 Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm Krista Burns of Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event that we do every Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Central Time, where we present topics by NLC staff members, guest speakers like we have today, and any sort of various topics that we have interest to libraries and librarians in the state of Nebraska. This morning, we have Maria McGee here who will be talking about the new and improved Library Information Services Program. So, go ahead. Okay. Thank you, and good morning. I am Maria McGee, and I am one of the instructors in the Library and Information Services Program, as it will now be known. Some of you may have either taken classes under the Library Technical Assistance Program as it existed previously. No, no, you can hear Marty, but you can't see me. That's okay, we'll get lined up here again in a second. Anyway, the program, as it officially begins, will start in fall of 2009 from the Central Community College in Grand Island Tastings in Columbus. So, if we can go to our next slide. We have a couple of other people with us on the phone today. The first of these is Dr. Diana Parmely. Diana Parmely is the Dean of Educational Services at Central Community College, and both she and Eric Jones, who is the technical coordinator for our program, have been really instrumental in getting this program off the ground, rounding up the instructors, getting us all on the same page, helping us work with the online software that we're going to be using, as well as some other technical considerations. So, with that, I'm going to invite Dr. Parmely to say a few words. Can you hear me? We can. Am I, and I didn't know if I was doing this right or not. I might tell you, Eric is actually at the Grand Island campus, he's not with us today, he's on vacation, but we were delighted, Eric did the proposal for the new program last summer, and we were delighted to be able to get it. There were problems that students had with enrollment, with sending transcripts, you know, when you go to six different colleges, it makes it a little confusing, and financial aid was also confusing to students, and then the fact that some of the courses were offered on a semester timeframe, and others on a quarter hour system. So, we are in a semester system, and we're glad to have the program. I think that's all I'll say for now, and maybe could answer questions at the end. Mary Young will be with us in a minute, but she's not here right this minute, Marnie. Okay, then we can go to the next slide. I have Mary Young's contact information here. Mary will be the admissions, she is the admissions director for Central Community College, and she'll be working with the students who are either bringing in credits or starting in the program initially. So, I am sure there may be some questions for her at the end in any case, so we may come back to her slides so people may need the contact information. So, let's go ahead and move on. Well, as Dr. Parmel mentioned, there are some real advantages now as to having this all out of Central Community College. Students will only need to register and apply for financial aid at one institution as opposed to when they may have done it previously at several different institutions. You'll have a single advisor, which will be Mary Young, and all the classes will be offered on one course management system, which is known as Blackboard. Some of you may have experienced classes in Angel or Web CT, some different course management systems, so you don't have to learn a new one each time you take a new class. Next slide. There are two choices in the program and Dr. Pasca will talk a little bit more about these, but it is a certificate program with 18 hours of coursework or it can be an associate degree program which will transfer to the University of Nebraska on the Hawks. Dr. Pasca also has been instrumental in getting this through with Central Community College and she is not here with us today, but I have asked her to say a few words so she has produced a video which we're going to try and load now and have you see. This may take a minute or two. My name is Dr. Becky Pasca and I am the coordinator of the Library Science Education Programs here at the University of Nebraska-Homoham. Thank you, Mary. Let me congratulate you on considering the study of your national skill program at Central Community College. The program is led by very highly qualified faculty and you'll proceed through a curriculum that is tied directly to the needs of 21st century libraries. Because of the high quality of the program, all of the courses will transfer into the undergraduate library science program here at UNO. Please contact me if you have any questions about the transfer and again, let me congratulate you on considering this exciting and meaningful educational journey. Please contact me if you have any questions about the transfer on considering studies and meaningful education. Okay, go ahead. Okay, next slide. I'm Carrie Turner and I am... Just a second, we're getting back to our presentation. My name is Dr. Becky Pasca. Well, I think I want to talk a little bit about it since the next one really is going to be about the class that I teach. Let me congratulate you on considering... The next part of our presentation here, I'm just going to tell you a little bit about each one of the classes that are part of the curriculum. I teach the Foundations of Library and Information Services class and I do this with Carrie Turner. I usually teach it one semester. Carrie Turner will teach it another semester. And this really includes a lot of introductory information such as histories of libraries, types of libraries, what the public service means in a library, technology that is becoming part of every library and some different career options or things that you can do with a library and information services certification. And if you'll click on Carrie Turner's video, she'll say hi to you here as well. Hi, I'm Carrie Turner and I am one of the instructors for Library 1010. And I am one of the instructors for Library 1010. Yeah, it was short and sweet, yes. But we knew it would be redundant if both of us were talking. And next slide. Cataloging and classification is being taught by Ruth Karlach. Ruth is over at York College and has a lot of great experience working with cataloging and classification. Some of the things that are covered in this class are bibliographic records, subject headings, Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems, mark records as well as copy cataloging. Next slide. Well, surprise, surprise, there's my face again. I also will be teaching the reference resources and services class. This class will be offered in the summertime and it includes a lot of the information that you will need as far as reference services goes. We'll be covering information literacy, which is obviously a big topic in all kinds of libraries, public as well as for school media specialists, which includes the big six. We talk about matching patrons with appropriate tools. We talk about the reference interview. We also talk about the search process, different kinds of databases and there are new ones out there all the time and evaluation of resources because we really think that's probably not only one of the most important things that librarians can do, but we need to be teaching it to our patrons as well. Next slide. And this is Patty Birch. Patty also has provided us with a video, but I will mention her class here, managing collections in libraries and information agencies. She'll be working with selection for your collection, evaluating your collection, intellectual freedom and copyright. And now we'll listen to a video from Patty. Hi, I'm Patty Birch, the library media specialist at North Platt High School in North Platt, Nebraska. I'll be teaching LIBR 2150, managing collections in libraries and information agencies for the new program being offered through Central Community College. In the semester class, we'll talk about a wide variety of different topics related to managing and developing your collection. In addition to getting to know your community or the area in which you work, we'll learn how to select items for that collection, we'll learn how to evaluate the collection, analyze it and see if there are some things that you need to take out of the collection. We'll also be talking about subjects like intellectual freedom, copyright, all kinds of information. So I hope you'll have a chance to explore these many topics in this 15-week class being offered through Central Community College. And back to the next slide. Next we hear from Carol Fiker. Carol has been teaching the leadership and management in library and information agencies. Carol also has some great experience doing this, having been a regional systems librarian for a number of years too. So a lot of her class will focus on the policies and procedures that are pertinent to directing any genre of library, and this will include things like how you do fundraising, how you deal with personnel issues, things like that and working with your boards of course too. So this is a great class particularly for folks who are looking to be directors of public libraries. And the last class or what we call the capstone practicum is taught by Dorothy Willis. Dorothy also has been working in the program for a number of years and this builds on previous coursework. So you have to take the foundations class first and you have to take the capstone practicum last. But in this program, the students will have the experience of working in a library and we will help you hand pick a mentor with whom to work so that you're really getting the experience for the kind of library that you really want to work in. And Dorothy does a very nice job of working with students in this capstone project. Okay, next slide. Oh, yeah. Mary Young, are you back there with the Central Community College people? Mary is here, she's coming up. I'll give you the opportunity to say a few words and then we're gonna open the floor to any questions if any of the people attending have anything to say. Diane has given me technical assistance. Well, my name is Mary Young and I would welcome any questions that you might have and would just encourage any students that might be interested to give me a call and we can work with them through their program. A number of students, as you know, could go a couple of routes. They could do the certificate program or the associate of arts degree and really willing to work with other institutions for those other courses that would apply to the associate of arts degree. So just would welcome any questions and have received quite a number of emails and that seems to be maybe the best way to contact me because I'm in and out of the office quite often and I strive for a 48 hour response so just would encourage any questions you might have. Mary, do you wanna remind us of your email address because I don't think it, I had it down there on your last, on that last slide. Sure, can you just give it to us verbally? Yes, I'd be glad to. It's M Young, and so M is in Mary, Y-O-U-N-G, at C-C-C-N-E-B dot E-D-U. And I would also mention that our library information is on our web address and so I would encourage students to visit our web as well and that address is www.C-C-C-N-E-B dot E-D-U slash L-I-F. Right, so excuse me, it's www.C-C-C-N-E-B dot E-D-U slash L-I-F. Correct, that will take you directly, that will take you directly to the library and information services page that has our course listings, the rotation of courses, I believe it has my, it may even have my address out there again, but that is a very, very helpful site. And if you forget that, and you wanna just go to now hiring at your library dot O-R-G, then you can find it under Education and Learning. There'll be a link to it. And that would be from the Nebraska Library Commission site. From the Nebraska Library Commission site. And the thing we did, we just changed all our references that used to say L-T-A, because that was the former name of the program, to L-I-F, the new name, but we left in all the tagging throughout in all the pages. So that if someone forgets the name of the page, and they search on Library Technical Assistant or L-T-A, they can still find it, it'll take them to L-I-F. And maybe at Central Community College, you could ask your tech people to do that too. So that if they're searching, they can find it. If they search on the wrong thing. For those of you who may not recognize her voice, that was Mary Jo Ryan. She just thinks everybody knows her. Sorry, that's okay. Mary Jo works for the Nebraska Library Commission. So she's been very helpful in getting this type of promotion going and helping us with the library and information systems. And also in the room here, we have Laura Johnson who is the training and education coordinator for the library commission. So Laura, do you want to say a few words? We're delighted that Central Community College has stepped up to take charge of this program. We think it's a great program. Yet really close to need in Nebraska. And this is very sweet. It's going to be a more cohesive experience for people that go through it. Great. I guess I would invite, if anybody's in the audience who has gone through the program or has taken any of the classes, would like to talk about it. I'd like to invite you to speak up now or text chat now. I think it might be useful for others to know a little bit about your experience. Don't be shy. And I'm not sure if we have anybody in the audience who has. We might have, just because of who's at the group. In the other side, right? Meanwhile, can we put the video back on? I just want to mention one of the things that we have. No, I think it's... I think it's going to send you one. So you could contact Mary Young and she would get that out to you. It just tells you a little bit about the program, what your options are as far as the certificate versus the associate of arts degree and what the course offerings are and when those are offered, fall, spring or summer. And I should just reiterate that some of the previous classes were offered, as Dr. Carmel mentioned, in a quarter program. In this new program, they'll all be semester classes or in the summer. So we have the fall semester, the spring semester and the summer program. So with that, I think I'll open it up to any other questions or comments from anyone. This is Diana. Mary said she would like to mention a few more things. So she's back here. Okay, super important, Mary. I just wanted to mention, I just wanted to mention that Central is, we have put together that associate degree online. And one thing that's been really a neat experience for me is working with students really at a distance. I've never seen their face. I've only heard their voice on the phone or had several emails with them. But I have a student in Western Nebraska that's completed all of the library courses that is now pursuing the associate of arts degree and then will persist on to a bachelor's degree. And so it's really a neat opportunity for students that might be really at a location that they need online classes and they work very, very well. And so would really welcome any students that are out at a distance that would really need this type of a program because it does work and it's really, I know for me as an advisor, it's really fun. I might also mentioned that since the program was previously in all six community colleges, if a student would like to complete their AA degree at one of the other five community colleges and just take these six courses from us, they can do that. And I probably shouldn't even say this, but I think Mid Plains also has their AA degree online. So a person could get the entire program online if they want to enroll through Mid Plains as well as us. I don't know about the other four colleges if they have all of their courses. And for us, fall will be the first time we've been able to say that we've had an AA completely online. Is there anything else, Mary, that you thought, maybe we ought to tell them? She's here to answer questions, so if anyone has any. So Diana and Mary, it's Mary Jo again. I'm just wondering, when you talk about an online experience, a complete online experience, can you describe just a little bit what that means, how does that, does the students have any meetings face to face meetings or interactions at all, face to face, or is it all just physically in front of your computer? You know, I like to take a stab at that. Sorry, Mary, go ahead. I'll let you go ahead and take your stab first. Well, you know, I, speaking in the class and classes that I teach, I will say that there is a component where they meet with other people, but not necessarily me. So previously I've offered an orientation session where if people wanted to get together, you know, we could help them walk through the first steps. But I think we'll be changing that so that they can walk through all of it themselves or call for assistance if they want to. The other component of the class may be that we ask you to meet with a library director, or we ask you to meet with someone who's doing reference work. So that you can interview people and this actually has a two-fold component. So let's say you live in Western Nebraska, obviously that doesn't require you then to drive to Omaha to meet with someone there, but you can choose somebody in your own community. So it not only gives you information that you need for the class, but it helps you start building your network, which we think is a really vital component. And the library world is a small world, so we really think that when you start to build those contacts, you're really starting to build contacts for when you're looking for a position, that you'll know some people and begin to know other people in the library community. Mary. Okay, we'll see what I can do here. For us with our AA degree, when we refer to that being online, the student does not necessarily have to come to campus. For really any courses except one. And that course right now, as we have it written, that is the biology course. And a student does need to take some classes in different distribution areas, such as communications, humanities, science, math, behavioral sciences, and then the electives, which the electives are the library courses. And therefore the only class that we do ask students to come to campus is the biology course. And that's how we have it set up for this fall. We're offering it with, and 10 students can enroll. Students do come to campus one day in August. And I believe that's just to go over some lab requirements, check out materials, microscopes. Checking out microscopes, but Diana's telling me. And then at the end of the term, they'll report back to campus just for that one, one meeting and to check everything back in. But that is the only one, the only course that the student would be required to come to campus. One other thing as an advisor that I'd really encourage, if you have students out there that are really considering online, the thing I see as an advisor is that a good planning, and if a student knows they're going to enroll in a fall course, enroll early. Because we do have some limits on how many students are in those courses at times. For example, the biology, we only have 10 spots. But even more important, if a student knows they're going to take a course, don't have them wait until like three days before to sign up for the course. Because what happens is we have to give them login information for the course. And sometimes if they enroll real late, maybe even a week before, by the time that login information is out to them, there might be an assignment posted. And it's really difficult sometimes to get really engaged in involving that online course if you're in a hurry and struggling to get logged on. And not that it's a difficult process, but just good planning is really essential. So I always tell students, if you know you're going to sign up for that online course, at least at the very least, sign up a couple weeks beforehand or more because of the limits that we have on those capacities. Great advice, Mary, plan ahead. There's a couple questions in the text chat. One of the first questions is a question that's asked, will any credit transfer to other colleges? I believe that probably means besides the UNO program, does it transfer to, say, Shadron, Takarni? Is that what the questioner means? That's what I guess. Mary, do you want to take a stab at that one? This is Diana. I think I can work on this one. I've actually been working on that this week. I did not know that Shadron and UNK had programs. So I have visited with the library people in both of those programs this week. Shadron does have an undergrad program in school library media, which is similar to UNO. The reason we didn't include anybody else was I didn't know anybody else, you know, I'm learning every day and I didn't know anybody else had programs. So after visiting with Shadron this week, they said that they were not interested in joining the old LPA program because the courses were not what they wanted students to have, but they were very impressed with our new program. So Shadron is the second opportunity for students. However, I visited with Sherry Crow at UNK just this morning, just in fact about a quarter to 10 this morning. The program at UNK is entirely a graduate program. They have a graduate endorsement for teachers. And so that program will not work with our program. I might say that UNO really kind of went out on a limb for us because there are the courses, the four courses in the middle, if you don't count the foundations course and the capstone course, the four in the middle are actually 400 level courses at UNO. And so UNO had to work very, very closely with us. We had two full day meetings to make sure that we would offer the same course and in fact that's why we changed course titles and content was to match the UNO information they learned. And so UNO now transfers those courses straight across the board, which they did not do in the old LTA program. And what I'm anticipating, we just started working yesterday, but I'm anticipating that we'll be able to have the same kind of agreement with Shadron. So in fact, I'm very excited about that. She really liked what we were doing. She said that she thought that there would be plenty of courses. You know, one of the hesitancies that UNO had, for example, and Shadron can have the same, is if they take these four courses that are in the middle, will they actually have any courses left to take when they transfer any library courses? And the answer is yes. They have a number of other library courses at both institutions. So I just feel real positive about this act that if a student does want to go to either of these, however the UNK thing won't work because their courses are all graduate level. We cannot use a 200 level course as a graduate course, but that's how it works. Now both Shadron and UNO have programs for certified teachers and for non-certified people. In other words, they can do an endorsement for a certified teacher on the undergraduate level, which UNK again does on the graduate level. They also have an option, it's still in the College of Education, but it's an option for people who are not certified teachers but who want to work in a school library media setting. Does that help answer that question? That's a great answer. Very good. Thank you so much. And then that next question? The next question you have to do is the practicum or the capstone. And I think that person is asking if they already work in a library can they just do their practicum right where they work? You know, I think the real theory there is that it's better to do some things somewhere else. And I don't know, you'd really have to check with Dorothy on that to be sure. And part of that may even depend on the size of your library. If you're in a large library, you may be able to do something else within your library that's outside of your normal scope. But again, a lot of that is about building your network, building your experience, because you don't want to take your resume to someone with the same thing that you had on it before. You want to be able to expand it upon that. So I think the encouragement there is to find a different library in which you can do that practicum. Laura, would you like to talk a little bit about how taking these courses affects your certification and whether or not you need to take basic skills that same thing? The courses will fulfill basic skills requirements. And they can earn a certain number of feet in credit. Laura, I hate to interrupt. I can't hear you very well. Can you speak up or maybe get closer to the microphone? The courses in the LIS program will fulfill the basic skills requirements as they're currently set out. And people will earn CE credits for taking the courses. So yes, this is a more in-depth program than basic skills. Basic skills is meant to be sort of a quick program to help people get up to speed. This is meant to be a stronger, more in-depth program. But yes, it would certainly fulfill the basic skills requirements. So like if you've taken these courses or even one of these courses, it's almost like testing out of that basic skills area. Is that how you might say? Yes, except there's no test. There's no testing out. It's exactly like testing out, except there's no test. And I would say, I've taken the basic skills classes, but my guess is that part of the difference is that this is an academic approach. So when we're talking about cataloging or collection development, we're not only gonna teach you those things, but we're gonna teach you where to find resources for those things on an ongoing basis. So you're looking up articles and learning how to comment on them and feeding back information to other people in your class as well. So would you say that's a fair part of the difference, Laura? Yes, although basic skills does try to give people Other resources. Other resources. Right. But basic skills is mostly quicker. Right. Well, I think that might be of interest to people just because some people may be wanting to get their certification processed. And if they've already taken an LTA class or they're planning to take an LTA class, then they would know not to sign up for a basic skills class in that area, because that's the class they're taking. Although if they want to, they still get credit for it. Yeah, you can get double credit. We don't... Re-enforcing the nurse. I'm not going to refresh him. I wouldn't tell people, no, you cannot. Take the basic skills class. I could tell them that if you've taken cataloging in the LIS program, the basic skills class is likely to be pretty much stuff you already know then. Yeah, that's a good point. Are there other questions or comments? Okay, I don't think we see anything here unless Dr. Parmalay or Mary Young, do you have any other comments? I did want to read some comments. Go ahead, Dr. Parmalay. I think we're okay if there's anything else we can answer. We'd be glad to. One thing I wanted to do if I could is because we don't have copies of the new brochure, I do want to read a couple of comments from the brochure if I could. This is from a student and it says, I like the convenience and flexibility of the online program. The virtual classroom allowed me to continue working at my present job full-time while preparing for my next career, that of a library technical assistant. Well, she still uses the LTA language, but I think that the message is clear that what people really want is to be able to prepare for an advancement in their careers and yet do it while they're still working at the job they have now. And I think that's just such a great statement because I think it really shows that we're hitting the mark here. I couldn't agree more. Okay, well, thanks for ending us on a positive note. Mary Jo, I think since there are no more questions, we can go ahead and end our call. We'll remind people that this will be archived and you'll receive an email from Chris to indicate where that will be. But we want to thank those of you who have attended and hopefully you've learned a little something from this session. Anything else, anybody? Okay, thank you. All right, yeah. Thank you very much, Maria. That was very interesting and hopefully we'll get a lot more people in the field. Oh, you're getting applause. Oh, God, that was great. Oh, God. Good job, good job. All right, thank you. If you have any questions, you can talk to the slides. Everybody's contact information is in there. The PowerPoint will be loaded up. I didn't get to it yet this afternoon to the commission slideshare account so anybody can download it and get the information from there, all the contact information and everything about the different classes all over there. I hope you'll join us next week when our Encompass Live will be on database road shows either database road shows coming up this summer, get a little preview of what's going to come in with that. And don't forget that will probably be our last Encompass Live on this center of software. We may be off for a few weeks as we're switching to new Microsoft Live meeting software for producing our online sessions. We'll see how that timing works out for us. So thank you very much. Bye-bye.