80% off of your internet bill worth doing this? I think so. And I'll mention two here while I'm here on this chart here. These slides will be available afterwards with the recording as well. So you do not have to try and write all this down and scribble all this down or anything. I will be providing this to you afterwards when we have the recording available. So you have all this information. All right. So what is e-ratable? What is that category two and category one all about? Every year, the FCC publishes what they call their eligible services list, ESL. And this is updated annually. If there are any new technologies, things they need to clarify. It's not a very long document. I think it's somewhere between 15 pages or something right now, maybe even less than that. Anyway, and it tells you what is eligible for e-rate. And the year is category one and category two. And I've got this graphic here on the side that to try and help visualize what is, which is which. Category one is any services providing high speed internet to your building. So bringing up to your building walls. So in this graphic over here, this red, those would just be bricks, like a brick wall. So anything outside the library. This would be your actual month that your internet service coming in and any construction or things outside the library. Once the internet has been brought into your library, then category two covers all of the equipment and service that is needed inside the building throughout the building to make that internet service work. So category one outside library walls category two inside. So as you can see, you're all the pieces of equipment, your modem, router, server, wireless access points, all of that. The devices that you use to actually use the internet like your laptops and PCs and and smartphones and wireless printers, but those are not e-rate eligible. Those are not things that you rate doesn't deal with the item, you know, the devices that you use to get on the internet. They deal with getting the internet service to to your to you and your patrons. There is a difference about the funding that can be requested for category one and category two category one. There's no limit on how much you can request. It's just what are you what are you paying you get a discount on it for category two. There is a budget that they give you and I'm going to get into the details of how you have us calculated and how you use that. There's a limit on how much they will give you for that internal connections inside the building. Alright, so category two or every one is basically anything that gets high speed broadband internet to your building. This is they call their digital transmission and internet access services. So your cable modem, DSL, fiber, satellite, wireless, all of these things. And as far as wireless, we're talking wireless as far as bringing the internet to your building, not inside the building when people use their devices wirelessly like I use my cell phone wirelessly. No, this is how does the internet get to your building. So any basically anything that provides that. So this is the actual service itself. This is not an exhaustive list of every single thing, but this is just some of the most common ways that the libraries and institutions can get internet. If you look at that eligible services list, then you'll see the list every single possibility that you can use. And as I said, if anything new comes up a new way to get internet, they update this or the list. In addition to the monthly actual service, there is also what they call special construction. If you need fiber, new fiber run to your library, you don't have it yet, you can get a discount on that construction under category one as well. So this is only be as I said for new fiber. So if you already have fiber to your library, you're not eligible for special construction discounts because you don't need it. So this would be for anyone who does not have the fiber connection. You can get a category one discount on it and this includes the actual construction itself, running the trenches running the cable from wherever the fiber is in your community, or wherever it is closest to your community or your building, any prep work design and engineering project management all that extra cost. Now USAC knows, and the FCC knows that you can't always do this at the timing of when the e-rate funding year is from July 1st to June 30th, and you probably want you to have your fiber turned on as of July 1st. So you can start this construction actually up to six months before the funding year starts that you're going to be using the servicer. So as early as January 1st of a year, anywhere between January 1st and July 1st, if needed, these constructions can start and be being done and then you would hopefully have your service by July 1st. And also can be done after that. It's just they give you that six months ahead of time if needed to do the construction and you'll still get your discount on that construction done in those early months, even though it's for getting the service in the year coming up. In addition to just the special construction service or discount, there is something that e-rate came up with called the state matching fund. This came along with the modernization they did with e-rate back 2010 or so. And this is additional funding that e-rate will help provide if a state helps libraries cover these construction costs. So for example, if you have an 80% discount for your e-rate, you have some construction project and you receive a discount. If your state can come up with a program or funding that will cover part of that extra that the library is responsible for, e-rate will match that as well. So you get additional funding and additional discount above and beyond your base discount. So this is only if you have this actual matching fund, state matching fund. So here's to give it a little math here so you can really think about it here. If you have an 80% discount, that's your discount rate and you've received a bid from a service provider to run fiber to your library. This is new fiber, remember, that costs $100,000. I don't know if that's the actual cost anymore, but this is just a nice round number to use for example purposes. So your e-rate discount is 80%, so e-rate covers 80,000 of that and then the library is now responsible for 20,000. If the state has a matching fund, they say we will contribute up to 10% of that extra, so 10,000. And then e-rate says, oh, your state has a matching fund will match whatever the state is giving you and they'll contribute another 10,000. And in the end, the library, your community, your city has to pay zero. E-rate and the state covering all. And then here's just the math, $100,000 project, 80,000 paid by your basic e-rate discount, 10,000 by the state, and then e-rate another 10,000 added on. Now, why am I getting into all the details of this? Because we do have this in Nebraska now. This is like I said, this program has been around for a long time and we just finally in Nebraska back in 2021, we're able to start doing this. The Public Service Commission actually is the who has the funding for this and it is our Nebraska Special Construction State matching fund and USF 117. And this came out of the, we had a broadband task force back in 2019, 2020, and this was one of the recommendations that and that did go forward. And the Public Service Commission has given a million dollars to use over four year period 2021 through 2024 to do the state matching fund to help schools and libraries and schools get fiber run to them using the Special Construction option through e-rate. There's the URL there to go to read more about it and apply for it from the Public Service Commission. This is right now, this is a program to use over four years so 2024 at the moment is the last year that is available. But there is an order out right now from the Public Service Commission asking to extend that program and make it go beyond 2024. And it's in the process in the works right now, most likely it will be extended, but right now officially it's just through 2024. But we have not used it anywhere near that million dollars as I said I'm guessing on that 100,000. It's cost a lot less than we expected to run fiber now. And so it will most, you know, we're working on being able to extend it beyond 2024. So keep your eyes open for that if you don't have fiber. But you can do it for the upcoming year. Definitely. You do have to go through the regular e-rate process to do this first. So you and we're going to get into the details of that. You do a 470 looking for a service provider who can do this fiber construction to your library. And then if you find one and pick one, then you submit your, you do the application to the Public Service Commission to get their state matching. If it's an extra form you have to submit to them saying we want it, we've found a service provider. We've picked one here so it is. And you send that copy of your 470 and who you've picked to the Public Service Commission and submit their form. That's a little screenshot over there. And then they get back to you and let you know if they've been approved. And once you have that approval, then you do your 471, your second form in the e-rate process where you then tell e-rate, we've picked someone and we have the state matching funds now. So that they know when they do your approval from e-rate that they will have this matching deal that they'll have to do. So definitely look into this. If you're interested, reach out to me here at the Library Commission. Holly Walt here at the Library Commission also is involved in, is very much involved in getting this going and helping libraries get through this process. You can see the deadlines here. Just end of December is when the deadline to apply for the Public Service Commission funding. And then sometime in January they will let you know if you've been approved. And that's all plenty of time to get all your applications and your forms done for the e-rate program. So does anybody have any questions yet about e-rate category one, this special construction deal that you have? Type into the questions section of your GoToWebinar interface. I'll give you a couple of minutes here. All right. Type in questions whenever you think of them. I will jump back and answer anything you want. All right. So that's category one. Category two, e-rate, is your internal connections. This is all of the actual physical equipment needed to make the broadband, your internet service work inside. Of course, question pops up. If our library currently has fiber, but we're building a new library, would the special construction still apply? If you have to bring new fiber to the new building, you probably would be able to do that, yes, because it's going to be a new connection to that new building. Yeah, if you're going to have to do something, a new connection that you didn't have before, I believe so, yes, that you could apply for that. Because if it's a new building, has never had fiber before, I'm just thinking it through, then yes, that would meet the criteria for it. So depending on when you're doing your library building, when your building is going to be built and done and ready to have the fiber done, that's when you could think about e-rate. Like I said, right now is when you can start applying for it for 2024. So if your building is going to be completed and ready to have its fiber run sometime in 2024, now would be the time to apply for all this so you can make sure you get the discount for all that. If it's going to be later, you might want to wait until 2025, it depends on how far you are along in the building process. All right, yes, thanks, I'll connect to the end, yes, yes, reach out to me, send me some details more information and we'll work with that on you, work with you on that. Absolutely. All right, so category two is, as I said, the equipment needed to make the broadband internet service work inside the building, as well as the maintenance on these connections too. So any upgrading, upkeep, repairs, all of that, as well as the actual equipment itself. And this can be anything, like this is also not an exhaustive list, but anything physical inside your building, access points, antennas, firewalls, routers, racks. This picture here is a nice, very well contained and well maintained organized wires and cables and racks. So anything you have like that in your library, a closet, somewhere where all this is, that's the stuff. If you need to upgrade it, category two can get you discount on that. Now, many libraries in Nebraska, and I'm sure across the country, you might have a cause like this, but not know what is all it is, what is all this stuff that I have. I don't understand it. I just know that's in there and somebody plugged it all in. And what do I need? Do I need, what do I need to update? Well, we have a great resource that's available now, the toward gigabit libraries toolkit that you can use and do a evaluation and an inventory of what you have and then figure out what you might need to update. It's free. It's open source. It was done by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which is, and it was actually just updated in last year or two. So it's always being updated. And it was a primarily designed for, it says here, small rural tribal libraries. You don't have an IT person. You don't have enough extra staff for that. You don't have someone on duty. A way for you to be able to do this yourself. We have a link to this from our e-rate website. So there's an inventory you do, and then it gives you an improvement plan. It says here's the things that you might want to update. And it explains this to you really well, really well. And good question saying, do you have one of these? This is what it actually does. So it really does help guide you through that and teach you a little bit about it. We highly recommend using that. Also, if you do need assistance with this, trying to figure out what you need, I'd mentioned Holly. Holly Wolthier, the commission, also Andrew Sherman. He's new here at the commission as of January. He's in our IT department. His job here also is to help libraries figure out what they need. And he can also advise you on help you using this or just advise you on what you could use, what you would need to update. So reach out to Holly or Sherm here at the library commission with any of those questions. So as I mentioned earlier, category one, you just get, you buy, you have the service, you get a discount on it. Category two works differently. Category two, the FCC has come up with this program where you have a budget. They calculate a budget. They figure out this is how much money we are going to give you over a five-year period to use for all your category two services. So over a five-year time, right now we're in the first five-year period, 2021 through 2025. Then the next one will be 2026 to 2030, et cetera. You have a amount of money you can use over that five-year period. You can use it, spread it out throughout the five years, buy something each year, a little bit here and there. You can do one big project. For example, if you're building a new library and putting a new computer lab in, and it's like a one-time big purchase, you could use all of your funding to get discounts on all of that equipment you'll be using to build that new computer lab if you want to. The budgets are fixed at the beginning of the year, but you can request a recalculation if you want to. So it's fixed, but you can ask to have things updated if something totally changes a lot. Right now, they only adjusted for inflation at the start of that funding year, so this current budget five-year budget period we're in right now, those prices were set at 2021. Lots of stuff can change in five years. You can always ask and say, can I adjust it? And you can receive discounts on the cost of any of your category two equipment up to this budget amount, but you can go over it as well. You're not limited to only using how much money E-rate gives you. They just said, well, we'll give you up to this amount. If your project is more than that, that's okay. You just have to pay full price for what's above what E-rate will give you. So this is not saying you can only spend this much money for your category two. It's saying E-rate will give you up to this much. If it costs more, that's fine. So specifically for libraries and for schools, it's different. Schools is done by student count, but since I deal with libraries specifically for public libraries, the budget is based on the size of your building, the physical space of your building, the square feet, all floors, anything closed by the walls of your library. And you get $4.50 per square foot. But there's a minimum of $25,000 that everybody gets, no matter how small their library is. That's what they call their funding floor. So, and officially in doing the math, if you have any library with up to 5,556 square feet, that meets that $25,000 funding floor. Everyone with libraries up to that size, you get $25,000. If your library is bigger than that, then you do the math, 450 times whatever your total square feet is. You can change this during the funding, that five-year period, like the library is talking about. If your building gets bigger or hopefully not smaller, or you build a new building that's a different size than the one you had previously, you can have the budget recalculated based on whatever your new size is of your building. So, for an example here with math, again, if your library is 3,500 square feet, 3,500 times $4.50 is $15,750. But there is that $25,000 minimum, so you actually get $25,000. However, then after you've figured that out, your discount rate does go into effect on this. Here for just easy math purposes, we went for a library has a 50% discount rate. So, at 50%, the library will receive half of that amount, $12,500 in funds to spend on any other category two services. So, the minimum any library can get is that $12,500 to use over five years. So, a little bit each year, all at once, whatever you want. This is a lot to keep track of, but that's okay. E-Rate will keep track of that for you. You have an online account that I'm going to show you in just a bit here, where you can, it will go in, you put into your account what is the square foot of your library and it does the math to tell you how much money you have. And then every time you make a category two request, it deducts from what you've got and lets you know how much you have left. So, they keep track of that, all that for you. All right, any questions about category two budgets? Category two, anything? Category one, anything. All right, let's move along. So, there are a couple of things that you do, a couple of other things you do need to be aware of and can take into consideration when you're doing E-Rate. And the first one is SIPA, the Children's Internet Protection Act. In order to receive E-Rate funding, which is federal funding, you do need to be in compliance with SIPA. This is for anything that gives you internet access or makes your internet work. So, your actual monthly service, the construction of bringing the service to your library and all that equipment inside. This is something, SIPA is something that anyone who any institution that receives federal funding for to provide internet service must be in compliance with SIPA. For our purposes, we're talking about E-Rate. This also would be if you receive funding grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, IMLS. Or if you receive grants through us, like here at the Library Commission, we use LSTA funding, library services and technology act funding, which comes to us from IMLS to give you all grants. And if you're using any of that money to provide internet access or anything that will use the internet, you have to be in compliance with SIPA. SIPA is about having filters on your computers, technology protection measures. This is not just your firewalls and things like that. For malware, this is about providing so that miners do not have access to anything harmful to miners. Anyone under 17 is considered a miner per SIPA. So you do have to have a filter somewhere in some way on a computer. An internet safety policy that says what people can and cannot do. You might already have one of these as part of a policy and that's fine. Don't do anything illegal on our computers, don't access anything illegal. And then at some point you have to let your community know you were doing this. Have had a public meeting and a public notice that this was going to be happening. There is information on the USAC website all about this as it relates to e-rate. We also did last week's Encompass Live was actually about SIPA and filtering. Andrew Sherman was the presenter for that. So you do want to know more about it from the Library Commission a lot about how to use filters and security on your computers. Definitely go and watch last week's recording as that relates to this. Now as far as certifying that you are in compliance with SIPA, the way this works is whenever you, when you apply for e-rate, there's a box you check on one of the forms, the 486 specifically, saying yes, we're in compliance. If there is no, there is no organization or agency that you submit your certification to ahead of time. It's not something you do preemptively where you say, you know, contact the FCC and fill out a form or send them a letter saying, hey, we are in compliance with SIPA. That's not how it works. You don't do that. Whenever you're asking for money, that's when you do it from any federal organization. So when you're applying for e-rate, there's a spot on the form where you check off and says yes, we're in compliance. When you apply for a grant from the IMLS, they will have a box that you've got to check that says yes, we are in compliance with SIPA. When you apply for grants for us to the Library Commission, specifically our library improvement grants, you have to check if the money you're receiving is going to have something to do with providing internet service or something that uses the internet, we will have you check a box that says that as well. So it's not something you preemptively do, like I said, and like send anyone, we're in compliance, and someone go look up and see that you're in compliance on some list. No, just whenever you go and ask for money that comes from the federal government, that's when you will say, yep, we're in compliance for you. Another thing you do have to remember is document retention schedule. E-rate requires that you keep all of your paperwork and documentation and anything for 10 years after the last date of service. For the upcoming 2024 funding year, that means anything related to this upcoming year, you have to keep through at least June 30th, 2035. Last date of service is the end of the funding year, that June 30th date. And this would be anything related to this year's application. It may be things that were from more than 10 years. So for example, if you signed a contract in 2020, that's a recurring service contract, and that supports the E-rate, ooh, that's also a 2024, I'll fix that, for 2024s. That's the contract you're using to get your 2024 E-rate service. You've got to keep that 2020 contract through also 2035. So anything that relates to this year's funding. You don't have to keep piles and piles of paper like this picture has here. You can if you want to. I know some people have file folders, binders, whatever. But you can keep it electronically. E-rate will keep this all in your online account as well. But for your own purposes, you may want to have your own scan, download, save it to a flash drive, put a folder on your computer that is just like E-rate 2024, whatever works for you. Just you need to be able to access it. If USAC ever comes and asks you, I want to see that contract from 2020. We need to confirm that it's a good contract for your 2024 application. Just make sure you'll be able to access anything if they ever ask. So let's get into the forms themselves. There are three forms that everybody has to do. That's the first three on this graphic, and then two that depends at the end. As I said at the beginning, we are not going to go into the details of how to submit all these forms today. We're just doing a general overview of what they're all for. My full workshops later in the fall will show you much more details about this. And we will talk about each of these forms. There is also one one time form down there that I mentioned here, the 498 for banking information. So you get your 470 where you first say to E-rate, we're looking for services. 471 where we say who we've picked 486 accepting the funding. And then depending on how you want your money, you tell you I'm paying my bills, giving me my money. You can get a discount on your bills or you can pay everything in full and get a reimbursement later. And we'll get into details of all of these now as we talk about the E-rate Productivity Center. Epic is how that's pronounced. And this is the online online account for all of your E-rate needs. Everything you do E-rate, you go into your Epic account to do. They do recommend that you use Chrome or Firefox. Other browsers, Edge, Safari, whatever, don't work really well with it. So have Chrome or Firefox to do your E-rate Epic account. And it is one stop shopping for everything you do. You submit your form, certify them. You can look up your application, see where they're at. Have conversations back and forth with their E-rate staff about your application, ask them questions. And that's the URL to get to the main USAC page, usac.org. So how do you log in to your Epic account? Whenever a library first joins gets into E-rate or is already an E-rate, there is an account created for your organization. And one person is designated as the account administrator. Here in Nebraska, generally that's a library director unless they've designated someone else to do that. But it can be whoever you want. And they're responsible in making sure everything in there is up to date. They're the main contact. You can have additional users added if you want to. And they can have different abilities in there if you want. Depends on if you have a lot of staff that will be doing this for you or not, or with you. So this is the screenshot of the main USAC website. There are two buttons there you see that both say sign in. They both get to the same place. Don't ask me why there's two. Either one of them will get you to the login screen, to logging in. So the first thing you get to when you go to log into your Epic account is this. And I'm going to get very detailed and strict about how you log in because it's something a lot of libraries struggle with. You'll notice here that it says if this is your first time logging in, read this information carefully. And that's important. Your very first time you log into Epic. So if you have never done any right before, never done that, you go through these eight steps the very first time you go in. After that, if you've ever done any right before, if you've ever used Epic, you do not have to do these every single time you log in. What you do is you ignore all this and you just click the continue button and go ahead and log yourself in. I think this is not really clearly explained here. I think it could be a little better because I've had too many libraries who tell me, oh yeah, every time I go to do my e-mail, I change my password. Because it tells me click the continue, click the forgot password, do the usual reset thing. But no, you only have to do that the very first time you're setting yourself up in the system, you have to go in. They do not have a way where you say I want an account. Here's my password. You have to pretend you forgot it and then go through that usual process like you do with anything online when you've forgotten your password. I know I've done it a lot. I'm sure you have. You only have to do that for your first time. Every other time you just ignore it and go in. You do have to reset your password every 90 days and the system will prompt you to do that when it's time. But please do not change your password every single time you log in. I hope you'll spread the word to everyone that that's not necessary. It is confusing though because when you first go to log in, this is what you get right in your face and unfortunately you get to ignore this most of the time. But we're going to pretend it is our first time just for demonstration purposes. So what you do do is hit continue, click the forgot password link. Username is your e-mail address. That's just not a special username that you have is just whatever your e-mail address is. And you do this reset via e-mail. We've all done this before with other services and whatnot. I'm sure they send you an e-mail, a link to your e-mail. You've got an hour to click on that and choose your own password. Once you do that, then you go back here, hit continue and go ahead and log in. And also every other time now once you've done that once, that forgot password thing once, you get to ignore all of that. Don't worry about that anymore. Just continue and log yourself in. Type in your username and password. Click the box to accept the terms and conditions. Click sign in. USAC did start a couple of years ago doing multi-factor authentication. This is where they send you a code. You might use this in other services too where you put in your e-mail address and they will send you a passcode that you will have to enter. They will send you an e-mail. Once you've said send the e-mail, this will pop up. Go back over to your e-mail. You get an e-mail that says one time verification code is the subject line. And there's a six digit code here. This is only good for 10 minutes. And then it expires and you'll need another one for the next time. What I do whenever I get one of these, as soon as I use this code to log in, I go back to my e-mail and delete this one because you can never use this code again. I've had libraries do that too. I said, well, the new one didn't work. I'm going to use the one I got yesterday. No, they're only good for 10 minutes. That's why it's not working. So I recommend just delete these as soon as you've used the code because it's only good for 10 minutes. Go back over to your Epic login, enter the passcode, verify, and then you're in their system. There are two parts to the USAC system here. There's the e-ray productivity center, Epic, where we're going to do our e-ray. And there's also the emergency connectivity fund. This is a special program put that was created out of the ARPA, American Rescue Plan Act, due to the COVID-19 pandemic for libraries and schools to get additional funding for devices and hotspots. That program is already, applying for that program is done. Libraries are still wrapping it up, so that's why it's there as an option. But we're going to go into the e-ray productivity center. You click anywhere here on that box and you get to your landing page. Now there's a lot on here. We're not going to do every single thing on here, as I said, because we're just doing highlights and overview of e-ray. But I'm going to zoom in to a few things here. If you do zoom in on the middle, there is an entity section and there's your entity number. This is something, a good thing to be aware of, sometimes called your build entity number, or a BEN. And that is a number assigned to your library, similar to a social security number assigned to a person. It's a number assigned to your library. No matter what staff come and go, your library always has an account, and that is the entity number and is something that USAC may refer to when they reach out to you. Also at the bottom of the screen here, you can search for any, look up any of your forms that you've submitted in the past, or that are in the process. So if you're wondering, did I submit a form this year? Did I get the next form? Where am I? Have things been certified or approved? You can all look this up yourself. Choose which form you're going to look at for 70, for 71, et cetera. And then what funding year it is. Here I looked at 2021, and I have two form for 70s, one certified meaning submitted and one incomplete. So you can see whether you've finished submitting something or not. So let's get into the forms themselves. The first form in the e-mail process is the 470. This is where you are opening up a competitive bidding process. We're looking for someone to provide us with this service. And so this is in the 470 is available as of July 1st of every year. It's available right now. So you can start this right now if you want to. And this is where you say we're looking for somebody either to give us whatever the services are you looking for. Is it monthly internet? Is it special construction? Is it I need to buy some new routers or wireless access points in category two? You detail all of that and what you're looking for on your 470. This is something you do as the applicant. You do not reach work with a service provider to do this form. You just do it yourself. You can check out a service provider's website. You can call them and ask just, hey, I'm just wondering what do you offer? What are the rate? What are the, you know, just don't say I want to do e-rate with you. That would, you know, they don't help you with this. You just do this one yourself. There are some times when you do not have to do a 470. The first instance, it's not always required every year, depending on your situation. If you are in a multi-year contract, you only do a 470 the first year of the contract, not every consecutive year of that contract. Because the 470 opens a bidding process asking for service. You already have a service. You don't want to ask for new service throughout the time that we've already got a contract signed. So you do the 470 the first year, for example, you have a three-year contract. And then for the second and third year, you skip and go and do the 471, the second form in the e-rate where you just sell you a sec. Yep, we're still with that company. We are still continuing with the contract. So you pick it up, the process of the second form. Also, if you can find really good low-cost internet, you are not required to do a form for a 70. And it's specifically business class internet service, so not residential. And if it's something commercially available, anyone can get it. You get to skip the competitive bidding. This is something that the FCC put out, trying to encourage more service providers to offer really fast internet at a really good rate for schools and libraries. And so they said, hey, if you can just offer this service, a library can just go with you and don't have to compete with any other service providers. And we have a lot more libraries are able to do this, a lot more service providers are offering this. The cost would have to be $3,600 annually, so less than $300 a month, and have at least 100 megabits per second speed downstream for downloading and 10 megabits per second upstream. So if they meet that criteria and that cost, you don't have to do a 470. So to do your 470, like I said, we're not going through every step, and I'm just showing you where it's at. On the left-hand landing page, up in the upper right, there's a whole bunch of items here. You can see different forms. You just click on the FCC form 470, and it gets you into starting your form. After you've submitted one of these forms, one thing I want to bring to your attention here, there is a discard form button here. This is on all the different e-rate forms. You'll notice it. If you've got partially through a form or you didn't realize you did something wrong, you can always discard a form and start a new one. So you don't have to leave them floating around out there. So make sure you keep things cleaned up on here. If you start one and start a second one, get rid of the old one using that. So after you've submitted your 470, you receive a receipt notification. This comes into your newsfeed, into your Epic account, and it summarizes what you've done. You can make corrections. So things are not in stone necessarily. There are certain things that you can update and fix if you need to. And this also gives you what is called your allowable contract date. After you submit the 470, you have to wait 28 calendar days before you can do your 471. You need to give that amount of time legally for competitive bidding to happen for companies to reach out to you. Which great is USAC will send you a notice when in your notifications saying your 470 was successfully posted, it will say your allowable contract date is, and whatever it is. So I did this one early this morning. So my allowable contract date, I have to wait until August 30th to be able to do my 471. That's the very earliest I can do it. So you always have this here. Do not jump the gun and go ahead and do it any earlier. You'll be breaking the e-rate rolls if you do that. After you submit the 470, you're in competitive bidding. This is the formal process where you vendors, companies will reach out to you possibly with bids and you pick who you want to do. Like I said, this process has to last at least 28 days minimum before you can make your choice. And through this process, you look for whatever might be the most cost effective bid using price as your primary factor. During the competitive bidding process, you do have to have a fair and open meaning process meaning all vendors have the same info. You can't work with one vendor to give them all the info and not provide it to all the other ones. Everyone has to know everything. Vendors, your service providers aren't involved in your 470. If they start asking you questions, then you answer them, of course, and say, oh, yeah, here's what we want. Here's what we're doing back and forth, but submitting it in the first place. And then you choose whatever is cost effective for you using cost and any other decisions, any other criteria that might be important to you. Now there are some situations, some weird situations you get into in the competitive bidding process. What if you already, that might need to address here, I got a lot of questions about, what if you already have a current contract? You're already in a certain contract with somebody, but you want to start doing e-rate for the first time. That's okay. Just do a 470, like usual, and then wait your 28 days. And then that contract you already have counts as one of your bid responses. You don't need something new from the company necessarily. You can just say, okay, here's what we currently have. Now here's all the ones we got in, compare them. Hopefully your existing contract becomes a winning bid, and then you can proceed with getting your e-rate discount on what you already have, what you're already in a contract for. That's perfectly fine. What if your city pays for the library's internet? What if, you know, the library isn't actually paying for it? That's okay, too. You use cost allocation. You can separate out the library's internet use from the rest of the city's internet use. And then only apply for e-rate on whatever the library uses. The city or your service provider may have service resources where they can tell you this much is being used by City Hall. This much is using the fire department. This much is what the library's using. Just look at the library's amount and ask for an e-rate discount on that. And what if you only receive one bid or none? That's okay, too. You don't actually have to have a competition. Here in Nebraska, we oftentimes only have one service provider in a community, so there isn't anyone to compete with. And that's okay. If you only receive one bid, just document that. Write yourself a note or an email saying it's the only company reached out to us this year. If you have no bids, then after the 28 days, you can reach out to vendors, service providers. If you know someone's in your community and you wanted a bid from them after that 28 days, you can then reach out and say, hey, I did this e-rate application. Can you please send me a quote? If you're just going to continue with your plan on continuing your current service provider, ask them to submit something or at least an email or some sort of confirmation that they will continue with you. After you have reached that allowable contract date, that 28 days, then you can close the competitive bidding process. There is no, like, you don't make an announcement. There's no where you check a box saying bidding is closed or turn it off. It's just you internally saying, okay, we're past 28 days and we've got all these bids. Now let's sit down and make our choice if there is a choice to be made. Make sure you sign a contract or have a contract in place. And then you do your 471, which is the second form in the process, but only during a specific time of year, the application filing window. The 471 is only available. It's locked down, not even open to use until they open their filing window. Usually that's done between January and March of the upcoming year and they usually announce when those dates are going to be sometime in December. So we don't know right now when that will be, but you can plan for it being sometime in early 2024. The 471 has to be done every year. This is not one that you can skip, like the 470 where there's certain situations where you don't have to do one. You always have to do your 471. And this is where you just tell them who you've picked, what services you're getting, how much it's going to cost. Another important tip here, whatever's on your 470 must match what's on your 471. You can't put something on your 471, some service you want that you didn't ask for on your 470. So if you ask for, say in a 471, I want wireless access points, so you didn't put wireless access points in your 470, not going to happen. So you got to make sure that they match up. You can have more on your 470 than what's on your 471. I call the 470 your dream list possibly. Sometimes you're just feeling things out trying to see what something's going to cost. That's fine. But once you get to 471, whatever's on there has to have already been mentioned on the 470. At this point, you can work with your service provider. You do want to at this point work with them on what they can offer, what it's going to cost, how it's going to happen, all of that. As I said, the 471 timing is after those 28 days, after you have either signed a contract or legally binding agreement or have one, and during your application filing window. Keep your eyes open for when that's announced later this year, but generally it falls mid-January to mid-March. What's great what USAC does is they do send you an email nudging you and letting you know when you have reached your allowable contract date. If you can't remember how long is my 28 days that I get there yet, you will get this email that says, Epic Notification Allowable Contract Date Reached. They also put that in your EPEX account as well. After you do 470, basically just sit back, get applications, responses in, and then wait for this notice and then start working on the 471. 471, same place as the 470. I'll link up the top here where you can click on that to go into starting your form. Also, just like the 470, you get an acknowledgement letter. You can make some corrections and changes if you need to. You can request funding reductions if you want, but you can't increase funding. If you were wrong about the amounts you put in, and you need to change it and make it more, once you find out for your service provider, actually the cost is going to be more, the 471. You can't increase funding requests after you've submitted one. Just do a whole new one and then you cancel off with one. After your 471 is submitted, then that is when it becomes a waiting time. The Program Integrity Assurance Division of USAC starts reviewing your application. They make sure it's checked with the eligibility. They may reach out to you with questions, make sure everything is legal and up and up. If they reach out to you with questions and you have no idea what they're asking for, if you want assistance on it, that's what I'm for. Reach out to me and let me know. Sometimes I'm copied on these emails with questions. Sometimes I'm not. So let me know if you want any help and I can help you navigate any questions that they may ask of you. After they've completed your review, you will get a Funding Commitment Decision Letter, your FCDL, and this will let you know if you've been funded or not or unfunded, canceled, whatever. You might receive more than one. And category two, sometimes those are split up. So keep your eyes open, make sure you get everything, some response about everything you submitted. You can also file an appeal if you disagree with them, either reducing or denying your funding. And this is how that comes to you. You get an email that will be sent to you that says USAC Funding Commitment Decision Letter available. In the email itself, it does not say what the response is. It just says, thank you for submitting. Attached is the form. And here's your next steps. It tells you what to do next. So you have a PDF, that's a letter. Open that up. And this is just an example. And it will tell you, yes, total committed, how much is. And there's multiple pages to this afterwards with more details. And then it tells you your next steps. Once you have your Funding Commitment Decision Letter, you immediately go on to the next form, the 486. There's no reason to wait. There's no reason to wait. There's nothing like that. As soon as they've told you you've got your funding, sit down that same day, next day, and do your 46. This is where you tell USAC, yes, we would like to have the funding. Many libraries kind of get stuck on this funny commitment letter. They say, yes, I got my funding letter. We got our money. I'm good, I did it. That's not exactly what this is. This means the money has been committed to you. You don't do this. They don't start giving you your money. This is also where you do your compliance with SIPA. This is the form where you check off the box saying you are compliant. And this is also one of the easiest forms to do because everything you need is already in your Epic system. Everything from your 471 and your 470 is already in there. You're basically just going in, creating one of these forms and checking off saying, yep, that's the one, that's all my 471 info. It's also available from the menu up here. As you can see, those three main forms that I said everyone has to do, they're all right up here in this menu on your Epic landing page. Now, there is a deadline by when you need to submit your 486 in order to get your funding. And it is 120 days after your service start date, which is July 1st, or the date you got your funding commitment decision letter. Your funding decision letter can come after July 1st. You still get all your funding on that July 1st, but sometimes, you know, retroactively, but sometimes it takes time for you to get through all the applications. This will fall in if it is before July 1st, October 29th, so end of October is when you're looking at as a deadline for that. If you submit your 46 after that deadline, you don't miss out on the money, you just get less. For however many days late you are, they reduce the amount of funding you get. But you just get less. I do pay attention to these deadlines, and I will notice, nudge you and send you emails saying, hey, it's coming up and you haven't done it yet. Once you do your 46, you will get a letter issued by USAC and letting you know it's sent to you and your service provider letting them know that you've done this and then they will be able to start your service provider will be able to start working and giving you your discounts. Does anybody have any questions here yet? I'm through the third form of the process and now we're going to get into receiving your funding in different forms you do there. Type in your questions section. We are a little after 11 o'clock, I know. Sorry about that, I apologize. Sometimes things go along with this, but I'll get through all of my slides here. Answer all the questions you have. If you do need to leave right now, that's fine. We are recording the whole show today and you'll be able to watch it later at your convenience when you have time. No questions yet? How about e-rate? So the last step in the e-rate process is what they call invoicing. This is invoicing USAC and saying I want my money. And you have two choices of how to do this. You can receive a discount on your bills automatically from your service provider and then they receive the funding from e-rate or you can pay your bills in full and then you request a reimbursement after the funding year is over. We highly recommend if possible doing the discount on your bills because it's easier for you in the library and at the library and after the 46 you are done submitting forms. You've done your first three and that's it. The service provider then will discount your bills and then they will submit a form to USAC to reimburse them for whatever the discounting you. Service providers are always paid in full when they participate in e-rate. They don't lose any money. They just get some of it from you at the library and some on the rest of it from USAC. They submit this form, the service provider in voice or spy form and they get their money back. Your other option is doing the bear form, billed entity applicant reimbursement form, the 472. This is you pay your bills in full and then you submit this to get reimbursed. So if for some reason your provider can't do discounts or doesn't then you would just do this and you just wait until the year is over and get your reimbursement. You can do another 120 days deadline, 120 days after the last service date or June 30 or whenever you did your 46 also comes up at the end of October. I will also notice this and send you emails if you haven't done it yet. This is done as if you are doing reimbursement, this is direct deposit from USAC. They don't issue checks or anything. They just do a bank transfer and this is where I mentioned that one extra form that you have to do once before they can send you this money, you have to do provide them with your banking information. This is banking information for the library. So similar to if you've done direct deposit forms for your own personal paychecks. This is the form for that for e-rate. It's called the 498. You have your banking information for the library, tax ID number and then when you submit a bear form it will then be deposited into whichever bank account you indicate here. This form is in a different place because it's only form you have to do once and it's not when you're regular ones, you're doing it every year so it's not up here in the upper right like the other three. If you go and click on your library's name underneath where the USAC logo is and then related actions way down here about the middle says create FCC form 498. That's where you would go and give that bank information. So before you can do a bear form you have to have this in there and you only do this once one time and as long as your bank has info it doesn't change you never have to do it again. If it does change then you do a new one. There is a new process for accessing your bear forms. They used to have an old if everyone did it right before I remember you had a pin number and a separate website to go to. Now the bear form is in the Epic system itself but you have to request access to it since not everybody's doing this it's not automatically in there. So you go to this website here about bear form access. There's a spreadsheet you submit. You send it in a customer service case within your Epic account to USAC. They'll let you know when you can when it's all set up and then you'll be able to do your bear form. Also you'll notice when you go out log back into your system if you remember when we did this at the beginning we had two gray boxes Epic and ECF now you'll have a third one for submitting your bear. So it's a little differently but it's all in the Epic system now and we click on the bear you then just have to enter your emergency number and go in and submit all your reimbursement information. No matter which way you do it getting reimbursed with discounts on your bill or getting discounts on your bill getting reimbursed after the fact you receive notices. If you do the bear you get a notification letting you know that it's been the funding has been processed and your shares freighter knows it's been processed. You also receive a quarterly report dispersion report whether it's a bear or a spy so reimbursement or discounts letting you know the money has been sent. So if you get one of these and you're getting discounts on your bills compare this report to your bills and make sure your service provider is giving you the appropriate discount because this report is telling you USAC has sent your provider money and they should be discounting your bill that amount. And that is the last form in the process the last step in the process doing that invoicing. So and so that wraps up the whole e-rate process your 470, 471, 486 and your invoicing forms anybody have any questions I just have a couple more wrap up slides for today but is anything you all wanted to know more about anything I didn't answer any questions you had ahead of time that I have not answered type into the question section I want to make sure I answer all your questions before we wrap things up for today. I don't see anything coming in that's okay you can also of course I'll reach out to me later I do want to bring your attention to on the USAC website their e-rate website they do have also a lot of training themselves they do an online training series every fall starting up October usually they used to do in person training they've already told us this year they're no longer doing that it's all going to be online so multiple trainings coming up every year they have tutorials step by step of each form 5-10 minutes each live ones that you can attend webinars, recorded ones there so check out their site if you like to use follow along on a user guide they do have PDFs of how to go step by step doing all the forms as well I also recommend if you can sign up for their e-rate news brief this is a monthly email that they send out with tips and tricks and notices about here's upcoming deadline coming up that you need to be aware of or changes the program or anything so definitely I highly recommend signing up for that if you do need more help you can call e-rates customer service center 888-203-8100 if you want to call them or within your Epic account there's a contact us link you can use that to send them a notice within the system and also on our e-rate website here our library commission website that I maintain we have lots of resources the recording of this training session will be there of this end come aside will be there recording of my 3R training sessions links to lots of things in the e-rate website the department education, school lunch numbers all those things there you can look there for all of that contact me as I said I'm the state e-rate coordinator for public libraries here in Nebraska there's my phone number and email address reach out to me with any questions, issues help hand holding you need related to e-rate that is one of my jobs here is to make sure all of our public libraries receive all of their e-rate funding does anybody have any last minute desperate questions you wanted to ask of me anything you'd like me to clarify anything you'd like to know more about that I did not mention yet type into the questions section as I said this was a quick overview very fast through the basics of the program hopefully give you a good idea of how everything works generally I will be doing longer as I said 3R workshops October November not sure on the dates yet to look for those if you want to more in depth step by step of how the process works thank you you're welcome everyone pop out of here and back to our Encompass Live website here so thank you everybody for being here today I hope this is very helpful for you as I said the show is recorded and in recordings I'll go here this is our main Encompass Live page if you use your search engine of choice and type in Encompass Live we're the only thing that will come up you'll find our upcoming shows in our archives are here today's show will be at the top of the list here most recent ones at the top everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show get an email from me letting you know when the recording is ready should be by the end of the day tomorrow as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me here's one I was also mentioning last week's Encompass Live internet filtering for e-rate CIPA compliance and cyber security I highly recommend watching that it's a much more in depth explanation of how cyber security and filtering can help you not just beyond CIPA compliance and I said Sherman here at the library commission did that session for us last week so definitely watch that one e-rate related you can search our archives here if you want to look and see if we've done a topic show on any particular topic this is our full show archives I'm not going to scroll all the way down you see here the scroll bar is really huge but this goes all the way back to when Encompass Live first premiered which was in January 2009 so we do have shows going back all the way there we have all of our shows up on YouTube so just pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything it is some of the shows will stand the test of time still be good useful information but some things can become old and outdated resources may have changed drastically services or products might not exist anymore people will probably work at different libraries than when they presented for us 10 years ago so just pay attention to that if you are ever watching an old show but this is something libraries do we keep things for historical purposes so we always keep doing that here as long as we have somewhere to host it we also have a Facebook page just links over here for our Encompass Live so if you like to use Facebook give us a like over there here's your mind about logging into today's show we do a little meet the presenter sessions we also post when recordings are available so if you use Facebook give us a like over there we also use the Encompass Live hashtag a little abbreviation of our name on Twitter and Instagram so you can follow us there as well to keep up with what we're doing so that wraps up today we have some more shows I'll be filling in here but next week we have deploying soft skills in the library setting Lacey Rogers from our University of Nebraska in Omaha Chris Library there will be talking about that with us next week so we'll have her as our guest speaker so hopefully you'll join us for that show and any of our other upcoming ones keep an eye on the schedule here I'm in talks with some people just nearing downs and final confirmations for filling in more of our August dates and September ones coming up that wraps it up for today thank you everyone for being here with me this morning I hope this is helpful contact me with any of your e-weight questions or issues you have I'm here to help and hopefully we'll see you at a future episode of Encompass Live bye