 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics, excuse me, maybe of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to address on Wednesdays that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today and it will be available later on in our show archives for you to watch at your convenience and I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of those show recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. For, we do a variety of things around the show. We do book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products. We do shows for public, academic, K-12 corrections museums, archives. Really our only criteria is that it is something to do with libraries. We bring in guest speakers from all over the country but we also have speakers from the Library Commission that present about things that we're doing here or things that we're involved in and that's what we are doing this morning. Today we are talking about the Nebraska Letters About Literature Contest and with us is Tessitari, our communications coordinator here at the Library Commission and Sally Snyder, who is our coordinator of youth and children's and young adult services and also a judge on this, I believe. Yes, all right, I knew it. And so I'm just going to hand it over to you, Tessa and Sally, to tell us all about the program and what we're doing this year. Yeah, so like Krista said, my name is Tessitari and I'm the communications coordinator here at the Nebraska Library Commission and one of my jobs is to help organize some of the Nebraska Center for the Book Programs that we help sponsor as the Library Commission. One of those programs is the Letters About Literature Contest and I've been helping organize this for a few years now and especially since we went from it being a national contest to a state-run contest, I had a much bigger role in how we organize and facilitate the contest. So that's why I'm here to talk to you today. So do you want to give them an overview about kind of why you're here to talk to us? I'm here because I've been a judge, one of the judges for the Letters About Literature for a number of years and I don't even know how long I've been involved in it, but I started when it was a national contest and I'll talk a little bit later on about the differences between then and now because I think it's great now, but that's my opinion as far as a judge goes and about reading the letters and it's always more than one person who's deciding this. I'm not the only one for this age group, there's another person and we'll get into that as we go along. It's kind of daunting to read the letters and decide who's doing it. It's hard. Yeah, it's a lot of responsibility on you. Okay, so if you aren't familiar with it, our Letters About Literature Contest is a statewide reading program and a writing contest. It is for young readers grades 4 through 12, so any school-aged children 4th grade and up pretty much. The goal of the contest is to get kids to really do some introspection and write a personal letter to an author about why a book has affected their life or changed the way they think about the world or yeah, just how it's affected them. And so we do really like to make sure people know this is not a book report contest. We don't need a synopsis of the book in your letter. It is about really getting kids to do what we call reflective writing and we're going to talk a little bit more about that too. So once again, they must explain how the authors work change the students view of the world. Now we separated out so that 4th graders aren't competing against 12th graders, so we have three grade levels. We have level one which is grades 4 through 6. We have level 2 which is 7 through 8 and then level 3 is high school 9 through 12. And obviously, students can submit letters even if they're not in a public school. We have parochial schools that submit letters. We have kids that are homeschooled that submit letters, so it doesn't have to just be a school activity, but we have kids that do this outside of school as extra credit or as a writing group. So it doesn't have to be school sponsored, but a lot of times it is spearheaded by a teacher or librarian who's kind of making this happen in their school or community. But public libraries can do this as well if the school... Oh yeah. Even though we talk about it being students and kids in those certain grade levels that it's based on, it doesn't have to be coming from the school. The live public library can initiate the program and help with running it either on their own or even in conjunction, which is great. We love partnerships with their school. Some public libraries are possible in the most locations. Some public libraries have a writing workshop for a group of age group or whatever of kids, and this is something that they could aim toward if they wanted to as a project for the kids to think about doing, giving them the option, but not usually public libraries don't force kids to do things. No, but a lot of public libraries around the state have teen groups. They have after-school programs for students, head start programs run out of the library. So this is a great program to integrate into something you're already doing with school age kids. And then our submission deadline, it's changed last year. So we're keeping it the same as last year. It's October 1st through December 31st. So you have all of October, November, and December to submit your letters to us. So we like to go over a little bit about what the Center for the Book actually is, what it does. They are a non-profit that is organized to help support authors, publishers, writers, illustrators, and just literature in Nebraska in general. That's their goal, is to just really make a platform for those, those specialties in literature to be highlighted and have support. So one of the reasons we like to do the letters about literature competition is just to encourage kids in Nebraska to be writing, to be reading, and to work their way. You know, you don't become an author just overnight. It's something you have to build too. And a lot of authors start when they're in school, really finding their love of books and writing. So that's, that's one of the things we love about this. And the Center for the Book, there's Center for the Books in, is there one in every state or almost all? Yeah, how other states have the much? Yeah, we're, we're affiliated with the Library of Congress. And we're sort of like a branch of the Library of Congress in Nebraska is how they like to think of it, like their boots on the ground. And every state is different. I have found some states have completely separate Center for the Books that have zero kind of budget or funding. They're just totally run out of donations, or some are out of their Humanities Council and are have grants that help run them. We're really lucky to have our Center for the Book and our State Library be kind of a joint effort in a sense that we have a totally separate board for the Center for the Book. But we also help with some logistical stuff here at the commission, and we help sponsor a lot of the same activities. And then Sally, do you want to talk a little bit? So the program has changed a lot. Letters about literature from its inception when it started as a Library of Congress writing contest. And then now it's a state contest. So each state has their own individual contest. When I first started with the Letters about Literature, the goal, well, each state had a winner in each group. And that person was then in the competition for the national award. And Nebraska has had a national winner. Really? I remember before my time. We did. And it was so, that was exciting, but it's all about, again, how did the book affect the child? And that's what they went for, starting way back when. I can't remember when this program first started in the national competition, but the being a judge for that time was a little harder because there were certain steps that had to be taken, understandably so, because they were protecting children's identities, which is important. So they did that. And for a while they had a portal that, as a judge, I had to go into and find the letters and find, and it was a little cumbersome. It worked, but it was kind of awkward to use. And then when they first, they finally said we're not doing this anymore on a national level. Well, that's too bad because this was something that any kid in the state could do if they wanted to, or if their teacher assigned it, which I don't know how many teachers. I don't know how many, make it an assignment for a grade. I think several do it for extra credit for their students, though. I think that's a great idea. And so I thought, well, now there's not going to be this anymore. And then I found out, no, Nebraska's going to have it. So thank you, Tessa, for being in charge. And I think you were kind of in charge of some parts of it for us to still have this happening in Nebraska. And the, as a judge, it's less cumbersome because it's, it's just Nebraska. We're still protecting kids' identities. We get the letters and we keep them very secure because it used to be, you didn't even know the child's name. Now I do believe the letters have the name on them yet, but we don't say anything to anybody about who's submitted the letter. That's all private. Yeah. And the other thing I really like about this is I do the grades four, four to six, and it's not just me. Like I said, there's another person I've worked with, I think three different public librarians reading these. And I like having a public librarian viewpoint with my viewpoint at the State Library. So we each read the letters ourselves. And then we talk up usually on the phone. We used to, a couple of times, we got together in person, but now we just talk on the phone and we have already figured out what our opinions are. And then we talk about what is it about this letter and that letter that really seems to hint the what we're going for with the contest. Yeah. And then we make some decisions and then turn that into tests. Yeah. So you use our winner and runner up. One thing that is much easier about it being a state-run contest than a nationally run contest is that before students would submit their letters to this Library of Congress in D.C. and so all the letters would go to D.C. and they would go through all the letters and basically filter them to make sure they met the criteria they wanted to meet and then they would send back the ones they had pre-screened for us. So we didn't actually get to see all the letters submitted when it was a national contest. And now the letters come straight to us here at the Library Commission. We've got a uh they just you submit them online and then I send them to the judges. So every letter gets read by the judges now. We don't have anybody pre-screening them at the Library of Congress like we used to. That's another thing I like about it because yes some particularly with the younger group the youngest group some haven't really moved into the reflected writing yet. So this is good practice for them and so you get some segments of the book report telling you this is what happened in the book that's what happened. Oh and this part where this happened that really made me think about this. So they thought they have some book report aspects to it and then they hit the more of the reflective thing that we're looking for. So possibly the Library of Congress reviewers may have been stricter than we are at least with I mean if we had to wait for them to say the ones you're allowed to even judge on we get to judge on anything that's been submitted. Yeah the other thing I really like about this contest is that the child or teen chooses the book that they want to talk about. They're not it's not just well here's this book writes some comments about it. Yeah it's they choose the book that that sends something to them and then talk about what it was that that they felt when they were in that book. No yeah I agree there's just a lot of autonomy for what kind of book you can pick. We've had people pick nonfiction fiction poetry comic books really any type of literature can be something that you write about. Essays it doesn't doesn't have to be one specific thing and we've had winners that have won after writing about all different kinds of books. So one one year I thought was particularly and particularly interesting we had a boy win after reading a book about the periodic table and science and chemistry and I don't think it was a text books exactly but it was I just was like I can't believe. Yeah so surprised me but so once you've gone through the whole process we've gotten your letters we've judged them. There aren't some fun things that happen for we have a winner and an alternate from each level and we invite them to a proclamation signing ceremony at the capitol usually with the governor and they get a certificate signed by the governor and then we go to Bennett Martin public library and we have a lunch and the students have the opportunity to read their letters if they would like to their parents and teachers and sometimes their siblings come as well and so it's a really fun time just to get to hear the other winning letters and also share the letter that you wrote to win and they get their prizes which are a check for the center for the book from the center for the book and some a gift card to Francie and Finch and chapter's bookstore so both of those bookstores generously donate gift certificates to us for the winners and then Richard Miller who's another judge always buys a notebook for the winners so they can keep on writing and journaling yeah so it's a really fun time and then we go down to the Nebraska library Jane Pope-Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska authors in Bennett Martin and we have a little tour that's actually what this picture on the slide of is it's an old one but we're in the Heritage Room students get a little overview of what the Heritage Room is and it is a collection of Nebraska literature and authors and like I think they have first edition cather books in there so they'll have like different editions of the same book by a Nebraska author so you can see how that author or that book has maybe changed over the years and it's different publishing series but it's a really interesting little specific gem in Lincoln City libraries and we get a chance to go in there and tour it and hear about the collection and then students sign their letters and give them over to the librarian at the Heritage Room and she files them away as Nebraska authors in their archives so for a lot of our students that are winners this is their first piece of work that they are authors of and they're keeping it at the Heritage Room for posterity that's true yeah yeah so hopefully one day we'll have a a student come back to say like this is my first piece of work here at the Heritage Room and here's my published novel so how can librarians teachers parents be involved in this process so librarians can partner with a classroom teacher with an English teacher or a librarian at his public school to help work on this program to have a writing clinic um it promotes the library is a place to find books that make a difference um you know a lot of people see libraries as just places to consume media or to find a fun book to read and I love it for that too but they make it those books make a difference and so this is a great way to highlight that as well we have a lot of materials on our Nebraska Center for Book website that will go over that library users can use to help them with the project one thing i think is fun um one library challenged adults and parents to write letters as examples for kids so that they could get an understanding of one what a letter actually looked like and two get a better idea of what reflective writing is and how that can look at from an adult standpoint but also from a child standpoint so that's a really fun idea mentors from writing if you have a local author a local writing group if you have a college class um have those people come in and help mentor students and learn about the writing process because outside of academic writing a lot of students don't really have a chance to do any sort of writing other than a book report other than an you know a history paper those types of things so learning how to to write creatively is not something that just everybody's going to know how to do we've also had people host letter letter writing clinics and um those are really fun we have more information on the website that will show you but it essentially you have kids come in you have them explore the library explore the books um you maybe go over some ideas they have of books that they want to write about and brainstorm up you know help them brainstorm the books that they've read or make a list of the ones that are their favorites that they really felt spoke to them and so that's one part of the writing clinic the other part is then helping them write that letter and really get out of the book report era and into reflective writing i can see that can be something difficult because i don't know i don't remember from when i was in school um when or if we got into that or if that was um into reflective writing as part of you know creative writing class or whatever um especially for the younger ones um i wonder if that would be that's something actually some a comment that someone did have was that would be something definitely that would be something the public library could help with is that um writing workshops on reflective writing if the school hasn't done it yet for the kids or if it's not part of that their curriculum at that particular school it's not something they get into or maybe it's once you get into um electives or higher level i don't know um they need somebody to teach you how to do this the school hasn't and doing these clinics are reading it bringing in these you know authors or writers to help that from the library side that's a great way for the public library to get involved yeah all right so how do you actually submit a letter after you've done all this work of you know maybe you've had a writing clinic maybe you partnered with your vocal class to you know write these letters it's super easy we've tried to make it as simple as we can for students and teachers and parents to go through this process and we do have a couple rules since we are submitting these online and not as physical letters uh there is there's a law that children under the age of 13 can't submit things online without parents approval so that is one one thing if your student is under the age of 13 as of october 1st this year you have to as a parent or guardian consent for them to submit this letter to us so it's really easy you just have to check a box on the sign inform but that is that is one thing to keep in mind for those lower levels definitely for the fourth graders it can be in between there whether they're over 13 yet we also um encourage you to keep a personal copy of your letter once you submit it so that because we don't return your letter to you so we want to make sure you have a copy of that letter for other reasons so you just have to go to this link and i'm actually going to show you if you go to the nebraska center for the book letters about literature webpage which is under programs we have a handy big submit button we have here's another link you can click that will take you to the submission platform we also have some guidelines you can use that um you could print out and hand out to students to help them work through those the submission just click submit it tells you a little bit about what we're looking for it needs to be between 400 800 words so we don't need a you know 10 page letter but we would like it to be more than just one tiny paragraph it can be to any author living or dead from any genre and we've already gone over what we want them to write about one thing we would like you to do is have a header or footer at the top or bottom of your letter that has your the student's name the school they go to and then the grade they're in and that's just in case after i've printed off all these letters for judges i pick it up and i say oh this is from john smith but i have no idea if he's in level one or if he's in level two or level three so this just helps me keep things a little bit more organized in the submission process so that is one thing we ask we also ask that you submit a pdf of your letter and not a word document so we need your school name a school phone number because we we do we want to it we want to get in contact with an adult we don't want a student's personal information so with a school name and a school phone number that allows us to contact a teacher or the school and not have a kid's personal information in our possession period we do want your students first and last name we want your students age and here is if your student is under the age of 13 that we have your permission we want to know what level of the contest they're going to be in but then even inside that we want to know what specific grade they are and then here we want contact information for an adult so we have teachers name and teachers email but this could be a librarian this could be a parent or a guardian um so just if this child wins what adult should we contact usually it's a teacher but it just depends we want to know the name of the author you're writing to and which book or title you are writing about and then all you have to do is click here to upload your letter and it's really easy you just upload your level your letter your file to a dropbox folder and we would like your file titled the student's name and what level they're in and then you just hit submit we have a lot of great information here on this page so we're going to go over the assessment portion so that's really what Sally's here for talk about once we get a letter what judges are specifically going through each of those letters and really looking for to find the winners I just want to jump in right here and let everyone know if you have any questions about the program or the process or anything you want to share if you've done this at your library or school um go ahead and type in the question section and I will grab them for um Sessa and Sally go ahead Sally thank you and I like how this is very pointed this is what we're looking for so who who who is it you're writing to what author are you writing to and the purpose of your letter and again that gets back to me how did this book teach you something about the world and make change your worldview we do look at grammar though we're not we're not marking corrective things on the letters but we do look at grammar and I catch spelling because I can't help myself it's okay it doesn't lose you a winning if you're if you're your ideas are there your ideas are there that's the most important thing in my opinion and I hope I'm right about that but we do look at grammar and we do look at spelling and also originality because if we've heard for years that some book or others than making impressions on people throughout the world and then the child writes the same thing you're kind of going well I hope that that's really something you read and this is quite your result but this isn't very original not that again I don't think that will make a great winning but we look at all of these and see how did all of this come together in the left I think the letter as a whole is really the thing we're hoping for and again with the youngest group sometimes they get started kind of reciting what happened in the book and then they kind of get into the reflected part and that makes a difference I think that's part of the audience as well so if you're writing a letter to an author you don't need to tell them about their book they already know about their book they wrote it so so you know it's just not necessary other than picking out the specific points of that book that you are talking about so that's part of really thinking about the audience and not thinking about this as a book report and we also have yeah about the grammar I'm not it I'm not a judge I'm the paper person who organizes the the letters for the judges but I know our our our judges look at different things based on the level they're judging so our level three judges one is a college professor one is Richard Miller who is a former the grass library commission employee but he is a stickler for grammar and spelling so so you know the level that we're looking for in level three is maybe different than level one just because we know those students have had more time to write have have a better grasp on those things so it's maybe more important to level three than it is to level one you know there's a sliding scale but so so yes I know those judges do care a lot about grammar and they might ding a letter if they didn't think it did but but yeah they're they're all different each letter that comes in is so unique that you really have to read each letter letter a few times I'm guessing before you can really judge it I kind of I shouldn't tell you my process I kind of set them on my desk I know you've seen my desk some of you so there's the and I'm going to read them all but I kind of put them by uh this is a good try but not so quite making it to oh my goodness I think these are contenders and no good contender and then I um go back again and things get shifted when I read it again it doesn't stay in that I'm not sure this yeah when we hit there because then I read it again and I I pick up on things that maybe I didn't catch the first time I think that's important too yeah and I don't know if you're going to talk about your sheet here but they do give us information to help guide us towards making decisions what I like about this is here under grammatical conventions um it says a weak letter would have multiple errors resulting in muddled meaning and I think that's the point that the meaning is muddled because they're not quite saying things properly and yes the whole letter is effective whereas if they use a a singular verb versus a verb of more than one person I'm not so concerned about yeah because they're I I just see them as writing right along and getting exciting and writing you don't forget to to use the right margin of the words and yeah so we I give each judge a scoring rubric kind of so that they can keep um a consistency throughout reading the letters and being able to judge them because they are so different to each child and each book is different so one is format and audience where we just want to know like we talked about one is purpose and reflection one is writer's voice and use of language and the other is grammatical conventions so they they are looking for these specific things but there's you know a different scale about where a kid might land so maybe your your format and your audience and your purpose and reflection are way up there and they're high but maybe you were a little lower on your grammar that's not gonna it's a curve they're grading on a curve not just a xxx and I like the fact that you were talking about the the workshops where you're talking about what is a letter what should a letter look like because um one of the things on here is under format and audience is it's weak if it's not in a letter format if they just do bullet points for example yeah which are interesting but it's not a letter and so that that takes it down and not just something we mean uh we sally mentioned this before but it's not just one person reading the the letters for each level we have two different judges for level one level two and level three and we send each of them the letters individually so they can read them and have a chance to absorb them like sally said and come back to them and read them again and then they come together and yeah they talk about which ones they felt were the top runners and then maybe they talk about those top five or three letters that they just really loved maybe they each have different top three but you guys eventually come to some sort of consensus I assume yes we do and some of the time we're almost identical in the things that we've chosen and other times they're like you said completely different letters and then that really opens my eyes because I'm one person and it's a completely different person and and they saw things that I didn't see in that letter and I guess well yeah you're right you know we did this reflective that I wasn't picking up on and and then we read them again and then we talk again because we don't when we're almost exactly the same then we might make a decision that same phone call but we don't rush it because this is important these kids work hard on these letters and I don't just read them and say well yeah you're the winner no they deserve a lot of consideration so then we'll call back and say you know I read that letter like you said and I'm moving that up to my top choice now and they might say well it's still my top choice so we're we're happy yeah and there are two like like we said there are two letters picked from each level each year so we've got a winner and then we've also got a runner up essentially so we picked the two top letters so we talked a lot about reflective writing and I thought it would be a great idea to go a little bit deeper into what is reflective writing what that actually means and you can read this slide but it is it is really jumping out of like an academic paper into getting into your personal experiences and observations and thinking about how that shapes both your thoughts and your life and your actions and how you think about new ideas and how you process things and it really does require students to tap into something different to express their own opinion and not I had a high school teacher that would say memorization regurgitation like we weren't thinking any new thoughts we weren't forming our own opinions about anything we were just memorizing the stuff they gave us and just giving it back to them which has its place in things like biology but multiplication tables location tables but you know a lot of learning is being able to wrap your head around something and then think about it beyond what your teachers have taught you about it so this is helping kids step into that place there was a letter a few years ago so I can't remember the book or the one but the letter was about something that had happened in that book which prompted the student to say something had happened to their uncle that was similar to what happened in the book and they got to really talking about that brought out a whole lot of understanding to for the read the child that these things happen sometimes and what had happened to their uncle was hard for him and they began to understand why their uncle had some trouble that he got passed but they had not realized before how hard it was for their uncle till they read that book and something like that really just kind of you know yeah we have we have students that write incredibly deep meaningful letters and and we are very conscious that some of them are essentially spilling their guts to us in these letters so we're very careful with them we don't we know we don't give them out we only publish them if we have the student permission afterwards and we only students don't even have the winners don't even have to read their letters at the award ceremony if they don't want to it's not something we make them do so if their letters to personal or private they they can totally choose not to do that awesome that you're sure of that yeah that's very important I think yeah and the heritage room isn't you know publishing these letters either they're just on file for posterity but yeah we're really careful about it so that the things these students talk about can be as private or as public as the day would like them to be essentially yeah um so I think we've gone into this a little bit um I don't know I think it's really interesting to hear the level ones read their winning letters and level twos and level threes and just see how students have progressed in this reflective writing um because yeah it's always really shocking to see how deeply these students are thinking about these things but yeah um we have a question about the letters which I want to make sure I get in here um not about how to write them but it's interesting I don't think you've ever had anyone ask this before have and I know you said that the identity is you know kept as private as possible but um have you ever seen a one of the children do something at a lower level and then submit a letter a letter again a few years later at the higher level like you may recognize a name in a school that goes together a name in a library or something is this something that you've done since they've um you know grown up yeah we've actually had we've had a student we've had the same student win in a couple different levels actually as they continue to to grow and read and I don't know if I can't remember if they won one year and then got an alternate the next year if they got it with or if they had alternate the first year and won the next year but but yeah we definitely have students that continue to write these in the different levels as they're going through school especially if it's a program in their community and not just a part of a classroom program because obviously if it's you know just your sixth grade teacher is asking you to write these letters it might not be something you do later but other teachers might not yeah yeah you never yeah it might not be something at every every level exactly but we have we've had students that have written in multiple years and levels and I love that yeah so continue to come back yeah I'm sure and say oh I'm really this kid you were great and then I think the other thing is and I guess I can't I don't know this 100% because I don't have the letters in front of me but I don't think they write about the same book I think they pick new books probably yeah write about and read something they've read something different as or they go back and they read something they read before but it has a whole new meaning for them at this new age or with new life experiences so definitely yeah look at it with new eyes yeah absolutely yeah and it has an effect on my to be read pile in my office because there'll be books that they write about that I haven't read I know it's shocking that there are some books I haven't read grades 4 through 6 and I go you know this is quite a profound letter and I've never read this book that doesn't have anything to do with the letter that has to do with me and I have to go read this book now because wow I have to see what I think of the book too yeah there's just books that are published it's impossible for anyone to read them all you're good Sal you're good it's your goal though I should at least hear about them all and I don't um this is a part of our writing guide that we have we let students um it's on our our guidelines we have up on the website that teachers or librarians anyone can print out and give to students or use in their library or classroom so it just gives a quick overview of what the contest is and what we're looking for um and then how you submit your book your letter I don't think we have time for it we do have um we have a letter that we had reported one year but maybe we can go back to that in a little bit we only have we have less than 10 minutes left yeah people can go look at those and like that's just something to know that there are um posted out there if you wanted to see um we did the virtual of course awards um so we didn't put a pause we did not skip this even when the pandemic started correct just went virtual for the awards we did we did have one year we okay I think it was the first year we did not do the contest just because we were still trying to figure everything out yeah libraries were closed and sent yeah um but the next year when we did it we still couldn't have they were no they were not having um in-person um proplemations and right so we we just aired on the side of safety and had a virtual celebration and the link for that is down here is our 2020 letters about literature virtual awards and so we have videos of the children reading their letters they're really great if you get a chance go in and watch that we also have some past winners from 2016 which was a little bit ago um they read their letters for NET radios all about books and so we have a recording of them reading their letters it's not a video but it's still just as good there's a lot of great stuff on here we this is last year's Encompass Live we'll put a link up to the new Encompass Live as soon as Christopher publishes that that should be by tomorrow you should have that all ready there's um a really great reflective writing assessment um from the National Letters about literature that was put out at one point that does go through reflective writing very nicely and is a great curriculum guide almost if that is something a teacher or a librarian would be interesting going into but here is the guidelines I talked about so this is just a PDF that's got all the information on it it's got information about entry about judging um the assessment of what the judges are looking for so students can have that on hand yeah do we have any other questions Christopher or anything you guys want to ask us before we run out of time um let's see I didn't see anything come in yet um does anybody have any questions any questions comments thoughts uh you can take me to the questions section of your go-to webinar interface I know it says that um Nebraska Center for the Book finds the judges and asks the judges if someone was interested in being a judge should they contact anyone yeah there's a librarian who would like to see that's a good question yeah if you are interested in being a judge or just getting some more information about the the program you can definitely contact me my information's right here you can send me an email and maybe let me know if you are interested in judging which level you would be more interested in judging we have had years where we've struggled to find judges for different levels just because somebody you know how dare they choose to retire from being a judge how would anybody retire from being a judge I don't know um but yeah it it is it's not it is occasionally a lot of work I mean you get you might have 30 40 letters sometimes that you're reading so yeah and you're trying to give them all an equal opportunity to be considered so it takes time to read them and think about them and then shuffle and read them again and but it's sure worth it but it's a really fun program to be a part of so if you're interested let us know all right well I don't see any new desperate questions or comments thing came in while we were chatting so I think we could work on wrapping things up um almost on time I love that so um thank you just and Sally this is we love this program it's why we kept going even after the Library of Congress no longer during the national one and I know other states did as well so if you're not from Nebraska and you're interested this we got some thank yous coming through you're welcome Tony um that you know the step doing the national one and others there was a little bit of a um confusion a little panic at first I know when that happened but many other states have also taken on and said you know what it's a great program we love it the the children love it let's just figure out a way to do it um and keep it going and I'm glad I've got to hear that you get so many submissions too because I always wonder I never knew like how many is this a huge thing 40 something letters wow that's that's a lot and I'm sure other states with the you know more population than Nebraska probably have more probably yeah and it changes from year to year sometimes there's there's 20 sometimes there's 30 you just don't know so I'm prepared to read and I love to read yeah honestly I'm I think the more letters the better I mean there's there's no limit on how many letters we would accept so sure oh yeah yeah all right you know Sally I have a hard time reading too many I might hand half of them to tess and say here read these this is your turn now I'm just kidding if you wanted to you certainly read all right I think I will yeah we'll get things do a little my little wrap up here so thank you so much tess and Sally this is great you got the good information out for this year like I said we'll get the recording up and ready by tomorrow I'm going to pull presenter control to my screen here to do my little wrap up there it is finally uh so yes this is the event page for today's show we pop back to the encompass live page if you just type encompass live into your search engine of choice it is the only thing called that on the internet no one's allowed to use that and you'll come up with the main page or archive page main pages are upcoming shows for the rest of this year and even into January yeah well but our archives are right here most recent one at the top of the page today's will be there everyone who like I said to be ready by tomorrow everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know when it's available I'll send that link to you too as well tessa so you can get it up on the let us about literature web page and also if you send me your slides we'll get those linked out as well for people to have there is a search feature here if you want to search or show archives see if we've done something anything else on the show and I will let you know here you can either search the full show archives are just most recent 12 months and that is because this is our full show archives and I'm not going to scroll all the way to the bottom because it goes back to go back to 2000 January 2009 was when Encompass Live first premiered we're 15 years old this year so yeah and still going yeah um it is through the pandemic and we're still going um but do pay attention to the original broadcast date if you do watch any of our recordings many of the shows will be great and stay in the test of times be good valid information but things are going to get old resources are going to change drastically or no longer exist anymore links may be broken people will probably work at different libraries than they worked at possibly when they presented for us 10 years ago so just keep an eye on that date if you do watch any of our really older shows we do have a Facebook page if you like to use Facebook you can give us a like over there like like um and you get reminders about things going on here's your reminder to log in today's show um or when the recordings are available information about our presenters we always post on here so do um if you like give us a like over there or on Twitter and Instagram we use the Encompass Live hashtag that you can keep an eye on what we're doing there i'll be here in Nebraska sign up for our regular old mailing list series of library commission and through our regional library systems and I push out everything on there so that wraps it up for today um uh as I said here's our schedule got almost everything filled in here some of these empty dates I do I'm just waiting for confirmation and final descriptions of things from varying um presenters and you'll see we do have Sally's regular and while Sally's here I'll mention her regular end of the year sessions are scheduled her best new children's books of 23 um summer reading program for next year 2024 and best new teen reads of 2023 so if you always look at Sally's shows for that at the end of the year they're all scheduled and you can sign up for those next week we'll be talking about Web Junction Kendra Morgan who's a program director at Web Junction will be with us this is a great online website been around for I don't know long a long time with great um professional development and education resources and training and workshops and webinars and articles and all sorts of things uh for librarians so if you're a librarian and looking for um something like that sign up for next week's show and join us for that other than that thank you everybody for being here thanks Tessa and Sally and we'll see you all on a future episode of Encompass Live bye-bye