 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is Library Commission's weekly online event or webinar, as some people call it, where we cover any commission activities or anything that may be of interest to Nebraska librarians. We have guest speakers that come in sometimes and we have our own staff as we have this morning do presentations and we do a mixture of anything we can come up with, interviews, regular presentations. Many training sessions, anything that piques our interest or we think might yours. We do these sessions every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time and they are recorded so you can watch any of our previous sessions that have been done. We're going on two years now worth of Encompass Live, so there's a lot of things out there. We've got a lot of one-hour sessions to go to watch if you want to. And this morning we have as I said some of our staff here Laura Johnson and Mary DeRion are going to talk about the scholarship and internship grants that we are doing or something about that. Sure, you bet. So I'm going to hand over to you guys. Do you want the mouse over there? Maybe you can use it if not the keyboard. Hi, this is Mary Jo. We were going to talk today about a program that we're very excited about, which is these scholarship grants that we're going to be able to give people next year. First, we thought we might start with talking a little bit about why we want to do this. Sometimes you have to hit the space bar. I don't know why, and that didn't work. The actual title of this program is Cultivating Rural Librarians Technology Skills, the IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Grant. We may have to find something cuter for that. It seems an acronym. It does. Well, because we call the website Now Hiring at Your Library, I usually just call the project Now Hiring, but it's important to credit and to thank the Institute of Museum and Library Services because it's the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. It is. One of the reasons we wanted to do this was that previous scholarships that we've had have been very popular, and we've been able to help a number of people in the Nebraska Library community with their further education. Another factor was that the LIS program at the Nebraska Community Colleges has been consolidated at Central Community College. It is an online program, so anyone in the state can take advantage of it easily, but we really wanted to support that program. We think that's a really important program for Nebraska libraries. And then the third thing was the 21st Century Skills, which is, well, it's a publication. It's a research project that was done by IMLS, but we're hearing about 21st Century Skills everywhere, and we'll talk about those a little later. But all those things came together and we thought, you know, we really need to see if we can't help some people with some scholarship money. So we, and the deadline for us, our proposal to IMLS, was due December 2009. So for one thing, this tells you what a long timeline this has. It takes a long time to get these together. But we put it together, we put it, we sent our proposal off, and we requested $721,032.94. Exactly. Which, okay. That's exactly what it'll cost to do this over the three-year period. Maybe that sounds a little obsessive-compulsive, that we wouldn't have even rounded it off, but we have to put in a very detailed budget, and this is what we asked. So then in November of 2010, yeah, we got it! We got the money! We were dancing in the aisles! It was pretty exciting around here. It was very exciting, but look, that was 11 months between when we turned it in and when we got the money. So, you know, it takes a while. Okay, what is this money going to cover? Well, it's going to cover scholarships, specifically, which is payments to schools to cover people's tuition fees, and what are we calling it? We're calling it class-related materials. Like books and... Yeah, well, we can no longer be old-fashioned and just say books. So, it will cover a certificate. There is a professional certificate offered by the community college, and we will cover that. We will cover an associate's degree, and this is not only the library science courses, but the other courses that contribute to the degree. A bachelor's degree in library science, a master's degree in library science, or the master's degree in educational media, or essentially, librarianship for the teaching profession. So, those are the scholarships. Then this program also includes stipends, and we'll talk about those in a minute. And we have internships. We've had some internships in the past. They've been enormously popular. We think they're such a great idea. They're a real win-win for the libraries and the interns. And then there's a few special programs here because we really wanted to emphasize the 21st century skills. So, first, the scholarships. And how do they work? Well, Mayor Joe, you want to talk about Jane Smith? Sure. I think that sometimes it's easier to figure out something like a scholarship program if we just have an illustration of a person. So, how about Jane? She's the new director of her community library. And she got a scholarship from the Nebraska Library Commission to work on her certificate at the Central Community College. And that certificate is library and information services program, or they call it the LIS Certificate. Now, she might be studying in any community in Nebraska, because the classes are online. And she's working through Central Community College, but she might even have to be taking some classes at another community college that will contribute towards this. So, I mean, it's a great opportunity. It's very flexible. And we will provide her with a scholarship for the costs of all the courses that she's taking for her certificate. So, once she gets the certificate, she may decide, well, that wasn't all that hard. And it was pretty much fun, actually. I enjoyed it. So, she might want to go on and get a bachelor's degree, which we would very much encourage. We would be willing to provide her another scholarship for her to continue on. And since she already had a couple of years of college, and now she has this certificate, she might apply to Shadrin State College to study for her bachelor's degree. And we would give her another scholarship for the courses that she needs to take to complete her bachelor's degree. You can kind of see what we're trying to do here is we're trying to meet people wherever they are on the career ladder and help them with more educational resources and services to move up the career ladder, move up the educational ladder. So, wherever you are or wherever someone you know is, that's very important. It might not be you that would be applying for the scholarships, but you may know someone who you think would make a fantastic library worker. We want to help that person further that kind of career goal. That's our goal. So, what do you think about this one? Here's another scholarship recipient example. Susan had a bachelor's degree already, but because of the size of her community, she needed an MLS to be the librarian if they wanted to have an accredited librarian. In some communities, depending on how big the population is, you have to have the masters in library science. I think it's over 5,000. So, Susan decided that she would apply. She was interested in this and she applied to the University of Missouri's program, which, again, is an online program. So, you can take it comfortably, as we like to say, in your pajamas. I think they do have some courses at OHA, too, that, yes, you go in for a weekend intensive in OMA. I don't know. You can probably wear your pajamas to those courses. I don't think they do. Susan got a scholarship and if she moves on and uses her scholarship money up, she can apply for a second scholarship as well, because we really want to support her, so that was for an MLS. And that's kind of how they work. Generally, the idea is to, as Mary Joe said, meet you where you are and try to help you move along. Each student can apply for up to two scholarships at a particular degree level, which means that if you moved through the associate's degree, the bachelor's degree, and then an MLS, you could apply for quite a few scholarships. The amounts vary because, well, tuition varies, really, is the deal. Because the period of our grant is three years, we need to have the funds expended in three years. We will have more details up very soon on our website at www.nlc.state.ne.us slash now hiring slash scholarships.asp. And there's a screenshot. You can see right where we're going to put those scholarship details. It's going to be right in the up front and center in the scholarship section of the now hiring website. So be very easy to find for you. It's the same place the scholarship details were for the previous scholarships. For those of you who either helped someone get a scholarship before or got a scholarship yourself or you have someone who got one. One of the things I wanted to mention is that both of our scenarios involved female scholarship recipients, but I want to be sure and point out that we have had many male scholarship recipients and we want to have more. So please do when you're thinking about people that you might want to encourage to apply for these scholarships. Think about men and women. Think about people who are working in libraries and people who are not necessarily working in libraries. We're looking for both, for all those kinds of people. Yes. Age is also not a factor. We would like young people who are starting out in the profession and we would like to help people who are perhaps a little further along and moving on. I want to stay in this profession. Here's the dates at this point. In year one the application deadline will be March 1st and then we'll notify people April 1st. So this award probably is going to take care of tuition and fees for summer or fall semesters. Right. If you're not planning to start school until next fall, you have to start now. You want to start now applying for these scholarships. And same thing if you're going to be going to summer school, start now. Yeah. So this little chart will be on the website. We don't need to... Yeah, you don't have to memorize it. No, not at all. And just to remind you, as always, the Encompass Live slides will be available along with the recorded session. So you can get access to these slides at the same spot you go to to read to watch the recorded session and Encompass Live. And our years are our grant years, not quite calendar years, but notice that basically we have three times a year when you can apply for a scholarship. It's not that the application will open and there will be a deadline three times a year. And now, you know, before we move on to stipends, okay, because this is another topic, completely different topic. Yes. Let me just ask if there are any questions that anybody has about scholarships specifically, now would be a great time to either type in the chat box your question. The chat box is on the right side, lower right side of your screen, correct? As they just type right in there and you can type your question in or if you'd prefer to speak through a microphone and just talk to us, we can have a dialogue. All you have to do is type a note to Krista that says, please turn on my microphone because she's our engineer. She's got everybody turned off by us. So we're going to give you a minute. We have a question. Hi, Jan. Hi, Jan. Can you apply for each session more than one scholarship? No. If I'm understanding your question, the way it works is if you're going to go to school in the summer or you've been accepted for the fall, you're applying for a scholarship for that semester and you will use as much of your scholarship money during that semester as it works for you to use basically with the number of classes you're taking and your expenses, then whatever's left over can be applied to the next semester. You don't need to reapply. You've got money left over that hasn't been sent to the school. It's ready for you for your next semester. Does that make sense? Did I describe that right? Yes. That's kind of how it works. You get approved, then the school tells us what your costs are and we pay the school. That's kind of how it works. Yes. To be eligible to get the scholarship, you have to have been accepted at the school, so you have to be enrolled in a program and we need to know that you are planning, you have a goal in mind and you are planning to work toward an educational goal and that you plan to work in a Nebraska library. You plan to seek work or continue working in a Nebraska library when you're finished and that you're a Nebraska citizen. You're actually living in Nebraska. Yes, these are scholarships for Nebraskans, which is kind of important to remember. Do we have any other questions? Yes, Diana Parmley. Hi Diana. Hi Diana, how you doing? For those who are applying the LAS certificate or the AA program, how much in funds will be available? I guess it means like what is there a max? It does vary, but there is a max for the what we're calling pre-professional scholarships. These are scholarships that are not master's level scholarship, so it would be certificate, associate, and bachelor's level. The maximum is $3,500 for any one scholarship, but again that might go over more than one quarter or semester depending on how many classes you're taking. I mean if you're just taking the max and barreling through, you could go through this scholarship money pretty fast. If you're only taking a couple of classes because you're working, it's going to take a little bit longer. We want to encourage people to go as fast as they can reasonably go, so we're giving them the option of spending the money as fast as they can. And I assume Jeff must know about an application form. I assume they'll be on the website. We'll be on the website. Yeah, we're working on those and they will be up there. We are actually getting our policies approved through our governing board and getting our applications up on the web as soon as the policies are all approved. And that really is our governing board. We'll meet very early in January and once they approve this stuff, then we can make it public, but until they do, we can't really. Yeah, we're looking at first part of January for this to be up there. And if you are not accepted and enrolled in a program, now is the time to work on that because you do want to have that in place when you do your application. So you can say, I've done all my advanced work to get enrolled in this program. Nicole Lawless from Madison. Hi, Nicole. If you're already enrolled, can we apply in March for the current semester or only one after? I guess it depends on when you need to pay your. This is not retroactive. Yeah, your tuition would have had to been paid for the current semester. So it would be the next quarter, whatever program after April. Yeah, yeah. Probably be too late for what you're already. Yeah. Hope that works for you, Nicole. Jan's here at Madison. Does it matter which school you apply at? It does not, but they have to be accredited. As long as it's an accredited school and the schools in Nebraska are Central Community College with their LIS program, Shadron State has a bachelor's program. UNK and UNO have a master's program for teachers and UNO has the program in conjunction with the University of Missouri. It's actually a degree from the University of Missouri for the MLS program. I think I've got those right. And does UNK have a bachelor's program as well or do they just have a master's program? I wish Sherry Crow was on this call with us. She could answer that question. But she would be the person to contact if you're interested in whether or not they have a bachelor's program at UNK and we will find out the answer to that question and get it right. For sure. Because so many of these programs are online programs, we have had people from past scholarships who took courses from, oh, let me see, we had University of Alabama. Texas. We had Texas. We had University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. So that is possible as long as the people are residents of Nebraska and planning to work in Nebraska. And planning to work in Nebraska. Diana from Central Community College says that UNO also has a bachelor's program and UNK only has the master's program. Okay, UNO has the bachelor's program. Thanks Diana. Yeah. And Nicole also wants to know, are there, what are the amounts for master's level grants? Or is it the same? No, it's actually less for master's level because the professional scholarships with the maximum is $2,500. At the moment. Okay. Now we can move on to something completely different. Okay. Can you guys be asking your questions as we go through this no problem? I will just ask how they can be fun. Absolutely. And if you think of something that has to do with scholarships and we're talking about something else, don't worry. Go ahead and ask the question about scholarships. We can, we can be flexible. Sure. Okay. Actually, the next door. Hi, Dave. I think he just wants to know any doctoral program restrictions or anything about it. There are doctoral programs we're not offering scholarships for them. Not, not this round. No. Okay. Can't be, can't hear doctor this way. No, it wasn't a part of the prior, the IMLS funding grant application. So we didn't have to buy one. Okay. So we were now, any more questions? No. Okay. Let's move on to stipends. Dave just says thank you. I tried. Yeah. We thought stipends were important because education is terribly important, but tuition and fees aren't the whole story. And there are other things that can really enhance the experience and help people learn a great deal about their profession. So we put this in stipends. Essentially, stipends are bits of, bits of money that we would reimburse expenses for certain things. And we think they will enhance student success. We think they'll enhance professional development and that they will help with networking, which is so critical in the 21st century. It always was critical, really. But we really have to emphasize this now. So we, you can get a stipend for a laptop computer. So many classes are online now that really this is class related materials. And we felt that if people did not have a good machine, it really would hold the mech. So we want to give you a stipend for a laptop computer. We thought attendance at a regional or national conference was really a great thing. So we will give you a stipend for that. And we would give you a stipend to pay for membership in a professional organization so that you can start developing peer relationships. So you can see, yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on. This is great. This, I just, we put a few of the conferences in that people might want to consider. The Public Library Association Conference held in even numbered years on the next one, 2012, Philadelphia. The ARSL, the Association for Rural and Small Libraries. The last conference was in Denver, we're working hard right now to see if we can get it for Council Bluffs. Wouldn't that be great? Yeah, that would be great. And then of course, the American Library Association Conference will be in New Orleans in 2011. So you are not confined just to these conferences, but these are some that people might want to think about. These, if you haven't been to one of these, they are amazing experiences. So we thought, this is something that would really help people and people could get a lot out of it. We see these scholarships as being a great opportunity for people to do formal education, but we want to make it value-added so that they can have other kinds of educational experiences. And so that leads into this peer networking as one of the things. We really want to support peer networking to that end. Well, we think it strengthens professional relationships greatly. This is a great way to have a coach and to be a coach. In encourages diversity, the world we live in is a very complex place, and we need to encourage diversity. And it helps us recruit potential members to the profession. There has been some concerning library science that the profession was, well, to put it politely, aging. Elderly, almost. And we do want to encourage young people to join. What we think has been a wonderful profession. So this is our Facebook page, The Nebraska Librarians Learning Together. We hope that everyone will start following this on Facebook and make this a good place to network. I just want to point out that Catherine Brockmeyer of the Nebraska Library Commission staff has been working on this Facebook page, and I think it's going to be a tremendous resource. She's very anxious to get people started using this Facebook page. You don't have to be a scholarship recipient to use this. The idea is that it's for all Nebraska librarians to share all kinds of ideas and resources with each other. I know that she's hoping to get some of those interns that we previously funded to get active on this Facebook page and learn more about what librarians are doing. And maybe those interns will want to apply for scholarships then after having had a great experience as an intern in a library. So I really want to encourage all of you that are on this call to start using this Facebook page in any way that works for you. And the whole idea is that we learn together, and by learning together, we encourage people to join our profession. So I hope it will be useful to you. I know Catherine has put a lot of thought into this, and she's really helpful that people will find it useful too. And I think one of the cool things she's doing, if you notice the photograph, she's taking pictures or getting pictures of Nebraska librarians, and this Facebook page photo is going to change all the time. It's going to be different Nebraska librarians all the time. So I guess we'll start now asking you to submit your photographs so we can share the face of Nebraska librarians learning together. Yes, if you want to be a face, just let us know. Please do. Libraries, well, we're currently going through an economic tough patch right now. And libraries are not an exception in terms of feeling the pinch sometimes. And one of the great things we can do to make our services stronger and to help parlay our strengths is to share and is to work together. And so we really think this is a really vital thing, a real 21st century skill that we no longer can afford not to do. And we're going to actually require that our scholarship recipients post to this page and share. They're going to share their experiences as students, what their educational experience is like. We're going to also ask them to share how they're using their stipend funds and what their stipend funded activities have been like. So this is going to, I hope be a place where the scholarship recipients find it useful, but then other librarians also find it a way to network and mentor each other. So that was stipends. And now here's another value added activity. We are going to have a 21st century tech skills camp. I love it that you found this illustration of the tech skills camp because it's sort of camp like, but it's very tech like. I thought we had a campfire burning on that. I had to create that. Oh my goodness. Good work. Very good, very good. But for the tech skills camp, the idea is to enhance your skills and in this case, particularly your technical skills. Try out new services, new software, new hardware and get answers to your questions. So this is a place to learn, to experiment, to have fun. So, you know, we hope it's going to be a good thing. I promise you it will be air conditioned. Going back to the camp. Not actually about intense somewhere. No, no, no, no. It will be camp like only in the sense that we'll be relaxed and comfortable and enjoying ourselves. But I wanted to mention to that the camp will be designed specifically to meet the needs of the scholarship participants. So we'll be getting some feedback from them as to what they feel their needs are and what will make it work for them. But we will also open it up to other librarians across the state. The scholarship participants will have their expenses paid. Other librarians will be free to join us. It won't be expensive, but we won't be paying their mileage. Yeah. We think this is one way to help people. It's so hard. Things come along every day. Yeah. I have this backlog of things to look at, things to try. Things to learn. Things to learn. I know. I'm looking forward to this myself. And there are people here on our staff that we're going to ask to help us with this. People who are tremendous coaches, who if you've got your laptop there and you're trying to learn how to do something different on your blog, we've got great staff here that'll help coach in that regard. Yes. So I'm looking forward to it. I need a day off to figure out how to do some things myself. Oh, yeah. I have a question here from Naomi Solomon about segments. Okay. Mind to know if they're offered for professional research, such as research that would hopefully lead to scholarly publication. Oh, like if they need to pay for some research materials? I guess, yeah. Or if you need to go travel somewhere. Make a case. I would say, you know, make a case for what it is you need. We'll try and figure it out. Make a case. It was not in our original proposal to IMLS. So we really have to take a look at that. But, you know, the way these stipends are going to work is that people will have to apply for them separately and make a separate case for what they need. So like not everybody's going to hand it out a laptop, for example. You're going to have to do an application for a laptop and explain why you need it. I mean, most people probably will need a new laptop unless they just bought it. And we're assuming that what will happen is that we'll come up with a set of specifications and an average cost of a laptop with those specifications and say, here, you can have up to this amount for a laptop. And here are maybe some of the machines that we can tell you would work out. We think would work out for you. The professional associations, it would just be the membership. We would say, yes, you know, we'll reimburse you for your membership. Going to the conferences. Because we're hoping that when groups of people want to go to the conferences that we can send someone along who has navigated these things before. Like a mentor who can help them out. But, you know, we maybe get this to be a really good experience for people. Naomi says, thanks for answering your question. Thank you. And we have another question about the camp. Diana probably wants to know if the LIS faculty could attend. Absolutely. You bet. Would any of their expenses be covered? Actually, we do have money in our grant for the LIS faculty for whatever you need to do curriculum development and whatever your plan is. When we talk to Eric about partnering with us on this, we had just a certain amount of money put in. So you and Eric can put together your budget for whatever you guys want your faculty to do, whatever you need money for for your faculty to do, whether it be travel or curriculum development. We have that in the grant. We put that in the grant deliberately. So you would have that. So yes, absolutely. We do also have a question from, she says, yeah. Our own commission staff here who are watching as well, wanting to have an automatic membership in NLA or NEMA in addition to other memberships. Hi, guys. Hi, commission staff. Hi. If these people are scholarship recipients, they'll make a case for whatever membership they would like to be included in, whatever membership they'd like to be reimbursed for. So it's not automatic. Nothing in psychics is automatic. Everything is separately applied for and approved. I have a pretty strong feeling, prejudice even, perhaps, against doing that sort of thing automatically for people. I really think people need to make their own decisions about what's right for them. What they want to get so much information, who they want information from. Are they really in the PLA or not? Do they even work at a public library? Then it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. I would encourage people to try these experiences. Oh, sure. We don't, we don't want everyone to do it. We just want to force people. So now we would, and they're also saying that the camp also covers all 21st century skills, not just tech. Right. We'll go through that. Yeah. We'll go through some of those. That's a good point. Yes, it's not just technology. We'll have some experiences for all the 21st century skills. The idea of the camp is definitely to explore some tech stuff, partly because we feel that's a difficult thing sometimes for people to explore on their own. Take the time. Yeah. Well, the time, having the equipment, knowing, knowing what to explore. And having a coach like our wonderful staff here at the commission who can help. So, you know, we just wanted to carve out some time for people to... Sure. Yeah. That would be fun. Okay. Anything else? So we'll go on. Oh, okay. Nope. Sorry. It just popped up. Yeah, they're typing. Yeah, good. Jen wants to know, do we have any of when the camp will be or is that... Probably spring 2012. Okay. Fitting things into the library schedule. So many other things we already have. Yeah. I think it's going to have to probably be maybe late spring, of course, before summer reading starts. And after, hopefully after the semester's over, so that the students aren't just completely bogged down in classwork. So we'll be asking the students who get the scholarships, what's the best time for you? Does this work? And can you plan for this? And hopefully that's where it'll be. But we don't know. We have not confirmed. But at this point, we're talking about over a year from now. So, okay. Want to go on to internships? Sure. I think this is close to Mary Jo's heart. I love these internships. And I love these interns. And we do want you to know that interns do lots of things besides shelving books. But this was just a very library-related little graphic. The internships involve grants to libraries rather than to individuals. The idea is to expose the interns to library work, encourage the interns to consider library careers. Some feedback we've had from intern past interns have said, wow, they had no idea. This is how libraries worked. And it was kind of cool. And then for the library, there is funding for new or extra staffers to do projects or help with things. So it's kind of a win-win situation. It sure is. I just want to make it clear that these internship grants go to public libraries and they're to accredited public libraries here in Nebraska. I also wanted to point out that this is a partnership effort that we've been working on for many years. But we work with the Nebraska Library Association on this partnership. They help us review the grants and make decisions about who gets funded. They also help us by working as the funding recipient for an anonymous private foundation grant, which helps to boost the number of internships we can give each year. So it's been a wonderful relationship with the Nebraska Library Association and our staff working together to make sure that there's as many of these interns in public libraries across Nebraska as possible. And these kids are fabulous. I mean, so many of them have done such great things. They've done digitization projects. They've set up teen centers. They've worked on the library's website and the library's Facebook page besides, of course, helping out as shelving books and working circulation. So I mean, it's a tremendous opportunity for them to see what a vital, vibrant, exciting life we have in library work and how they could contribute and be part of it. And I hope that a bunch of those interns that we've funded over the last five or six years will now be scholarship recipients. We're going to go contact them all and say, do you know you can get a scholarship right now? And I just want to jump in here and say, if you want to know a lot about people who have experienced these internships, we're actually doing an Encompass Live on this in January. Katherine is doing a session on January 12th called Internships, a good fit for your library. And we're actually having, I'm not sure how many people who have been these interns who will be reporting about how they, what it was like, what they did, how they liked it, their whole experience. So that will be a great session. So if you want to know, you know, what did they do, how did they like it from the actual people who experience the actual interns themselves, that's our January 12th Encompass Live session. Oh, great. That'll be a great session. So with the internships, the applications will be available January 15th. The deadline is February 15th. So this is coming right up. This needs to be on everybody's, you know, horizon. And then we'll be awarding them March 15th. So programs must be completed by. We've been trying to think about that. Yeah. There is a time period. I think that'll be negotiated. It'll be clear in the application. Yes. When the end date will be. Yeah. And again, this hasn't, these applications have not gone up on our website yet, because once more, we do want to make sure that they are approved by our governing board, that all the policies and all the procedures are approved by our governing board and by our partner, the Nebraska Library Association. Yes. And this is this year's. This is this year's coming here. We'll be talking about years after that, after that. So that's the interns. Now, we've talked. Were there any questions about internships? Maybe we should do that. Not for the moment. We'd really like to encourage libraries who maybe haven't had an intern before. One of the criteria was that we hoped the libraries would have a good experience planned for the interns, but we also want to be sure that the interns are making a good contribution in the library. So we really want this to be a good fit and a win-win for everyone. Yeah. One thing I guess I wanted to point out is that again, oh, well, we've got that out there. Well, if you go to now hiring at your library.org, you can find information about internships. You can find information about scholarships. You can find information about everything we've been talking about. Yes. In fact, this is linked to on our the Nebraska Library Commission's home page. It's one of the links on the left-hand side. You shouldn't have any trouble finding it. We thought now maybe we should talk a little bit about these 21st century skills because we've mentioned them several times. And we think this is going to get to be a bigger thing all the time. We think that this is something that is going to be very important. And so we thought, well, let's talk about them a little bit. What librarians need to know. And maybe one of the first things you need to know is that the 21st century skills are not strictly for librarians. They are for everybody. And so they are things that librarians are going to want to help their library users with as well. Yeah, I think the main goal, if you read this report, which I think we've got coming up on the next slide, I think the main goal is to assure that librarians have these skills so they can help their customers achieve these skills as well. This was from the museum's libraries and 21st century skills is the name of the report. This is the link to it. It's at the Institute of Museum and Library Services website. And it says, and I know it's awful to read things on the slide, but I'll just read this one little quote. The report outlines a vision for the role of libraries and museums in the national dialogue around learning and 21st century skills and includes case studies of innovative audience engagement and 21st century skills practices from across the country. Now, these are already being used a lot. 21st century skills in schools are showing up. There's some books about it. But this is for all kinds of libraries, even for museums because the Institute of Museum and Library Services has a very active program for museums as well as libraries. So, and what are these skills? What are we really talking about? Well, we're talking about a whole set of skills. Yes, we are. And so when the question is asked, will the technology camp, the 21st century technology camp, focus only on technology? Well, we will focus on technology, but the technology is, in some ways, it's a tool toward these, attaining these whole set of skills. One being critical thinking and problem solving. I think that there's a ton of stuff that the schools are doing to encourage critical thinking and problem solving. But I think we can't forget our adults also need to build these skills and need to use these skills in their everyday life. Creativity and innovation. I think there's a lot that's going to be happening in libraries around entrepreneurial innovation and the libraries being the source where entrepreneurs can come and grow their entrepreneurial business. So, this is just one example of how that skill, having that kind of skill set, can help you help your customers. Communication and collaboration. And then all the literacy issues, basic literacy, visual literacy, scientific and numerical literacy, just you name it, people have to be able to do these kinds of things and to have these kinds of skills. And I think libraries are in a unique position to understand what literacy skills do for people. And we may appreciate more than many places the fact that literacy is still not universal. There are people who lack these skills and it's a great detriment to them. So, if we can help them, this is something, this is one of the things that has traditionally been a library priority. And we would like to see it continue that literacy is terribly important. And you can see how those technology skills feed into this literacy and they feed each other. So, so many of these skills are part of it. That's why I say skill set. They're part of a dynamic learning experience for people. Flexibility and adaptability, technology skills, life and career skills. You know, living, skills for living, skills for keeping your career lively. Those kinds of things are going to be very important. I think librarians are telling us right now huge numbers of people are coming into Nebraska libraries looking for help with these kinds of skills. And it's going to just be more and more. And we're very excited that this is something that libraries are so well positioned to help people with. Initiative and self-direction. And then what I consider to be a very important piece, the cross-cultural skills. But being able to appreciate and being able to to enhance your own cultural experience by having cross-cultural skills, including communication and language skills, but not limited to just being able to speak another language, but also understanding other cultural holidays and mores and just enjoying the richness of Nebraska's culture. Some of our communities have people speaking 20, 30 different languages. How rich is that? It's amazing. We're so lucky in many ways, but it also provides challenges for skill building. And one of the things that we think that libraries, we have to start thinking about not just building our libraries, but helping to build our communities. And the contribution that our libraries are making to our communities and to our communities' cultural and economic well-being. And these all fit into that as well. And the idea of communication and collaboration, we just hear it over and over again. Nobody can go it alone anymore. And you can build those skills at any point in time in your life and just keep building them. They'll always need a little refresher. So anyway, these are the 21st century skills that we've been talking about. We would encourage you to go to the IMLS website and read about the skills because they kind of delineate them and talk about them at various what this means at different levels and how you've really achieved the highest skill levels than what would your practice be looking like. And the report actually is very readable. Yes, it is. It's really a good report. And it's very interesting. So it's not real long and researchy. Although it is based on research. I should say it is. Have a research base. But as we said, you're going to hear about this in schools. You're going to hear about this in economic development. And we think that the libraries, the public libraries, as well as school libraries and other libraries, have a real role to play here with the 21st century skills. So that's kind of where we are. Do we have any questions? Any other last-minute questions? Yeah, we have plenty of time. Anything that was mentioned. Do you want to go back to anything that was talked about? Go ahead and type your questions or say unmute me. I can do that if anyone else wants to talk besides us. Love to hear your voices. If you've got a microphone, do look about the second week in January for the material on our website about the scholarships. And if you have questions, well, you could just call the commission if you want. But Mary Jo and I would both be happy to try and answer your questions or Catherine Brockmeyer is handling questions on the scholarships. And we really want these to work for people. So we want to hear what you have to say. Hop on that Facebook page and say whatever comes to your mind. I mean, I think there's a lot that can happen with that kind of peer-to-peer networking and sharing. Do we have any questions about you guys? We just have Diana want to know about the slides. After the session is over, the recording will be processed and then we'll put that up on our website when we do. This slideshow will be available as well there. And all of you who registered will get an email letting you know that the recording is ready and the slides are up there for you to go ahead and view, download, do whatever you want to go over them again. And when you get that email, please feel free to forward it to anyone you think might be interested because anybody can look at the recorded version. This is not the kind of webinar where the only time you can look at the recorded version is if you've been there. Anybody can look at the recorded version and I think it could be very useful. At least some of the slides might be good to print out and have people use to share information. Yeah, all of the slides are available for anyone to watch at any time. Slides are up there. Any links that were in the presentation will also be available for you to get to those links to report and then the website, the now hiring website. Yeah, there are actually quite a few links in this and we used to put them up as a delicious account and we're still doing that although we might be changing that in a few years. We're looking into changing right now. Right now you can still use delicious to get to all the links or just open up SciShow and go to the links through the SciShow. Any other questions about anything? I think Julie's jumping up yet. I just want to thank everybody for hopping on the call and joining us and asking all your good questions. This makes this a very rich hour of learning for us and we appreciate it. We have one of our students, Claudia Moore, asking about, I know you said the skills camp won't be for until 2012. Yeah, she's asking about it possibly being on a weekend to accommodate full-time employees, people who have jobs during the week. Thank you for sharing that. That is a good idea. And by the way, one of the things we didn't talk about is we will be doing throughout this three-year period, we'll be doing some little mini sessions that anybody can hop on and hopefully they'll be abused to you. We'll be asking you through the Facebook page what it is that you would be interested in having a mini session on and everybody can interact during these mini sessions. So we'll be asking you questions like when would you like to have it? Would you like to have it in the evening? Would you like to have a mini session on the weekend? What's the best thing for you? And Claudia, I'm so glad you're on the call because I left a message for you with how to get on the call and I thought, oh gosh, I hope she gets that message. So it's great to hear that you're on the call, Claudia. We also really appreciate your feedback. I know it's easy to think, well, they don't care or they wouldn't want to hear from me, but you know what, we really do want to hear from you. We don't want to make decisions in a vacuum. We do want it to work for you. And who wants to give a party and then find out nobody can come? That was the wrong time. So do let us know. We're always happy to hear from you. Thank you. So thank you. Anything else before we close down for the morning? Now you know, you can contact Mary Jo and Laura. You've got their emails there. The commission 800 number asks for either one of them and you can find out more that you want to know about it. I can't find the mouse there. Be sure and join Catherine on January 12th again at 10 a.m. to learn more about the internships. I'm actually looking at the description again. It looks like there'll be actual libraries at the library. People that have accepted the grants and quite experienced it, how the interns did as well. So it should be very interesting. Totally follows up on this. Great. Okay. Well, thank you very much for attending this morning. As we said, it has been recorded and the recording will be available probably this afternoon, depends on how long it takes for this technology to process. And I hope you'll join us next week or I will not be here. I will be away for the holidays. But Michael Sowers, our technology innovation librarian, will be here doing his regular monthly tech talk. Not sure what his topic is going to be, but they're always interesting. They are always interesting, those tech talks. It's always something new and innovative and something you want to know about. So he will be here next Wednesday morning doing that for you. So we'll see you next time. Thank you very much for attending. Meanwhile, thank you. Happy holidays. Bye-bye.