 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 that may be of interest to libraries across the state. We broadcast the show, actually across the country, we have people from outside the state, we broadcast this show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's okay. You can always watch on the archive of our recordings at your convenience and I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can go on our website to see all of our archives. Both the live show and the archived recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone who you think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. The Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for all libraries in Nebraska, so you will find things on our upcoming shows and on our archives for every type of library you can think of. Public, academic, K-12, universities, correction facilities, museums, anything that has anything that is a library or can be considered library, we will have some do something on the show and that is really our only criteria here that anything that we do have on is something library related, something libraries are doing, something we think they could be doing, services and programs and resources that we think may be beneficial to them. We do book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, but we bring guest speakers some time from outside the Nebraska Library Commission to share what they're doing at their libraries, so we have some of those as well, but we also have commission staff do sessions and that was what we have this morning, with me this morning is Sam Shaw. Good morning. Good morning. And he is our planning and data services coordinator, our stats guy. Yeah, I guess. Here at the Nebraska Library Commission, handing anything, handling anything, statistics related for us and he specifically is in charge for us the the annual public library survey that is done and he is going to tell us today about how to do that and any new things coming up with it. I think there's some changes. There are. Yeah, so I'll just hand it over to you, Sam, to take it away. Thank you, Christa. So the topic of discussion today is the annual public library survey and we'll go right here. And so it's kind of a two part, we'll talk about two part thing today. We'll talk about the public library survey in general first. And then we'll also talk about bibliostat. I just want to clear up some confusion at the outset. I hear people a lot of the time refer to this survey as the bibliostat survey. And that's not actually correct. It's the public library survey. Bibliostat is the vendor that we use to collect the data in Nebraska. And so there may be other states that use a different vendor. So the correct terminology would be the public library survey, but the vendor that we use to collect the data an online tool is called Bibliostat. No, I thought that everybody had used Bibliostat. There's a competing product called Counting Opinions is the other major vendor that states use. And then there are some states that have their own homegrown versions and some US territories, like for instance, Guam and American Samoa that have a very limited number of libraries, so they use their own. They only have like one library that reports like American Samoa, so they use Excel. Whatever works. I guess if you can get the right numbers that you said this is something. Yeah, yeah. And so this is actually IMLS is the one who is asking for this data who were sending it on to you. So as long as you can get the right data that they need, it doesn't matter how you get it. Right. So, so yeah, this is part of a national statistical collection program from IMLS. So in Nebraska, the report covers the library fiscal year. So for most people, this is either October 1 through September 30th or June or July 1 through June 30th. You have a few states that have calendar year fiscal years like January through December. So that just depends on your local what your local fiscal year is. So for the current survey that we are in the process of collecting data right now runs November 5th, 2018. So it's open. Bibliostat is open and ready for you to input your data. And it'll stay open until February 15th of 2019. That's the window that you can enter your data online with Bibliostat. And you will enter the data. Your statistics will cover your fiscal year. So whatever your fiscal year is, either October 1 through September 3th or July 1 through June 30th. So you don't have to change your year to be anything in particular. It's whatever you guys do, whatever they do at their own library is fine. Correct. Like for instance, the state fiscal year is July 1 through June 30th. The federal fiscal year I believe is October 1 through September 3. So those are the more common ones just because it coincides with state or federal. And like I said, this is a part of a national program by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. So we participate, all states participate in this program. We're one of the states, like I said, that use Bibliostat. So we'll cover Bibliostat later in this presentation. But I'd like to talk a little bit about IMLS. I think most of you are probably familiar with IMLS, but maybe some aren't. I know Krista works with IMLS a lot too. So if you have anything to add, jump in. So IMLS, the Institute of Museum and Library Services is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government. They're the primary source of federal support for libraries and museums throughout the United States and U.S. territories. That's financial and other support that they might give. There's grants that are given by IMLS, that's a major component. Grants to states programs. So that's a chunk of money that we receive as the state library administrative agency from IMLS to then distribute national leadership grants or grants that they offer libraries throughout the United States. A lot of you have maybe heard of those. But they also conduct as a part of those programs and a part of the money that they get from Congress. They also conduct policy research analysis and data collection. The primary method of data collection that they utilize is the Panual Public Library Survey. So like I said, they collaborate with state library administrative agencies or SLAS, which the Nebraska Library Commission is. They've published public library survey data since 1988. So we have a data file that goes back to 1988. And there's a series of edit checks, I guess you could say, that are employed when we submit our data to them. That tries to ensure that the data that's submitted is reliable and complete and also accurate. So a lot of you that have done the survey before on Bibliostat, you will get edit checks if your data is outside of a certain range and we'll go over that a little later as we look at the new Bibliostat. But that's the reason those edit checks are in place is to make sure that the data is accurate and complete. And so IMLS reports this data online. They're usually about a year behind. So we usually report our data because different states have different data collection cycles. We're, I think, in cycle two. There's also cycle one that if you're in another state, you might be collecting data in the summertime. So usually when IMLS reports their data, it's usually like we report our data usually early spring or late spring, early summer of the year. So the most current data that we have on our website is for the 2017 fiscal year, which was reported last early summer. IMLS, the most current data on IMLS's site is from fiscal year 2016. So they're usually about a year behind because they publish everyone's data at the same time. They got to wait for everyone to submit. So like I said, there's two groups. The states are divided into those two groups. And then for some reason, Texas, because it's so huge, they're in their own group. So Texas, I can't remember how many administrative entities Texas has, but it's a lot. So IMLS does this, they do a public library survey. They don't do anything for any of the surveys for other types of libraries. Or I mean, they are the museum and libraries release one to museums as well. Not that I know, but that's a good question. I don't know if they collect data from museums. I don't think it's part of an annual cycle of collection, like with the public library survey. But that's a good question. I'd have to look into that and see what data they analyze to look at museum trends or non-public library trends. I'm sure that they have things, but I don't know if it's part of this formal data collection that we use for public library survey. So like I said, when you submit your statistics in Nebraska, it contributes to this national file, which is the IMLS data catalog. That's where they publish their data. So like in Nebraska, this is kind of like what we use the data for in Nebraska. We use it for accreditation, the accreditation process if your library is accredited. Some of you have been through that process. You'll notice that a lot of the data that you submit on your public library survey is prefilled on your accreditation application. That's used to compare you to other libraries. So if you submit your statistics and the other libraries submit their statistics, then we have data that we can compare those benchmarks that are on the accreditation application. Actually, there's a Nebraska statute, which is 51-407 that requires us as the state library administrative agency to collect an annual report from all public libraries in the state. So we could say that submitting an annual report is required by statute. And do we then consider the public library survey as the annual report? That's what we consider the annual report. Libraries, I don't want anyone to think, oh wait, now I have to send something else to you guys. There's another statute that I think requires an annual report to the library board for public libraries. Right, yeah. That's a separate report. That's just internal to your state. The one to submit to us as the state library administrative agency is the public library survey. Once you've done that, you're good. Once you've done that, you're good. And there's no penalty in the statute, so I'm not sure how much leverage it just says that we are to collect. So that's kind of part of this program. So as a part of the accreditation application, submitting your statistics, since that's required for the accreditation, it's also required to receive state aid. You must be accredited library to receive state aid. We also have a dollars for data grants program. What that is, if you're not familiar with it, is we offer a $200 for data grant to libraries that are unaccredited that submit their statistics online with the Bibliostat program. So maybe if you are looking to become accredited, that's the first step to become accredited is that you need to submit your statistics. And so as a part of that, we offer a $200 incentive to start the process. Just to at least start this, yeah. And there are some libraries that maybe want to submit their statistics, but they're not really to that point of accreditation right now. That's a good first step to submit your statistics. Maybe look at your peer libraries and also receive the $200. Yeah. Once you do submit your statistics, you are then invited to participate, to become accredited if you want to. That's the first step. You'll get an email from me in May, yeah, in the spring after the statistics have been, as Sam said, they get everything's, the deadline is February. So by May, June, we have all your numbers figured out and all the edits are fixes or whatever errors need to be fixed done. And then you'll be invited to apply to be accredited if you want to. Of course, everyone who is previously accredited and it's their up for reaccreditation will be told, hey, you're up, but people have never been accredited libraries will get the email as well saying, hey, since you did this, you can now become accredited. Now, even if you are not ready, as Sam said, to do everything involved with it, I highly recommend you at least go in and look at the application that's been created for you because you can see where you're falling in relation to your peer libraries. We compare you to, there's a few, a bunch of questions within the accreditation form that are comparing you to libraries who are within 15%. 15% of a legal service area. Yeah, legal service area above and below your library, your library in the middle. So you can see for air towns that are similar size to you, how you compare to them with some of these questions. So it's a good start to see where you are with that and see where places, areas you might want to think about improving and working on. I will say one thing that when you log into your accreditation application for those benchmarks that are those questions on the accreditation application, it'll give you what your numbers are and then the peer average and the peer median. And if you want to look at the back end data, the more specific numbers from all of those libraries to see how you compare to the specific libraries with the same or similar legal service area, you can always email me and I'll pull that data for you and send it. Yeah. Which can be helpful too, if you want to look at the more detailed data. Because it's only some of the questions that we use in accreditation. It's not going to be everything. And Sam can pull everything for you and customize whatever you want to know. Customize our full data that's published on our site. Someone did let us know the statute for reporting to your city or village, if anyone's interested in this, is statute 51-213. Excellent. So, like I said, we use Bibliostat and partly the reason that we are doing this today is that we have a new version of Bibliostat that just came out this year. And so, for those of you that have used the old Bibliostat, part of the issue with the old version of Bibliostat is that Chrome was never supported. And so with the new version, Chrome is now one of the supported browsers. So, that's a plus. Although, with the new version of Bibliostat, since we're one of the early libraries to use it, we want your feedback. How did it compare to the old version? Were there challenges when you used it? So, if any of those things come up, send me an email or give me a call so that I can then pass that on back to Bibliostat and let them know. So, your username and password. You have one password that you log in to your accreditation application. That same username and password is the same username and password that you use for Bibliostat. It's the same thing. And then we also, we'll talk about later, the NLC Supplemental Survey. That's also the same password. So, I want to make you have to remember another one. You have one password for all three things. So, here's some links. You can also get to these from our website. The first link up at the top is the main page for Bibliostat, which will contain up at the top a direct link to that URL that's the second link on this page, which is your log to log in to Bibliostat. It also contains, if you want to print a paper version of the survey and maybe fill it out offline before you enter the data, you can do that. It's a PDFN Word version you can use. It also has instructions. There's tips. There's an Overdrive Guide, although we prefill that data, if you're one of the Nebraska Overdrive Libraries, that data will be prefilled on your survey. But if you want to know how we pulled that data, there's a guide on there that'll show you how to do that. So, after you log into that main page from the direct URL, the second link there, you'll see all the surveys that you've submitted in previous years. So, if you ever want to log in and print those surveys, you can at any time. We also save a copy here at the commission locally. I save a PDF of everybody's survey. So, if you are having some issues logging in and getting your prior year surveys, you can always contact me and I'll send you the PDF of that. If you've lost your ID and password, you can always send me an email or call. If I'm not around, you can call the reference desk, the 800 number, or there is a lost password link. So, I think if you go to our website and type in lost password or Bibliostat lost password or something to that effect, you'll get that link down at the bottom. And you just enter your library name and it'll automatically send your password to the email of the director that's on file with us. So, like, if you were working on this on the weekend and you couldn't get all the reference desk and get all the me because I'm not here on the weekends, you can always do that lost password. And I will say one thing about passwords, the number one issue that we get with passwords not working is most of our passwords are start with ne for Nebraska. And then they have a series of numbers after it. Those numbers, the primary issue is that when people enter the zero as a capital O, it creates an issue in Bibliostat and it doesn't recognize it as an O, or it doesn't recognize it as a zero. It's supposed to be a zero. It's supposed to be a zero, yeah. There's no O's in our passwords. There's no O's in our passwords. It is a zero. I would say that's the number one issue that we have with logins is that it's, and then the password usually starts with P-A-S-S, and then a series of numbers. So there's no O's at all in the IDR password. Now, let everybody know while we're on this page too, after when you get the archive for today's show, the recording, we will have access to this PowerPoint as well. We'll upload this to our slide share account. So don't worry about trying to scribble down these passwords or these URLs or anything. You'll have this sent to you. It'll be on the page with our recordings, but also, as Sam said, this is all on our website as well, which we're going to demo that for you a little bit too, so you'll see it. Yeah, and that new direct URL to Bibliostat Collect, and the reason that Baker and Taylor is in there, Baker and Taylor owns Bibliostat, and Baker and Taylor is now owned by Follett. So they're all under the umbrella of Follett now. But yeah, that's why it's like that. There's something else. Okay, honor. So when you log in to the new version of Collect, this is what it's going to look like. It's a little bit different than last year. You'll notice up at the top, like this is the Ainsworth Public Library, you'll notice up at the top left corner, the library name, that'll be your library. Over to the right, you'll see Survey List, and that would be a link to your prior year surveys. So if you want to look at the 2017 survey, the 2016, you can click on that link and you'll get a screen that'll provide you with prior year surveys. Frequently asked questions. We try and put those on there if things come up that are common, known issues. And the full survey instructions. So you'll notice as you navigate through the survey, certain questions will have instructions embedded within the survey itself. If you'd want to look at the entire instructions, you can look at those by clicking on that link up at the upper right-hand corner. There's a Save button to save the data that you entered on the page up at the top. A Submit button, when you get completed your survey and you're ready to submit it, you click on that button. A Print icon if you'd want to print the survey before you submitted it, for instance. Over on the left, this is pretty important. There's a Show Status bar. That's important after you've entered all your data when you're done with your survey. You want to go to that. And we talked a little bit earlier about edit checks. So the system will run through a series of edit checks. And if your data is, say, outside of a certain range, or it's exactly the same as what you entered last year, you might get an edit check for certain questions. So you want to look at that and see what edit checks you have. It'll also tell you if you have unanswered questions, required unanswered questions, and unrequired unanswered questions. So edit check doesn't necessarily mean you answered it wrong. It's just setting up a little alarm saying, is your statistics really the same as last year? Yeah. Did your programs really remain the same? Yes. And you just have to enter a note and say, yes, they did. Or another common edit check is for overdrive libraries. Everybody typically spends or pays the commission $500 per year for the overdrive fee. Because that's reported the same every year, you typically get an edit check and it says, why is this the same? And you just have to enter a note in the note field saying, this is my overdrive fee and it hasn't changed. It always, yeah. It's always the same. So again, over on the left-hand side, just to survey navigation, you can go through different sections of the survey. Starts with general data, library facility. A lot of those first two sections are going to be pre-filled, because those are things that don't really change from year to year. Usually your address, phone number, those things remain the same, although sometimes we run into issues if people move, you have to move, or a branch opens or things like that that are kind of uncommon, but do happen from time to time. Section three is library finance. Section four is library collections. Section five is library services. Six is technology, I got my cheat sheet here. Six is technology. Seven is staffing. And then we have some certification things towards the end. One important thing here, let me see here, is over this button right here. So you may log in and this may say, show last year's answers. Right now I have it set up to automatically show last year's answers. That's a very important thing that I use all the time that I think a lot of libraries use as well. You can either show that on or off to show last year's answers or hide last year's answers. And I always like to look at what was entered last year. That way you know here, it's going to show you what last year's answer was. As you enter data, you kind of want the data to vary from year to year, but not be exactly the same. But you can then look at that and say, oh my gosh, our data is way off. What happened last year? Maybe it was entered incorrectly or we need to look at it again. Or maybe some of that happened that you need to enter a note. Like say you had a tornado hit and you were closed for six months out of the year. So that's why your data was outside of that range. And that would be the note that you would need to enter. So you'll notice here that some questions are pre-filled on your server. We try and pre-fill as much as we can, although there's probably some other things that we're looking at that we might be able to try and pre-fill that we haven't pre-filled, like lender compensation, had a request for that. Probably won't happen this year, but that might be something that we might look at next year if we have that data. We could pre-fill it for you. And that way you don't have to go through all of that. That way you don't have to go through those reports. And other things, if you know of something maybe that would be more helpful that we don't pre-fill, let me know and we'll try and pre-fill it. We'll try and make it as easy as we can. You'll notice here like on this question, there's a question mark. If you click on that, you'll get a pop-up that will contain more information. So like in this case, there's a definition of what's reported for mailing address. And I think the definition says something like, if you have a P.O. box, you report that there. Not to report the street address, but a P.O. box. So if you didn't have a P.O. box, you put an N.A. or leave a blank. Whoa, what happened there? That was weird. Did I hit it twice? Well, that's more than twice. Did I hit the scroll bar? I think I hit the scroll bar. Maybe. Okay. All right, okay. All right. So you'll also notice some of the fields are in gray. Like here, the first four questions are grayed out. Those are pre-filled with data and they can't be changed. And the reason that they can't be changed is if there's slight variations in that, when I go to submit all of our data to IMLS, it throws an edit check on our end. So if, for instance, your telephone number has changed, or your zip code's changed, or your address has changed, or any of those things happen, let me know and I can, as the survey administrator, make that change to those grayed fields. And then we'll have to enter a note. We can enter a note saying, yeah, you moved to a new location. And then there's other things that we need to do on our end when we submit the data to IMLS. You'll notice also that some questions are in purple, like the first four are in purple. And the fact number is not in purple. What that means is that those purple questions are federally required questions. So we have an annual meeting of all the data coordinators in December, it's actually next week, where we look at all the data elements that are federally required questions. And people can propose new questions that, hey, this is an important question that maybe we should ask at the federal level. And so then if those are proposed, then each state has a vote. And if there's a certain number of votes, then that data question passes and it becomes part of everyone's survey for all the states in U.S. territories. Questions that aren't in purple are questions that we ask at the state level. We can ask anything on this survey. So those are questions that maybe we want to know that are important to us on the state level, like in this case, your facts number. At the bottom of each page, you'll see a navigation button that'll take you to the previous or take you to the next. If you click on next, it'll save the data that you entered on that page. So while you could scroll all the way back up to the top and hit save and then navigate to the next, you don't have to because it should save your data when you click on that next button. So let's talk about flagging a question. So why would you typically flag a question? Say you were entering your data and you noticed something that seemed a little off or you remembered something that you didn't include in the number and you didn't want to go and get it. You wanted to just flag the question so that you would know that there was some issue with that question that you needed to look at later. So you can flag that question and then when you go to submit your survey, at the end it'll say, hey, you had two questions that you flagged and it'll alert you so that you can then look at those questions at the end. This is kind of marking a question to look at later. Yeah, so hey, I wanted to look at this because I forgot that I needed to include this. I forgot to include the Eclipse in my program numbers. I forgot to include the Eclipse event that we had at the library, that would be one example. And then you can go and track that number down and then go back to your survey later and make sure that you hadn't entered. You can either flag the question within the survey itself. That's the example number one at the top or you can look at the flag questions in the status button. That's the example at the bottom there. That's that show status that we talked about earlier that's an upper left-hand corner. You can then look at your flag questions then when you go to the status. And that status bar will have those three things that will show your edit checks, will show your unanswered questions and then your flag questions. So you can look at all three there. So same thing with a note. You can enter a note in the survey itself or you can wait until the end and look at say, hey, is this going to throw an edit check? Sometimes you may know that it's going to throw an edit check or believe that it's going to throw an edit check. Like the overdrive is an example. If you've done the survey every year and you know that that's always an edit check, you can just enter a note in the survey itself and say, this is my overdrive fee hasn't changed. It's the same as last year, it's $500. Or my programming stayed the same if you know that that typically throws an edit check for you. You can enter it in the survey itself or you can enter it in the status when you get down towards the end. You also have the option for notes. There's the federal notes. So if you have a question that's in purple and that throws an edit check, you're going to want to enter a note in the federal note field. That's this one down here. So once you pull up this either in the survey itself or in the status, you have the option to enter a federal note, a state note, a local note, or what you entered for the previous year. So you can just copy and paste if you know that that's the same thing that happens every year. So state and local notes, you might want to enter a state or local note. If it's a state question or maybe you want to explain something to us, maybe why your data was outside a certain range, but it's not a purple question or federal question, you can enter a state note and let us know. Or sometimes local notes are important or useful for library directors that maybe you might want to put in the survey itself. Hey, here's where I got these numbers. So that if something were to happen to you and somebody else looked at that, they would know where you pulled those numbers from. Or like if you forget, since you only do this once a year. Right. You can then look at your local notes and say, hey, this is where I got those. And that kind of is important, especially when we look at electronic materials. You know, where those reports were ran, where they came from. Maybe your ILS has a certain report that you run for certain data. You could enter that in a local note. So like I said, this is also in this show status bar. You can also then, like I said before, once you get done with your survey, you can click on that show status bar and it'll show you what edit checks you have. And you can then enter your notes for edit checks, show your unanswered questions, make sure that you fill those in. And if things are not applicable or they're zero, sometimes, especially for the federal questions, if it's something that doesn't really apply to you, make sure that you enter an NA or zero in those just so that you'll be able to submit your survey. Otherwise you won't be able to. Also, if there's things that require that you didn't need. You just left blank because it's not applicable. And while you submit the survey, unless you put an NA in there, it's not applicable. So here's what the screen looks like in the show status bar. So here's an example of an edit check that showed up for the FSCS public library definition. So when you notice on the right hand side, it explains to you why this is an edit, why they're asking for more information. It says your library is an FSCS library. You've entered yes or it shows up as yes, but you don't have any staff expenditures. So one of the criteria for an FSCS library is that you have staff expenditures. So you either would need to look at your staff expenditures and say, well, was that misreported? Or do we really have no staff expenditures this year? And if you did, then you would enter a federal note explaining that you didn't have any staff expenditures and why you would enter that in the federal note field down below. So then once you would enter a note, and so like here's an example of an edit check where that came up on operating revenue as $950, and I assume that's because it was lower than what they have received a year before. Because if you notice something, that edit check has now turned green because we've entered a note down at the bottom that says we received less money, less revenue from the city this year. And that then makes that edit check turn green and that means you're good to go. I would say one thing is that when you enter a note, try and make it somewhat specific as to the reason why your data is out of the range. If it's something that is outside the range that you verified, that is the actual number of programs that you did have, you can enter a note saying something like, I verified this number and this is truly the number of programs that we offered during the fiscal year. If you enter a big note, the system will ask us for, or I will call you, actually I will call you and say, hey can you provide more information about this? So try and enter as much of a specific note as you can so that'll avoid following it later on or times that following it later on. So again with unanswered questions when you go into status button, you'll notice up here at the top, there's a menu here for required unanswered questions and unrequired unanswered questions. So that would be like the required ones would be the ones that are in purple. And it's saying here, even though you had, last year you reported zero for capital revenue, this year you left it blank. And so in this case, if you didn't have any capital revenue, you just need to enter a zero here and answer it. And you can do that from this status bar here too. If you had more than one required unanswered question, you can enter all those here and then down at the bottom hit I think save or submit. I think it's submit the answers to the unanswered questions. So you can do that right there. You don't need to go back into the survey. So once you've resolved those edit checks and your unanswered questions, you can go ahead and click on the submit button if you're ready to submit. And I will say that once you've submitted, if you run into things that need to be changed later on, I can make those changes as a survey administrator. So if something comes up later on, it's not something that we can't undo. But once you hit submit, you can't go back in. Once you hit submit, your survey is locked. And what happens is I will get an email notification indicating that your survey has been submitted and that it's locked. And typically then I'll take a look at it and then follow up with an email if there's issues that we need to resolve. So once you submit it, yeah, you can't log back in and it becomes locked. And like I said, edit checks and unanswered questions must be resolved before you can submit the survey. So I won't even allow you to click the button if you're not. Well, so here's an example of if you hit submit and you had issues. So the first one says all required questions must be answered before a survey can be submitted. It's a spread sign. So and then it gives you a link to where you can look at those unanswered questions. To then enter zeros if there's something that was left out or something that wasn't entered correctly. If you have a flag question, like here it's green because we don't have any flag questions. But if you did have a flag question, it would notify you of that here. And then it would also notify you if you have edit checks that maybe you didn't enter a note. And for the federal questions, make sure that you enter the note in the federal field because I think that the edit check will come up if it's in the state or local. You didn't have to. You got to use the right one for depending on what you're answering. Yeah. So then you can resolve those again from this edit check status here. And like I said, once your survey is submitted, then I get an email and I'll go in and look over your survey, look over your notes and make sure everything looks good. If you do need to make changes later on, let me know. And say you found something they didn't include. We can make changes to your survey during the data collection, which runs until the middle of February. Typically, I will email you if I have questions. And like I said, you can log back in any time after you've submitted a survey in print. If you'd want to print it for your own records, if you want to copy locally, you can do that at any time. And so that's what I have for the public library survey. Are there any questions at this point? Or I will go on to the supplemental survey. If you have any questions, you can type them in. If any questions, type them into your questions section if you want to right now. And just, you know, you can type them in at any time when we're talking of the wait, whenever you think of something you want to ask, go ahead and type it. And we'll answer as you. Maybe this is a good time to pull up the browser and show how to get to the did list at main page. I find that the easiest way for me is to just type in public library survey in the search box or Bibliostat. It'll also show up in the, I think we have a link in the reminder section over here during the survey cycle. So you can click on that and it should take you to the, well, it's absolutely the blog post. But then within that you've got. Within that there's links to the training guide, lost password reset button and a direct link to the survey. Let's go back here. So in this case, if we wanted to just type in Bibliostat, that's going to take us to the, that main page, which I talked about earlier that has a direct link to the login, the blank survey. You want to print it in PDF and do it locally or fill it in with the word and then enter it online later. If you want to look at maybe changes that we made from year to year, we also have a version of that. And this year there's no, there were no changes to the, we made no change, we made, we didn't make any changes to the state questions. It was a change that now we have a new federally required question and that was for website visits, which we were asking at the state level. So it didn't affect us because we had been collecting that data already for the last two years. A link to the instructions. Frequently asked questions about Bibliostat, maybe known issues with Bibliostat. There's also a link to the federal definitions. So if you'd want to look at how, you know, those federal questions that we talked about and how they, how they define legal service area or how they define programs or how they define, how they define the new Wi-Fi or the new website visits definition, you can look at that there. Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi visits, stuff like that is all on the federal, those are all federal questions. You can look at those definitions here. Public Library Survey Guide, that's the PowerPoint from today for new directors in particular. And then here's that overdrive circulation guide that I was talking about that we will pre-fill that data if you're a Nebraska overdrive library. We pre-fill your holdings and your circulation. But if you'd want to look at that, how we, how, how Debra pulled those numbers, the guide is right there. So let's talk about the supplemental. No, go to the next one next on the current slide. Oh, it's all right. Okay. So once you've submitted your survey and everything looks good and you get a thank you email for me, we also have a NLC supplemental survey. So this is much easier than the public library, the whole public library survey. So the reason that we have a supplemental survey is we like to keep track of, make sure that our records here are up to date with your most current information. So like say your hours, your board members, trying to think of what else we include on there, contact information, I think we keep track of social media. We have a Facebook link. We want to make sure that we have the most up to date one. There's a series of questions on there that we ask that feeds into our website as well. So the information from the supplemental survey feeds into our website. So that the information that's publicly available is to make sure that it's up to date. So you can do the supplemental survey at any time throughout the year. Like say your staffing changed, or your Facebook link changed, or your board members changed. You can log in at any time throughout the year and update that information. But we like to have you update it at least once a year. And so that's why we send you a reminder after you submit your public library survey. That's kind of a good time to think about it. It's a good time to do it. You're doing survey type stuff anyways. Right. And it is required for your accreditation application too. So you want to make sure that you do both. We also have library maps. We want to make sure that those are up to date. And other directories that are out there, mostly most of their website. Yeah, down at the bottom. Library staff, board, friends, groups, hours, and online services. So if you have an OPEC, any of that changes, you can always log in. You can let us know, send us an email. We can update the information, but you can also do it yourself with the supplemental survey and it automatically updates our records. So once we get the data, once we get all the data from every library, so the kind of processes that I take all these surveys and submit them to IMLS in the spring, and they have a series of edit checks that they run through too, that maybe there might be follow-up questions that come up later, that maybe they looked at one of our notes and said, hey, we want more information about this. So you may get a contact for me when that process happens, like in the spring. Usually I'm cleaning up a lot of the data after the survey cycle ends in mid-February and getting it ready to submit to IMLS, but once it's submitted to IMLS, they may have a follow-up question. So you may get a contact for me. It doesn't happen very often because usually we like to be proactive with entering notes in the surveys for known issues that come up on those edit checks, but it's possible that they might ask a follow-up question and I would contact you and say, can you provide more information about this? So once our data is submitted to them, we publish it on our website. Historical data is also on our website, so if you'd want to look at data from prior years, you could, and this is a huge Excel file. That you could download and sort, like if you'd want to look at certain measures, you could sort, say, hey, I want to know how my internet speed compares to every other library in the state, so you can download that into an Excel file and look at that data or any other question that we ask on the survey. And like I said before, the completed data is then prefilled on your accreditation application, so it shows up automatically. We also use it to identify the peer library groups. I talked earlier, and as we also talked earlier, IMLS would then release that data in the spring. That might be helpful if, say, your library that, this may be in a metropolitan area where Nebraska has a lot of rural libraries and say you're in a location where you want to look at similar libraries, which are not in a rural area. Maybe you're in a suburban or metropolitan area and there's not a lot of libraries in Nebraska to compare yourself to. Right. You need to expand beyond our data. You can go to that data catalog and look at similar libraries in other states if you wanted to see how you compare. And that is what we've done for accreditation applications for the peer libraries that we compare you to. We do have, we know we have certain libraries in Nebraska that don't have anyone to be compared. And we've pulled in numbers from really neighboring states to us because they have, we try to assume, from our same region, they possibly do things the same way as our libraries do. So it's, they're more similar to our libraries as far as they run things, but we need to find, bring them in because we don't have any libraries of your same size to do the peer comparisons. And typically it's Iowa libraries, because IMLS... Very similar to Nebraska. Yeah, Nebraska. So you might notice that some of your peers in the accreditation application are from Iowa. And that's the reason why those, those appear is because there's not enough Nebraska peers to compare you to. One thing to keep in mind, if you do go to that IMLS data catalog, that all that data is a year old. So the data, if you want current data, always get it from our website. If you want to look at, look at data that IMLS publishes from other states, that's available, but it's a year old. It's a year old. So that's one thing to keep in mind. If you need help when you're doing your survey, you can always contact me. I'm always here to help you. You can call me, send me an email. I will be gone next week at the data coordinator conference weather permitting. If you've lost your password, you can always contact the reference stats like I said, you've lost password. Use that online feature we have. You can also contact Bibliostat if you run into like a error code or something like that. I want to know about that. So let me know. But you can also contact them. There's also a help button in Bibliostat where you can contact them. And also on our website, like those guides, you know, might be helpful, you know, if you want to look at those definitions. Like I said, the little question mark connects to the question. If you want to know what to count where, typically, we get a lot of questions about electronic stuff. Or do I put this? Which category does it actually fall in? And I will say that the general rule, I mean, this is probably an oversimplification, but the general rule is for ebooks and audio books, if it is not permanently retained by the patron, if it's quote unquote returned, you report that in the ebook audio book section. If it is permanently retained, we count that as a database or electronic collection. So that's kind of the general rule. And that's, or just let me know. Just call and say, hey, we have this vendor, this service, this is what it is, where do I report it? Typically, we get a lot of questions for electronic stuff like that. Do I report it as a database or an electronic collection? We call it a database. I think the IMLS definition says it's an electronic collection. They got really good data. Electronic collection, they got rid of the database definition a few years ago. So it's defined with both terms. But you're going to probably need some explanation of what, yeah. Right. So if anybody has any questions right now, let us know. You can type it in. Did you want to do some demo of the reactor logging in? Yeah, we could. Maybe hit escape. You'll be able to then click on your browser at the bottom there to bring it back up. Yeah. So if I log into the survey, you've got them. So here, this is the log in. You would enter, I'm just going to enter the test module and see if I can get into it. So this is kind of like when you log in, this is what it's going to look like. It's going to show you this, this year survey. You can look at the status. You could print. If it was already submitted and locked, you wouldn't have that continue button. You wouldn't be able to go into it. You can also look at the prior years. Like here, there's a print icon. If you don't want to look at that and print it, you could. 2017, going back to 2001, it looks like. That was probably when we started using the boost that I'm guessing. We have reports from prior to there. Like if you'd want to look at your survey from a year before that, just contact me and I can track that down for you. Actually, we got a request from a library. I wanted to look at our annual report from early 1900s and we had them. Wow. There was only like one page of data that was reported, but they're holdings and circulations that were in there. So we have those on paper. You never know. Sometimes I have a quick question before you go on to do this about what you're talking about, the e-materials. So I want to know if you can repeat the difference between e-material retained versus returned. Okay, so like if you had an e-book that a patron checked out and there was a lending period, so it was like 21 days and it would disappear from their device or technically they would or they could go, you know, if they were finished with it before that time period, they can go and return it to the system so that somebody else could check it out. Like a great example, this would be overdrive. That's counted in section four on the survey in the library holdings. So you would count your overdrive holdings and then you would count in section five for library services. You would count it as an e-book circulation. Sure. If it was like, I think Zinio would be an example of say a magazine, an electronic magazine that's maybe permanently retained. I think Zinio is permanently retained. So if that was permanently retained by the patron, they don't return it. They don't have to return it. Yeah. They just keep it. Then that gets reported as a Zinio would get reported as a database and then the number of uses of Zinio would get reported on the survey. And I can I can show you where that looks on the survey because that's kind of a little tricky or it can be a little tricky because it's part of a repeating group which we should probably go over to. So here under library collections it's going to ask about paper books here's where you would report the e-books. So this is a part of the overdrive libraries. This would be prefilled if you're an overdrive library. If you an Nebraska overdrive library is going to be prefilled based on your fiscal year. If you had another shared collection if you were part of another consortium you'd report those holdings there. 4.7 is where you would report overdrive advantage titles. This is where you would report overdrive advantage titles or titles that were made available locally through your library or overdrive advantage plus titles that are made available that you've purchased locally and then turned back over to the consortium or shared with the rest of the overdrive libraries group. So you report the holdings here and then same thing here for audiobooks and then the circulations for those get reported on your library services. And for the circulation your overdrive circulations are going to be prefilled. See here in notes prefilled for overdrive circulations only. So if you have a different vendor you're going to want to add that. You take what's in there and then add. And then add the rest of it. Yeah and the circulations are for adult downloadable materials that includes overdrive e-books and audiobooks. And then you do separate out children. And then children's down here for this. Okay so that's where those children's would be reported. Now I always tell people on the survey if you can't determine whether it was an adult item or a children's item. Sometimes you know they may be catalogued different ways. I would just report render adult if you can't make that determination as to whether it's an adult or children's. So for the data for the material that's here's electronic collections of who we call databases. It gives you a kind of a longish definition here of what to count. I said do not have a circulation period. Do not have a circulation period and are permanently retained. That's kind of a general guideline that we use. So like in this case on this test survey we've entered that they had three local electronic collections databases. So just to clarify you don't report Nebraska access. Databases that are provided by us are reported in a different spot on the survey. This is the only stuff that you purchase locally. So in this case if you had three you would put a three or whatever number that you have and then you would enter in 5.15 in the example that I gave earlier if it was Zinio. You would put Zinio in 5.15 and then the number of uses in 5.16. And then since you reported three you would click on this add group icon or add group link and it's going to add another group saying what's your second collection that you have here? And you would enter the second one. Because you told that. Yeah because you had three. You have more than one. And you would enter the name of the second one and the number of uses and then add group again for the third group. If you entered it in error you just click on remove group. And then that would remove this group here. And I think there's built into this an edit check. I think we've built an edit check into it so that if you've entered four repeating groups and three up here it'll at the end it'll say hey wait a minute you got one extra one here did you want to change that to a four? Or omit one. So that's kind of the basic navigation. There is at the end for the certification. Let's see go back to library services. Okay. Will it not go to it's entry thing? So like I said this little question mark could be your friend. Absolutely yes. You know well what do I count for registered borrowers? This kind of gives you some guidance. Now it's a library. You know do I count everybody in the community? Or do I count people with just library cards? Let's clarify that it says it's a library user who has applied for and received an identification number or card from the public library. You know and it also tells you that your files should have been purged for them last three years. Always going to update get rid of yeah make sure everything's up to date. So that that that question mark is always helpful. Someone does have a question. Lola has a question here and she said she has a microphone so. Lola I've unmuted you. She'd be able to. Okay can you hear me? Yes. Okay hi guys. Hey this is great but I was wondering if at some point Sam you could go over and have either a workshop or a webinar on what actually goes into the different questions through there. Because I do compare the libraries in my area and stuff so I can see the numbers and stuff and I can when I go over them I see there's some great differences in what's reported one library versus another. And so to me we're not comparing the same things all the time. So I was just wondering you don't have to at some point that could happen. Everybody really doing it correctly. Are we using the same you know just for instance you know other funding sources you know. I can see a lot of them will come up with fines fees and stuff and then all of a sudden you see a couple libraries that don't have that or they you know or are they just not reporting in or how do they justify what they're doing. I guess is my some of my questions I see. Right and we had it we had that come up. I just did a workshop where I went through an entire survey at the castle meeting for the southeast library systems and then there's another one scheduled through Janice Harder's with the Central Plains Library System scheduled for December 18th in Holdridge. But yeah if you contact your system systems director we can definitely set up training sessions where I would come out and we would actually go through an entire survey and say here's what your report where and answer questions basically on each section of the survey and I'll give you an example of something that came up at the castle meeting was we were talking about interlibrary loan and somebody mentioned the book club kits that are checked out from the library commission and they said well can we count that as an interlibrary loan I said yes you can. So if you check out a book club kit that has 20 books in it that's an interlibrary loan that you've received from the commission. And that would be considered 20 books then? Yeah if you checked out 20 books that were in the kit that would be 20 interlibrary loans. So yeah an answer to your original question yeah you know we can definitely come out I'd definitely be willing to come out we have ones like I said that I'm not sure what system you're in I think it's southeast. The castle meeting but you know if you want to work through Scott yeah we should talk to Scott and see about set up another one of those someplace else I'd definitely be willing to do that. I can reach out to all the systems directors too and and just as a follow-up because I said they did the castle one was this group that came together and then Denise has central planes doing one for central but yeah we'll reach out to the other systems both southeast three rivers and even western and see if they want something done either in person or a remote thing like this as well. Yeah we could do that too where we'd go through an entire survey. This doesn't have to just be in one hour a quickie thing like this we can do full on here is we're going to demo everything everyone log in and we'll see how it all goes yeah. And that is helpful because like you said you know on your accreditation application if you're if you're counting something or not counting something and your peer libraries are counting it differently that definitely that's going to skew the numbers it's not going to be correct yeah I want you guys to be able to be compared correctly on to each other with all the same like you said well putting in using the same information as your criteria but what what you put into whatever box so that when you are compared you're all thinking about and using the same. Not to mention everybody's on the same page with reporting things correctly too and there is a little bit of gray area sometimes. Yeah so Sam will reach out to the other systems we'll get something set up before obviously this one's due in February. Sure yeah yeah we have some time. Thanks. Thank you. All right does anybody else have any questions you have about anything any questions any comments about the survey you want to ask if Sam Molly's here we're a little after 11 o'clock but that's okay we go as long as is needed to get everything all of our information out to you and answer any questions you may have now. So type into your question section there. And while we're waiting I would also say that if you run across things as you're going through your survey and say hey you know this question you know why do you ask this quite why do you ask this question is this something that's really necessary you know if it's not a purple one the purple ones we have to ask because those are primary questions. But if it's a state question you know like that was one thing that was great for me at the castle meeting was you know there may be things that are important for us to ask on a state level as we look at certain trends but maybe not important to you on a local level but there may be other things that might have run their course and might not be as important to us on a state level and so we might want to look at maybe not collecting that data anymore and we want to make the survey as simple as possible and maybe you know as painless as we can. Everything is up for discussion. Yeah so you know let me know or provide feedback and also feedback on the new version of Bibliostat too. Right so this is this year it's the first time we're doing this one. And I think there's four of us states that have jumped in and and did the whole thing did the whole switch over. So if you run into any issues we want to make sure that we get those reported back to them. We have a good rep that's responsive to things that we suggest too so if there's I've already suggested some things that I would like to see that show status bar at the top left I'd like to see that more prominent. Yeah that's why I when you were mentioning I'm like I don't see it that's why I was like I wanted to point it out because it is so kind of hidden. Yeah and so that was one of my suggestions for them is to move that over and make it big next to the print icon. And so I'm sure that we'll discuss that next week at our at our annual meeting but so there's some things that I've suggested to them but if you run across anything pass that on to me I'll make sure that I give it to them. Great all right well it doesn't look like anybody typed in any desperate questions they need to answer it right now that's okay you guys know where to find where to find Sam reaching out to him here at the commission. All right so I think we'll wrap up today's show do you need to log out of this so yeah let's do that cool all right yeah leave that open all right so I think we'll wrap it up for today thank you so much for being here talking about this so I'm glad to get this information out it looks like we do need a little bit you know especially with the new interface a bit more hands-on training and we'll you know I put you on the spot there saying we'll reach out to the system so we will yeah contacts Scott and Eric and Jan the other three and see if we can get something set up for their area as well it is over the winter time though so that is you know as you mentioned just your travels to next week whether permitting doing these things so possibly something a person possibly something that becomes a remote thing like this just because that kind of thing we'll figure it out we have options all right so that will wrap it up for today's show I'm going to go to our Encompass Live website which here from our library commission page you can also search for Encompass Live if you want to but also if you just use your search engine of choice so far the Encompass Live is the only thing called that on the internet and hopefully no one else will ever call it that anything that because we're the one and you can get to us as well can we see one? can we see somebody? yeah I need a trademark or whatever I need to do for that yeah uh so this is where we have our upcoming sessions but I wanted to show you this is where our archives are here underneath underneath all our upcoming shows and this is all of our archives the most recent ones at the top so today's show will appear up there probably by the end of the day today I should have everything processed and as long as YouTube cooperates and everything and have it up there everybody who attended today and who registered will get an email from me letting you know when it's available and you will have this is somewhere last week so it'll be the same thing I have a link to the recording on our YouTube and a link to the PowerPoint presentation that will post up to our slide share account will be there for you um while I'm here I'll show you you can search all of our archives we have a search feature here now we're gonna search all sessions or just the most recent 12 months if you want something more up to date and that is because this is 2018 and I'm almost wrapping it up because it's the end of the year is the 10th year of Encompass Live yeah I know it's crazy so if and these archives here if you go all the way to the bottom close your eyes and scroll all the way down we have all of our archives going back to the very beginning 2009 so you will find things in here that are old possibly out of date definitely out of date links might not work services might not exist anymore you never know but everything has a date on them so you know exactly when it was broadcast live so you can tell oh this is actually from back in 2012 so they might be this might be why now whatever it is doesn't exist anymore but you can limit your record search to just the most recent year if you want to up there as well so that will be work for our archives so we also do have a Facebook page for Encompass Live so if you're being on Facebook give us a like over there we post when our new shows are coming up here's your reminder to log in right now to today's whoops to today's show when our recordings are available we post up here no one will log in so if you like use Facebook you'll get notices from us over there so I hope you join us for next week when our topic is the best new teen books of 2018 this is Sally Snyder who is our coordinator of children's and young adult library services here at the commission this is her annual list she does a teen one and a children's one and they did the children's one earlier yeah and this is the teen one her best new teen books of 2018 along with Jill Annas who is from our Alcorn Grandview Middle School she joins us for that one so let me talk about all the books great new books that came out in 2018 for your teens and you can use that in conjunction with the best of children's books of 2018 was done two weeks ago so you can watch that recording to see the their um Sally did that one with other people because children's teen Dana Fontaine from Fremont High School and Karlo Endel and who's from works with the Nebraska Gold and Silver Awards program so those are your two best new children's and teen book sessions that Sally does every year for you so hopefully you'll join us for next week's show or any of our other ones we have coming up I do have um other ones coming we're getting our 2019 sessions already booked and just so you know the last one in December December 26th will be an update to from our Talking Book and Braille service here at the Nebraska Library Commission I'm just waiting for a description an official description from Scott Schultz our director there so just if you're looking for something about Talking Book and Braille they've got some new things they're doing there that will be our December 26th session so please do sign up for that other than that thank you very much for attending thank you being here Sam and we'll see you on next time on Encompass Live bye