 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event. Yes, we are a webinar. You can call us that. We won't be offended. Where we cover anything that may be of interest to librarians. We do this show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time and they are all recorded so if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We have all of our recordings up on our website. You can always go there and watch anything you may have missed. We do a mixture of things here. Interviews, book reviews, training sessions, basically anything related to libraries. We will have it on the show. We have commission staff, Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations and we do bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. Today with us joining us remotely from Kearney, Nebraska is Carrie Pearson and Dr. Ron Ward, who are from University of Nebraska at Kearney. I actually attended a presentation earlier this spring at a spring meeting for one of our Nebraska Library Association sections, the College and University section. They talked about this learning commons that was put together over the last few years. It's been quite a process at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and they are going to share with us what they did. Carrie, are you currently the director of the learning commons or how is that? I'm the interim assistant director. You're not the assistant director. I knew there was staffing changes and things were in flux as far as that. Both assistant directors, I know Carrie, you're on the learning commons side and Ron, you're from the library side. Right. Okay, great. I'll just let you go ahead. You've got your presentation here. Go ahead and take it away and then we'll take questions near the end. Great. Alright, thanks. Okay, well good morning everyone. We're very happy to have you with us here at Encompass. Ron and I are here to talk to you this morning about our learning commons and I think the process that we went through in developing that. We encourage you to ask questions as we go through so feel free to do whatever you need to do to ask us because this is a very casual thing for us. We want to hear what you're concerned about and we need to know more about. Hey Carrie. Yes. I actually have a question that already came in which may be something you're going to mention already but it's just kind of funny that it came in. Someone says that their director already wants to know, what is the brand of chairs in the photo that you guys got? Is that something you'll talk about where things came from later on? If I can get that person's information, I can certainly get that to them. I know I can't remember the name of the company actually off the top of my head but I do have to get that to them. Okay, I'll get you guys connected afterwards. No problem. Okay. Alright, go ahead. They're three chairs. They look very cool, yeah. Yeah, they are. I also like the ones you have that are the green ones in the back there, the benches. Yeah, the booths. The booths, yeah. This is very popular but for studying and napping. Of course. Alright, great. Go ahead. Yeah, okay. Alright, well, let me get on my slide here. I'm going to talk a little bit about the vision that we had of the learning commons when we first started out and the transition and reality and a little bit about how we see it going into the future. I apologize for my voice. I'm experiencing probably some sensitivity to all of them in mold and that sort of thing. Yeah. So first step, we'll talk about the vision and how we got started. Initially, before the learning commons was developed in 2009, we had two academic support services on campus. And they were housed in different places. We had the Writing Center, which was actually housed in the library. Yeah, it was in the west end of the library on the second floor originally in a small space. Occasionally, as it got crowded in that space, it would spill over into some study rooms that were adjacent to that location and even into the west end of the library space itself. The peer tutoring program was housed in a hallway actually in a building and another building, not the library. It was typically regarded as remedial. And by that I mean the students who were there getting help were regarded, not actually, they didn't fulfill this demographic expectation, but they were regarded as being the students who weren't going to make it or the students who really, really were struggling and needed to pass their class. And so because we were outside of kind of an academic context, it was difficult for us to show people that we were helping the students who were struggling, but also the people who did very well in their classes, which is a different reputation to have on campus. One of the things that had been happening with the library over a number of years is that the gate cap had continued to decline. And this is not an uncommon phenomenon in university libraries, partly because of the importance of online resources, but it's something that we were concerned about and wanted to see changed. Also up on the second floor of the library we have space of about 4,800 square feet that was essentially a carol farm. Now a lot of study carols, cubicles that nobody ever used, it was just a waste of space. Now the Writing Center, we provided a graph of attendance before the Learning Commons was developed. And you can see that there is a fluctuation in the number of students who were getting help or the number of time students were being helped in the Writing Center. And a lot of that had to do with the changing leadership of the Writing Center. It's gone from different hands all over campus. We've had Writing Center directors who've been in place full time. We've had GAs running the program. It just didn't really have a home where it felt like it could kind of stay in one place with one person. And this is a picture of the space that Ron described where the Writing Center was housed before the Learning Commons. You can see it's a very functional space. They've got chairs on wheels, tables that work, individual spaces where tutors can work with students. But it also, like Ron said, was outgrowing the space that it had. It had to use the study rooms next door. There wasn't a lot of room to have a private conversation. And it just wasn't ideal for the services that were being offered. And we do still have this plant. Somehow it has also survived the transition. The peer tutoring program has generally seen steady growth. Again, this is before the Learning Commons. You can see an increase there of the few thousand visits over those years. But we had outgrown our space. And we had a program review in the spring of 2009 that emphasized our need to find another place to host our services because we were spilling into, I'll show you a picture. This is our hallway that we had right here. We had some tables here in this space. And there was also a room up here where we would have our math tutoring in the evenings because that's a very popular subject for us to help with. And the hallway was distracting. There was a lot of noise and traffic going through there. And it just wasn't an ideal space for students to get help. And there's also a really bad echo that made it difficult often to hear people. And that's where Serendipity came in. Following the program review, the two deans were sitting at a deans meeting side by side and they started to talk about the academic program review that showed that the Learning Commons had basically outgrown the space available. And the library dean pointed out that she had space that could be used. And so what they talked about was finding a way for those two, I guess, situations, not necessarily problems, but situations to come together. And the dean of the library had been looking into developing the Learning Commons well before this actually happened. And so it was at the Forth-Honor Caroline to do so. And this was a really great overlap of opportunity for it to get started. So the idea initially was just to get these two services, the peer tutoring program and the writing center together in this one space so that it would be more convenient for students and so that we could start working with the library in offering our academic support to the campus. Basic to the plans that started to develop was a conjunction with the UNK mission statement and the strategic plan of the university. And as we looked through those documents, we found that there was a lot of interest in cooperating across divisions of the university. So we got a lot of support. From the chancellor, the vice chancellors all the way up the line, they saw the potential for learning commons on campus to help students improve outside of the classroom. And there really wasn't any way to see this as something that wasn't going to help our students. It fulfilled so many aspects of our mission statement directly by bringing academic and student affairs together by having us cooperate across boundaries. And they wanted that to happen and so we had their full support. And that really helped. And that support has continued. So we have a space and a space that we envisioned as enhancing interaction. Libraries have traditionally been quiet places, but we realized that this was not going to be the case. And so we wanted again to bring together an essentialized location, these support services. The idea isn't just to do that for convenience. It's not just finding one space for that to happen. The idea is also to bring them together so that it is efficient for the student to go from one to the other and to have those services working together collaboratively and deliberately to maybe make new services or new procedures that amplify students' experiences outside the classroom. And so a lot of things would take place. We think that the result would be a synergy that would be greater than any of the individual parts. So we envision the Learning Commons as a combination of library resources and services, student affairs, and technology resources. Now the things that we have in our Learning Commons are typical of many Learning Commons across the globe, but there's also variations. There's many different ways that a Learning Commons can be implemented. The first few things on this list are things that we do have. We have obviously writing and tutoring help. We do have some study rooms that we built. We have desktop computers, which you would think with students with iPads and laptops nowadays wouldn't get used, but they argue students come in to use our computers regularly. We provide reference and research help whenever it's needed. Study skills actually are provided through another element of student affairs that is skills coaching. Right, academic success coaching. Yep, that's another program. And if we need assistance with IT, we provide that through the library IT personnel. The next step we took obviously was the transition. We had this great idea, we had a great opportunity, and we needed to find a way to make it come true. So again, the three services are programs, partners, however you want to say it that we started with, or the peer tutoring program, which focuses on assistance to students in general studies courses, our writing center, which as many of you know, helps with any writing at any stage of the writing process. And the library, which houses the student research materials study space and technology access, and all of these three things were going to come together. The original plan from University Architect envisioned the use of the space and included a lot of glass walls around individual tables. When the student tutors were invited to comment on this, they said we can't have those glass walls all over the place. It would interfere with the way that we tutor. So they collaborate a lot. They ask each other questions and provide support to one another. They knew that this would not work. So we took that feedback and were able to develop some new designs that work better for what services were going to be there. The initial plan was to have our learning commons open in the fall of 2010. And so our peer tutoring offices moved from that hallway and the other building to a space in the library where the writing center was operating. It wasn't the old writing center space, it was a different space. And that happened in the summer of 2010 to facilitate the initiations of that collaboration. Now the idea was to turn the space that I moved my office into into the learning commons offices where our administration would be housed. And then outside of that, that study carol space would be transformed into the learning commons over the summer. And then challenges arose. One of the challenges was that there was apparently some problem in identifying the funding that was needed. And the actual process of getting the space had already started. It had been divided off from the library with a plastic and a dust wall. The ceiling tiles had been removed, the lighting had been pulled up, the flooring had been removed. So it was not usable for any other purpose. And in addition to that, the individual who at the time was our writing center director and who was also going to be the learning commons assistant director moved to China because her husband got a job there. And so we were without leadership for the writing center and without formal leadership for the learning commons. And so that was another challenge that we experienced that summer. However, in spite of that, we had to open. We couldn't just not have tutoring in the fall. And so Ron and I worked very closely together over the summer to ensure that we would be able to open somewhere together in the library. And we identified space on the other side of the floor where the learning commons was being built where there were already several tables and study tables. We put a desk there as a welcome desk where students could sign in for services, get information about tutoring. And this move, while this might not seem like an ideal space, it was a huge step up for our tutoring program to be out here because we had more room, which is what we needed. And so even in the transition, we were able to find a better fit from what we originally had. The reason that we were able to do this and utilize this space is that over the previous year, library staff had worked very hard on identifying items from our standing reference collection that we could read out. This allowed us to take a lot of shelf units that were in the center of the main library floor and move them down to the lower floor to the basement and open up that whole area for student use. And as we brought tables and chairs into the space, students immediately sat down at the table and started working. So we knew that we had the space needed for all our activities. So our collaboration was ongoing, despite the challenges that we were experiencing at the time with the construction and finding someone. And actually the process that we went through together in hiring the Writing Center and Learning Commons Assistant Director was bonding for us. I'm not sure what other words to use, but we had to develop a job description together. We went through the search committee together. We interviewed people together. And that really helped us understand what we were looking for and what our Learning Commons had the potential to become and where we were at. And so that process itself, even though it was a challenge staffing-wise for that initial first semester, was also very beneficial. We're kind of going through that process again because we're looking for, again, a Writing Center Learning Commons Assistant Director. Kerry's serving as the interim, but we're interviewing or accepting applications for a new person in that role. We've added additional technology in the general library space, a lot more computers. Other computer labs around the campus are gradually being closed. And that equipment generally is appearing in the library and it's more of a load on our technology people, but it's definitely needed. And it's not uncommon, especially in the afternoon and late afternoon or early evening, to find every computer in the building in use. And what we were able to do in that fall in that transitional space was students were saying that they wanted more computer access in the library. And we, the Learning Commons Services, had computers just waiting that we had already purchased for a space that wasn't finished yet. And so we were able to bring those out with the help of technology support from the library. And that way, both we benefited from having the technology in our tutoring space. But then the library as a whole also benefited by having that available to students. And really, of course, the people who benefit from that are the students. We don't think about our programs benefiting as much as what it does for the students we're serving. Well, all this was going on. The deans continued to collaborate and provide resources and support. And this also went up into higher administration as well with our Senior Vice Chancellor. It was very supportive. Yes. So we're going to take a big jump here because that's really how we went from transition to reality. We were waiting on our funding to be found and approved. And then as soon as that happened, there was a really quick jump into what we have now. So this, again, was the initial space that we were looking at developing. And this is a transitional picture that shows the construction. This is essentially what it looked like that first false 2010 semester before anything was done to it. And you can see that here they're actually starting some work after the funding was approved. And we ended up with this beautiful space that has three glass study rooms. The biggest one here in the center that's blue. And then there's two on either side of it, the students' use for study areas, beautiful carpet painting. And all of that opened in the fall of 2011. We were very, very happy to be in our new space. That's a very flexible space. You'll note that all of the furnishings are on wheels. So the tutors or the students or the staff of that matter can reconfigure this however it's needed and very short order. And you can see over here, too, we have a movable whiteboard. Excuse me, that's double-sided. And that's really great for the flexibility of the space also. We do have some that are mounted, too, but this allows tutors to kind of create study spaces. You know, if they're working with a group or a student or whatever, and just use it however they need to, wherever they need to. So as a result, the library gate count has started to just get the trend up. And we hope that that's going to continue. We're pretty sure that's going to come. Excuse me. And, you know, we don't have the numbers for this current year, but we anticipate that they're going to be just as high if not higher than they were last year. There's been about a 30% increase since 2009-2010 to this 2011-2012 year. Now, peer tutoring attendance I had shared with you was around 5,000 visits every year. Before the Learning Commons was built, we had a pretty big bump in 2009, and I'm not really sure why. But then the Learning Commons started in 2010, and we maintained our attendance, which I thought was great, because we were in a new space and we had to tell everybody where we were and get the whole campus involved in sending students to the right place. And it worked. And we didn't go down in our attendance, maintain that again. And then this last year, we saw a huge increase. And I think that is because the word of the Learning Commons has gotten out to students. The students who are here now is upperclassmen. Our students who have been here ever since the Learning Commons was around. And so it's more ingrained in the population that we have. The Writing Center attendance, you know, has fluctuated as we said. There was a decrease the first year that we had the Learning Commons in place. And part of that, most of that was due to the fact that we didn't have a Writing Center director at the time. And so it was difficult for us to maintain the success that it had had prior to that. But we have rebounded quite a bit in the last couple of years. And we hope that with new staffing in the next year that that will continue to increase. And I don't want to give the impression that our Writing Center isn't busy. We are booked two weeks in advance. And so part of the reason that the numbers here in 2012 are lower than they were in 2009 is because we have fewer tutors. But, you know, again with leadership, we hope to increase that as more tutors are hired. So we've made a lot of efforts to ensure the success. And we always keep in mind that the reason that we're doing this is for our students. We have, our mission is to help them to see the academic part. And that goes beyond any boundaries. I think that we see us having as programs. We really, truly try to work together to make this as efficient and even the right word, synergistic, I think is better for students so that it's working to their greatest advantage. We've developed some marketing pieces to tie the programs together. And we think they're working. We're going to continue to do that and try to improve our marketing in the future. One of the pieces we do is a banner that we put on the front of the library building. It just reminds students who are coming back where we are and that we're here. And it tells me freshmen also stamp, you know, here's the place you go for the learning commons. Because they all would have heard about this in freshman orientation. And this gives them a visual as to where we are. The media services develop some signage for us using the theme common knowledge. And there's arrows pointing to where the learning commons are located. The new library website that's just been rolled out makes the learning commons stand out much more than it did with the previous website. We also coordinated some events together in the fall of 2011 and 12. First, we want to tell you about some videos that we have, a blue tube. Our colors are blue and gold. Instead of YouTube, we have blue tube on YouTube. And we had a blue tube video for prospective students that helps explain what the learning commons is, how to use it, where it's located. And all of that is pushed to students as they're oriented to the campus. Louis the Loper is the campus mascot. So we presented a fable based on Louis the Loper and how you learn to use the resources of the learning commons. And both of these are available to you. You can either copy down the bit links there or I know that this presentation will be available after the fact and you're welcome to access those that way. We had a game night in both the fall of 2010 and fall 2011. And that was an opportunity for students to come into the learning commons, get to know the tutors, because tutors were there, and just have fun. This was the year that we had our new furniture and it was great for them to come and see the space and just enjoy being there and find out that tutors aren't scary people and that this is a really great place to come and get help. Actually the tutors and the students were involved in selecting the furnishings that you see in the new space. And the fall of 2012, we took a little bit different approach because we wanted to work in orienting students more directly with the library. In all the programs actually. So we had not only learning commons, but we had activities all over the building. And they included things like ring toss and bowling and darts and all fun things designed to show students that. The library is a pleasant place to be that you're welcome to be here. And we don't expect it to always be quiet. Last year we also had a lib quiz which was modeled after a pub quiz, except with no pub. There wasn't a huge turnout for that, but it was very successful. We had an English professor emcee the events and the students who came bonded so closely over the two hours that they were there. Afterwards they hung around for a half hour just talking to each other and most of them were complete strangers. So this was a great opportunity again to introduce them to the library and the learning commons. And also to work with the librarians and hosting this event by getting, having them help us develop trivia questions. That was another fun thing that kind of brought this together as a joint effort. We meet weekly for every Friday at 9 o'clock, two partners from Student Affairs, two from the library. And we will continue to do that. We normally have an agenda, but we also use this for strategic planning and looking at new activities that we might want to implement. Another aspect that we've changed since we started was initially we just had one Learning Commons Assistant Director in that position we still have and it's housed in Student Affairs. But we've also added the Learning Commons Assistant Director for the library, who is your presenter, Dr. Rahab Ward. And what that does is it allows each partner to have equal footing or stake in the development of the Learning Commons. It ensures that that partnership is truly working together and coordinates the communication of what's going on in the Learning Commons and coming up in the Learning Commons to both lines of reporting. So both the Student Affairs and Library site are equally informed and involved and engaged with what is going on in our space. Another thing that has happened is that we have increased our services significantly over the last year. We've added supplemental instruction, which is an international program that focuses on collaboration outside the classroom using games and activities instead of direct question and answer tutoring. We've also developed a language table program and that has exploded over the last year because of the support of our Modern Languages Department. And those language tables also use games and activities to focus the support to students academically. We have a lot of support from the Modern Languages Department for that in terms of finding people, both native speakers and tutors to run those tables. They're also giving us a GA who is going to coordinate those tables next year. I have a personal stake in this since I taught for languages for about 20 years. And so Ron will be working with that GA to coordinate the language table program next year, which we see is another great sign of the collaboration and partnership that make the Learning Commons work. We're currently one of 75 schools across the United States, ranging from small private schools and community colleges through mid-size liberal arts schools to medium and large research universities. And what we're trying to determine is if our library instruction has actual impact on student learning outcomes. So we're going to be working on that over the next year and we're due to do a poster presentation at the LA meeting in 2014 in Las Vegas. Another thing that we're very excited about is our undergraduate research seminars, which, again, developed spontaneously over the last year. I'll show you a couple posters. These are the two presentations that we did last spring. And again, this is a Learning Commons library undergraduate research collaborative venture so that we are all, all these three parts are coming together to facilitate these. The first was the IRB, helping students understand the IRB process. And it wasn't heavily attended, but it was very informative. I think it was just timed in a bad time for when students need to hear that information. So we'll be offering that again next year, earlier in the year. The second one was a research seminar by a speaker from the CDC who talked about government-funded research on insect-borne diseases, and that was really well attended. We had somewhere between 40 and 50 people that showed up for that. We even had to provide more chairs. We hadn't counted on that many people. And so we used that success to help build our itinerary for next year's undergraduate research seminars. Again, we'll have the IRB again in September when students will most likely be starting that process that they need to for their research. In October, we're going to show how to use library resources and internet resources to build literature review. In November, February and April, we'll have speakers coming in, one from different colleges on campus, just like the CDC speaker was here from National and Social Sciences. So that will engage students from those particular colleges with current research in the field. In January, the Writing Center will host a writing and citing seminar which will focus on helping students understand how to organize and write their research papers, what citations are going to look like for those research papers, and that will help them build something that they can submit to our undergraduate research journal. And then in March, John Ritterbush, who is the other library employee that works with Learning Commons, will be doing a presentation on posters. So finally, our last step, we want to talk to you a little bit about the future that we see for our Learning Commons. We actually have a technology room that is usable for students or by students, rather, who want to do something a little more sophisticated than what you can do with standard Microsoft Office or PowerPoint presentation. It has Adobe Creative Suite and some other more sophisticated tools. One of the things that we need to do is to provide some additional support and instruction on how to use those tools. So we're looking at getting a touchscreen monitor that we can mount in our blue glass room that students can hook up a laptop and iPad, whatever device to, and then collaborate in developing a presentation. Another thing that we really want to look at at this point, we've focused so much on our first years of bringing services together, bringing Writing Center and peer tutoring together and making those work, and that was a process. We are now focused on ensuring that those services integrate with library services and vice versa so that we can provide the amplified experience for students in the Learning Commons so that they're getting the most out of each of those services. And the first step in doing so is to understand what's going on essentially between the library and tutoring. For example, if a Writing Center tutor is working with a student on a paper and they see that the student's sources are either very poorly researched or maybe they just need help finding a couple more for their paper, we can refer them to a Reference Librarian who can then help them do that. And a Reference Librarian who is working with a student in finding sources often gets questions about writing the paper, and so they would be able to refer that student back to the Writing Center for that kind of help. So we developed a Google Docs intake spreadsheet where whoever is making the referral from one service to another is able to put this information in for us. It's put into a spreadsheet and then we can go back in and look at that referral and see if the student followed up with it or not because we want to know not only did the referral happen but is the student following through. Because if they're not, we need to do something to ensure that they do so that they're getting the most out of our services here. Also this next year we're going to be integrating some more information literacy training into the actual tutor training process. And I'll probably be doing that. Over the longer term, at the present time the main floor of the library is divided into parts. One being the library proper, the other being the Mitchell Center. And the Mitchell Center houses the communication department. Speech and radio TV kind of operations. The space is not actually ideal for their uses although they've done some upgrades over the last year. Once other space that's more suitable for them becomes available, the plan is for the library to take that space and reconfigure it for use by other student services. So what we've done is we've gone from these two silos where we had there's more like three I guess in the writing center, we had peer tutoring and we had the library, all houses separate spaces and we've been able to put those together and develop this beautiful I think Ron has called it synergistic experience for students to help them do better academically on campus. Been a good experience for all of us I think. And most of all for the students. I mean that's why we're here. So we're glad that it's working for them. Yeah, it's been an interesting process but we always keep in mind that the reason we're doing it is to help our students succeed academically. Exactly. We've got our web address there if you'd like to visit that. There's some information there. I know there's one part of that website that has some different Learning Commons resources, articles and so forth if you'd like to do some research about Learning Commons it's there for you. So I guess at this point if there's any questions we would be really happy to answer anything that anybody might be wondering about. Okay, great. Thank you very much Carrie and Ron. Does anybody, that was great. I remember as I said I'd seen this presentation earlier this spring and I took all sorts of notes with my own about it because I thought it was so interesting. I mean you hear a lot of people talking about doing Learning Commons and that yes we've got one and here is what it does but seeing the process from what it used to be is something you don't always necessarily hear about. You just say yay we finally got one going. Right. So does anybody have any questions? Any questions or comments? You can type them into the questions section of the go to webinar interface here or if you have a microphone just let me know and I can unmute you and we can take your questions that way. Nobody had anything during the session that came in that I was holding on to or anything. There's just that one at the very beginning about your chairs that are right there again in that photo. The cool chairs you have it. I've got the contact info for the director at that library so I'll be sending it off to you. We found that the booths are very popular. Yes. They look very cool, very comfortable, yeah. One question, a couple questions that I was thinking of that were mentioned when I saw the presentation before. How is the whole space staffed? How are people greeted and assigned to different? I know you said that you have a waiting list of people scheduled to do things but what's the basic flow of how that all works when people just kind of come in on the fly, I guess? Yeah, sure. I wish that I had included a picture of our welcome desk. I realize that's a shortcoming now in our presentation but we do have a welcome desk that is positioned right near the stairs where students come up to the learning commons and come into our space and that is staffed by students. Students check in there. We have a couple different computers that they can check in on and then that welcome desk assistant will take them to their writing tutor who they have an appointment with or take them to a subject tutor who we have a walk-in subject tutoring service so that person will just take the student to whoever is available and students also just walk in and out. We don't want students to sign in if they're just there to study and they just need a booth to sit in. Right, because it's just an available space to come in and use what's there they want. Yes, exactly. And so it's a very, you know, as Ron has emphasized, very flexible. The only thing we need to track is the actual services. Right. We do have some questions now. Someone wants to say first that it's so great how much you're working with integrating library resources with the tutoring services. Do you have a librarian's schedule to spend time in the Learning Center on the Learning Commons on a regular basis and have you considered an embedded librarian to be there? Well, we're going to have librarians assigned during scheduled hours but then they'll be also available on call outside of the schedule period. Because this is the same building as the library, correct? Correct, so. John Ritterbush and I serve as embedded librarians at this point. What was your question, Chris? No, I was just saying because this is the same building as the library itself. Yes. So it's very easy for someone to like pop up and down or wherever they need to be or you guys to send someone to the library for whatever they might need. Yes. And one of the advantages is that, you know, libraries open more hours than any other building on campus. So it allows for extended hours in the Learning Commons. Right. We're able to add some additional hours to our schedule because of that. So I think this also relates to the next question that came up was how do library reference services work in the Learning Commons? Right now, on a referral basis. And we have, you know, in the future we're looking to, again, our focus in the first two years, and it sounds like I'm making an excuse, was to just get things working with the services. And so now we're able to turn our attention to, you know, making more of that convenient in that space. And so that's a focus for our next few years of work. Another thing that's become apparent is that we actually need more room. We can use another 3,000 or 4,000 square feet. Our space is often full. And that's what you're already looking into in that area right next door. We're promoting that idea. I see, yes. Yes. So the Learning Commons then is open in staff during the same hours that all the hours of the library is open then? Well, yeah. The Learning Commons space, of course, is open anytime the library is. The services themselves typically run from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Okay, right. So actually going to having official tutors on staff and ready there to help someone. Gotcha. Oh, good question. You mentioned that all the furniture is on wheels, including the tables, and I know you talked about this before. How often are they rearranged by users? Whenever they want. Every day. I'll go in there and they'll be tables moved. It's every day. And we really don't worry too much about putting them back to a certain configuration because they just get moved again. If it looks really messy, we might kind of work with them. Neaten it up a little bit, maybe. But every day they are manipulated. I think I remember what you had mentioned in the previous, I watched the session before that you started putting in the furniture and while you were in the midst of it, they were already moving things and taking it elsewhere. That was on the main floor of the library when you moved the reference collection downstairs. We opened up a space that's pretty comparable in size to the Learning Commons a little bit larger. And as we were putting the tables and chairs and students were sitting down, that told us right away that we've done something right. I see Robin has a question. Am I supposed to... Nope, that was one that I just did. Oh, okay, got it. Sorry. So how about, I know this sounds like a great place for students to be there hanging out and doing lots of things and spending a lot of time there. Have you considered us in some places having some sort of a café or food type stuff there? Is there somewhere nearby that already has that that they can use? Yeah, there are actually on the main floor of the library. There's a vending machine area. We really need a coffee shop down there. Yeah, lots of places have that, yeah. And that's something too that we want to explore as we move forward because it's a hotspot for students. Our services had in total 11,000 visits last year. Wow, yeah. If a coffee shop was there, they would probably get a lot of visits. Yeah, they should know that, yeah. There's another question that came in. Do you have hardwired computers for the students there or do they use wireless laptops that they bring in themselves or how is that all? Yeah, we have both. We have desktops that are available for students. We have six desktops, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's sufficient for our space. And then we have ample wireless. There are several wireless ports in our learning commons, almost one on each of the pillars that you see there in the picture. And at times, that's not even enough because we have iPads and all kinds of things happening there. So we access internet both ways. Okay. And another question came in. Is there any charge for the tutoring service for the students? Well, it's funded through student fees, so yes and no. Right. We don't have to pay up front. And they're not limited in the number of times that they access help. But our student workers are completely student fee funded. And we have about 65 workers. Right. And one thing that is maybe important to think about are campuses that we have the highest percentage of international students on any campus in the University of Nebraska system. And some of our tutors are international. Yeah. And we tried to do that so that, like I said, I think I said before, we create a global perspective in the learning commons. Not just, you know, mid-Nebraska stamp. It looks like the world. And so that's something we really try to push with how we staff it. I'll mention also, we've talked about whiteboards, but one of the things that has become apparent is that the glass walls are very useful. Students use those to write on. Oh, okay. And carry you on and talk about that. We have liquid chalk. You know, there's several mornings where I walk in and there's physics all over my walls. And it's awesome. It is such a great thing to see, you know, to see that collaboration happening. Because that's where the people learn. Another thing that's happened this last year especially is that we've had a number of faculty members volunteer their time. The learning commons outside their normal office hours. We have 12 new faculty departments who want to do the same thing. That's pretty significant. That's bringing even more collaborators into the space that we could not have done in our old space. Yeah, it sounds like you guys got a lot of support. Having the support from the administration and the faculty really makes a difference. It's really gratifying both from the administration and the faculty. They really support the idea of learning commons and are committed to its success. And it's working, so... It's working. Of course, yeah. Another question that came in. For library, you might know this, Ron. How many desktops and laptops library-wide are available for the students? Like so in the library itself, that's nearby. I don't know the exact number. It's more than 100. Yeah, cool. So even though you've got just a few here, for learning commons, for group study type things as I can see the tables and whatnot, a lot of things are doing that don't require the computers. That's why it works for you guys that's fewer. You know, two computer labs, and they're used pretty heavily for instruction, but they're also used by students outside of instructional time. And we have good wireless throughout the library, so many, many students will collaborate using their own laptops throughout the building. And you know, some things on our wish list are like that touchscreen monitor. There's also even tables that have touchscreen monitors embedded in them. Oh, yeah. I've looked it over, so that would be something really cool to offer in our space as well. Yeah, Microsoft Surface. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Ah, yes. Last year, something specific. The tornado, the windstorm that came through. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know what it affected. Was that, have any effect on the learning commons there? Not really on the learning commons. I know the library had damage. Yeah, the library basically blew off the insulation and the overcoat. There is a new temporary, they call it a bladder that they've installed, and they're waiting for insurance and other things. Oh, still? Wow. Come in before they put down a new roof altogether. So if you look on the picture that's still up, like the bookshelves that you see here between our walls, those are all cordoned off right now, because that's where the water damage was. Oh, wow, okay. Plastic sheeting still. Yeah, because I remember seeing the photos that went around on Facebook and whatnot of all the books laid out on the floor to do a quick get them dry. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm glad that things are slowly progressing with that. Yeah, we're next. Okay, any other, about the top of the hour here, 11 o'clock, here's central time. Any last minute questions or comments, anybody from the audience wants to type in here or ask, you can use your microphone if you want to, or just type them in as people have been, please. I don't think they see anything urgent. You do have their, you know, first, find the website here. I have done, taken the link for the website and for those two videos, put them into the library commission's delicious account. So they will be included when we put the recording up. So you have quick links to those, the videos and the page for the Learning Commons itself so you can contact Carrie and Ron to ask them any other questions you might have about it. We do have some thank yous. It was very informative this session. Great, so glad. Yeah, so thank you very much. This is, yeah, like I said, a great session. Thank you for asking us to do this. Yeah, I guess. We're really proud of Learning Commons and really committed to its success. And it's, yeah, this is the kind of thing I, I know this is a, I don't know how new you might say, it's something that libraries and universities are doing now and we did not have this kind of thing when I was in college, which was a while ago that I won't say. But I wish we had, it would have been, I think, a much more interactive kind of education kind of previously to this kind of thing. You're kind of on your own to find this place, find that place, find the resource you need over here in this other building and kind of scattered. Yeah, exactly. You can dig it up if you need to do, but this works very well, yeah. So I am going to pull back, present your control to myself here so I can, do you wrap up the thing here? There we go. Okay, all right here. All right, so thank you very much everyone for attending this week. The show is being recorded, so it will be available only later today tomorrow. And as I said, I did include the links in our commission's delicious account. I saved them over here. So they will also be available when the recording goes up. So that wraps it up for this week's Encompass Live. I hope you'll join us next week on the show. We have something we just added, so you might not have heard about it. Libraries are the new health insurance marketplace. At the ALA conference just last month, it was announced that libraries are going to be helping people get to the websites and information they need for signing up for the new health care options made available by the Affordable Health Care Act. So we have jumped in and put together a session of what we know now. It's just getting started. We will have Kendra Morgan on who is from Web Junction, who received a grant from IMLS to create training materials and webinars to help librarians know what they need to do. And Mary Sowers, who is our government information services librarian here at the Library Commission, will be on also talking about other resources that are available out there right now and what's being put together to help librarians know where to direct people and how to help them with this. So that will be our show next week, so please sign up and join us for that. NCUPUS Live is also on Facebook, so if you are a big Facebook user, please do go ahead and pop over there and like our page and you will get notifications of when recordings are done and available and new shows that have been added to the schedule. Reminders I do every week, when the new shoot one's episode is ready to start so people can pop in on the fly and join us. Any news and information at NCUPUS Live will be here on our Facebook page. So if we don't have any last minute questions, which it doesn't look like we do, we will wrap it up for this morning and say thank you very much for attending and we will see you next week.