 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. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week as we are doing right now, and it will be posted to our archives for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show how you can navigate in our archives. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on our show. Any upcoming topics that you can see are upcoming schedule there or any of our archived sessions. There it is. I didn't have the screen up. There's our web page. So we do a variety of things here on Encompass Live on the show. For those of you who might be watching from, not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries in Nebraska, like your state library. And we provide services to all types of libraries across the state. So you will find things on our show for publics, academics, K-12s, corrections, special libraries, archives, et cetera, et cetera, anything. All really are only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries, something that libraries are doing, some cool things we think they should be doing. We bring in guest speakers from around the state and around the country sometimes. And we sometimes have library commission staff that do presentations. Today you're going to be hearing from me. I'm doing today's presentation. But before we jump into today's show, I just want to give my, I've been doing this reminder every week just so everyone is on top of things. I'm going to pop over here. This is our main library commission website. And we are still in the height and of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most recent news is we are working towards the second wave. Things are going to only get worse as we go into the fall and the winter. So here in the library commission's website, we are trying to gather resources to help their libraries. We have a post here pinned to the top of the page. It's always, we'll always be here on top of our new posts with resources for libraries. We have a list that we are attempting to maintain for libraries across the state. Are they open? Are they closed? Special accommodations, curbside pickup, Wi-Fi in the parking lot. Some libraries we know who have opened are now re-closing again because there have been new outbreaks in their areas. So re-closings. So keep an eye on that. If you are in Nebraska library, let us know here at the commission if we need to update our information about you. Our library resources that we have here, we have a link where you can update our list, some maps. But here's where we have a link to some specific resources. These are things you can use in your library to help people who may be coming in. Unemployment, homeschooling, businesses, what to do. But the second option here specifically, I want to bring your attention to is about your library. What resources, webinars, just any sort of information we know that is out there. Things from the CDC, World Health Organizations, ALA, OCLC, IMLS, et cetera, et cetera. Anything we find, we are always adding to this page as well. So keep an eye on here for new information that we may be providing as information specifically for schools. Information about hosting meetings, your board meetings, this is specific to Nebraska. If you are not in Nebraska library, check your state's rules and regulations. Examples of policies of libraries who have reopened, how they did it. Health, online resources, et cetera, et cetera. So we try to keep this up to date. Keep an eye on it as time goes on for any other resources we may add to it. As I said, this is the Nebraska Library Commission's page. A lot of this information is general. Could be for anybody. But if you are not in Nebraska library, check with your state library or your state library association and see if they may be providing the same resources and information for you. So let's get into today's show then. There we go. There it is. All right. So today I'm going to be talking to you about e-rate. E-rate 101, just the basics. Here at the library commission, in addition to hosting this show, I am the library development director. I am also the state e-rate coordinator for public libraries in Nebraska. That means I handle all the training, education, hand-holding, whatever you may need here in Nebraska to get through the e-rate process. I do do workshops, longer workshops in the fall on e-rate, about three hour sessions. And I will be doing that again later coming up. We have not scheduled the workshops yet. That's still to come. But I wanted to get some information out to you if you were wanting to know about e-rate at least. So this will be just a very more quick overview just for this one hour, 45 minutes hour that we are here for. But the real basics of just how the process works. So this will be some repetition for some of you who may have done e-rate before. Some new information. That's always good to have a refresher. e-rate is a great program to use to get on top of, but does take some education and learning about it. So this is going to be the basics. Look for my announcements for when I have my longer workshops. The workshops that we were doing this year, I usually go around the state to various locations so everyone can attend. We will, for safety purposes, we will not be doing that this year. I will be doing online workshops, the longer three hour workshops, two and a half three hour workshops, with going through step by step how to do each form. I will be doing multiple sessions of those as well. I always have done an online one after my in-person ones. I'm going to be doing multiple online ones at various times and days so that everybody can have a chance to attend when it's convenient for them. And then we'll have the ability to ask me questions live if they want to. So look for those recording of those shows to be coming up and be announced. That shows workshops. So let's just get into today's session, e-rate, the basics. So e-rate is a federal program done by the FCC, Federal Communications Commissions, and this is their official mission statement, so that's why I said in quotes, to ensure that schools and libraries can obtain high speed internet access and telecommunications at affordable rates and keep students and library patrons connected to broadband by providing a discount on eligible services. So this is a FCC federal program that gives discounts to schools and libraries on anything related to getting your internet. So this would be your actual monthly internet costs, construction to get that internet connected, and any sort of equipment you might need to keep that internet working in your library. The funding for this program comes from the universal service fee. This is something if you check your phone bill, your cell phone bill, or your cable bill, or your internet bill, with all of those different taxes and fees that you have to pay, there's something there that will be called the federal universal service free, USF fee, different companies may abbreviate it differently. But we as customers of these services and the telecommunications companies that provide the services pay in a little tax for this, and it is all gathered up to then help schools and libraries be able to to afford their internet services. So as I said, the FCC is the US government agency that runs the program. They set all the rules and all the policies. So whenever we are doing anything with e-rate and anything changes in the year, we're waiting on them for direction and guidance and orders, I know what to do. When they first created the program, which was in the mid 90s, 1996 was the telecommunications act, and that was what created the e-rate program. And the universal service administrative company USAC was created as a nonprofit to not for profit to run the day to day running of the e-rate program. They actually run the e-rate program and three other programs, programs to give discounts to healthcare facilities to help people who are low income and to help people in very high cost areas where it's really difficult to get internet access to. So they have multiple programs they run. The one that we're concerned with being in libraries is the schools and libraries division part of USAC. E is generally considered an abbreviation potentially. I'm not sure if it's official for education. So everything that has to do with getting this service to and these discounts to schools has education related and to libraries included in that because they do provide education, but any kind of resources that they provide that are based in the internet. Most of the time we talk about USAC. When we're talking about e-rate, USAC has doing this. USAC is sending you an email. You need to reach out to USAC about something related to your e-rate. E-rate is given out on a funding year. This is how they run the program. And the funding year runs every cycle from a July 1st to a June 30th of the next year. So whenever you are applying for e-rate, you're always looking to the future. Right now is when you can actually start the process and we'll get into the specifics of that, but you are thinking of in July of 2021, I want to start receiving, I want to have these discounts. So this is what you're working on right now. What the discounts you're receiving right now, you were working on last, started working on last fall. So it's an ongoing process every year, but you're always a one year at a time. So for funding year 2021 is the next one that we'll be talking about that you'll be looking into. And that runs from July 1st, 2021 to June 30th, 2022. There is almost $4 billion available usually in this program. It is adjusted for inflation regularly. So there is a lot of money out there. And this is money that is specifically designated for this purpose, just to give discounts to schools and libraries on their internet related charges. It is not something that can go somewhere else or be used for something else in the federal government. So it's just out there waiting for you to apply for and ask for it for your library. All libraries, all public libraries in Nebraska are eligible for this program. The criteria from USAC and the FCC is that you must be eligible for LSTA Fundings. And this varies from state to state. So this is just Nebraska, other states, if you happen to watch my session here, check with your state. But here in Nebraska, we consider all public libraries eligible for services and programs that are funded by LSTA funds. So then you are all eligible for e-rate. Our schools and school districts are all eligible. And if we did have consortia where groups of entities that got together to share costs, those consortia who could apply as a group as well. How much can you receive as a discount on your services? This is a range. This will depend anywhere from 20% is the lowest, excuse me, up to 90%. And this depends on a couple of criteria. The main number that you look at for a library is the kids children in your school district that are eligible for the school lunch program. This is the free and reduced lunch program at your school. So wherever your library is physically, geographically located, whatever that school district is, is the numbers that you look at. Now you may serve kids that come in from neighboring school districts just because of where people live and go geographically. And that's fine. But for e-rate purposes, they just say where does your library live? Where is it actually physically? Look at that school's numbers. And you can see here for whatever reason, you can't include the pre-K numbers, such as kindergarten through 12th grade. Once you know that number, then you also look to see if whether your area is considered urban or rural. Here in Nebraska, most of us are considered rural, which gives us a little bump up on some of the discounts. And here's the specifics of how you can find these numbers and calculate this for yourself first. For libraries who are new to e-rate or wondering about should I even get involved in doing this, I recommend you do this yourself ahead of time before you even start submitting forms. Find out how much of a discount you could potentially receive to see if it is worth it for you to go through all the work that it takes to apply for and maintain e-rate. E-rate is a ongoing process. There's forms that you submit at different times throughout the year and you do it every year. So it is a regular thing you have to keep up on. I'm here to help you keep up on that, but it does take some like work on your side. So if you're not sure, I recommend you do this. We are very lucky here in Nebraska that our Department of Education posts the data about the school lunch numbers, the school library national library program lunch program, sorry, on their website. And I've got a link right there where you can go to look at it. It's also linked off the e-rate page that I maintain here at the library commission. So you can go there. It has a spreadsheet that pops up and it has a tab on that spreadsheet for the school districts, each school district. So all of you want you to look at all the schools in the districts. If you've got elementary, middle, high schools and multiple ones, what's the grand total? So you can go there and find your number of children that are in the program. And what's the key here too? I'm going to go back a screen. It is this is number of students that are eligible for the program, not necessarily that participate. And that can be a big difference. There are many, there are families that don't feel the need to participate in the program. For just, you know, we're actually doing fine. We don't need it. There are families that for the stigma don't do it for whatever reasons. But that's not what these numbers are that the school district is even putting out. This is just the numbers of children that happen to be eligible, not who are participating. So that's a key there. Then you'd look up and see if you're rural or urban. USAC has a tool where you can look up your area and find out what you are. This is based on census data, most recent census from 2010. After this census that we're doing right now is done and whatever comes of it, they will most likely update to that information. The FCC cutoff between urban and rural is 25,000 populations. So populations of 25,000 or more are considered urban, under 25,000 are rural. That's almost everywhere in Nebraska except for our large cities like Lincoln, Omaha, etc. Once you have those two items, then you go to the USAC's discount matrix to look up your discount. And there it is. It's also on their website. So you see what is the percent of children eligible. That's from the Department of Education. It's in their spreadsheet, that percentage. And then are you urban or rural and see how much of a discount you can get? You can see here there's different categories of service category one and category two. I'm going to explain that in a minute here. But you can see here if you only have half of the kids in your school are eligible, 50%, you can get an 80% discount on your services. That's huge. If it's just less, it goes down 60, 70. So most libraries in Nebraska fall between the 60 and 80% discount rate for all their services. So definitely could be a benefit for you if you're willing to keep up with and do the work for it. So what is eligible? What is irratable? I don't know if that's a real word. I've invented that for my purposes here. But every year the FCC publishes what they call their eligible services list, ESL. So there's a new list every year. So depending on what year you're applying for or looking at information about, you need to look at the correct list. I've got a link on our website that goes right to the current list. Well, the page where they have the list. Sometimes you are working on multiple years at the same time. So if USAC is asking you questions about last year's application, like the 2021, you got to make sure if they're looking at eligible services, you look at the 2020 list. If you're applying for next year, you look at the 2021 list. Sometimes the list change. They add things to it. They remove things. They did some, a lot of streamlining of it over the last about four or five years ago. So it's really easy to work with now. New services, new technologies, you know, are created and invented and they may at need to tweak the wording in the list for new ways people can get internet. The services are split up between two categories. Category one, category two. Category one gets the service to your building, whatever the high speed internet services you have. Category two makes the internet service work throughout the building. So you can think of the difference also between category one and two is this year is the wall of the building, the bricks there. Category one is what it brings to the building outside. And then once it's in there, all that equipment you need, modems, routers, servers, switches, access points, et cetera, et cetera, racks, cables, I didn't put everything on here, but anything that in all that physical equipment inside your building, once you have the internet line coming in, that you need to then make all of those devices be able to use the internet, your PCs, laptops, people coming with their own wireless phones, printers, et cetera. Those particular devices themselves, the cost of those isn't eligible, it's just the service that they will use. So you've got your one and your two. Category, anybody have any questions? Don't forget, type them into the questions section. Let me just double check my, I'm gonna get that open so I can see if anybody ever has anything that pops up there. All right. So category one is, as I said, anything that gets the internet into your building. And this is anything, any sort of connection you have that provides any sort of high speed broadband internet service. So if you have cable, if you have DSL, fiber, satellite, wireless, whatever is getting the service to your library. And this is not exhaustive list, this is just some examples of some of the ones down there. When you are looking at your e-rate forms, they'll show you all these options of the different kinds of ways you potentially get your internet service to the building. A little information here about fiber, you'll notice it did mention lit and dark fiber, those are both possibilities for you if you're working on getting fiber. Fiber lines when the reason we have lit and dark is when fiber lines were first installed, so to speak, if they came through your town or near your area and dug trenches and laid fiber underground, they always put in more lines, more fiber connections than they actually need at the time. They thought for thinking for the future. So they, the lines that aren't needed yet, the connections that aren't needed yet are not turned on right away, so they're called dark fiber. They're in there, they're in the ground, somebody owns it, your service provider, the company that is running it, but they just need to flip a switch and hope they work that and turn it on so that you can use it. Lit fiber is already out there and ready to use and you're just trying to find someone to use that. So those are both options available. We recommend asking when you're doing your e-rate applications, say we'd like either one because you never know what might be out there. There might be some dark fiber hiding around somewhere that you just need to let someone know. We'd love to have that if you do this e-rate deal with us. They do, you see here, there's rules that if you are wanting to look into dark fiber, you also have to ask for lit as well. So there is a combo option to say least dark and least lit all as one deal. So it makes it nice and easy for you to pick that and say this is what we're looking for and just putting a feeler out to see what's out there. Under category one, two is a special deal that they have a special situation called special construction. Many areas still need new fiber run to them and all this construction work done outside the building, you can receive an e-rate discount on. So this is any costs if you are getting fiber for the first time. So this is new fiber if you already have fiber and you're just upgrading and getting faster speed, that's not what this is, that's just your regular. But special construction, any actual physical that they have to dig new trenches to run lines to you, install anything, whatever work needs to be done with managing the project for you can be, you can receive an e-rate discount on it. Because they know, they understand that not all companies in all construction can work just in that tight e-rate funding year of July through June. They do allow you to start this work actually up to six months before the official funding year starts, so January. So for next year, if you're thinking about doing this as an option of having a new fiber line run to your library, you can talk to your company and say it's okay if you need to start construction in March, April, May, whatever, our e-rate discount will still apply for that special construction even though the funding year, when the service starts in July, that's when the service starts, the construction could would need potentially need to be done ahead of time. Now I mentioned this also because here in Nebraska we have a new opportunity available to you two libraries. As part of the e-rate modernization that they did about four or five years ago, updating and expanding and making e-rate hopefully easier, they created a state matching fund, state matching for special construction. If a state was able to come up with extra funding to help pay for some of this work, e-rate would match that funding as well and add even more of a discount on to a library's costs for having this special construction done. Over the years about 20, over 20 other states have done this, the state matching fund, and just this year we finally here in Nebraska are offering it as well. So this will, if you do do special construction and apply for it, then e-rate, we at the state, we will give you a little extra discount on your e-rate and e-rate will match that. And I'll give a little more, this is in using numbers, I think explains this a lot better to me. So for example, you've gotten a bid from a provider to run fiber to your library and it's going to cost a nice round $100,000. I do them, make easy math here. And you have 80% discount on your e-rate. Right off the bat, your basic e-rate, you get 80% off. So the library is responsible for, to start with, if it was just a basic e-rate, $20,000 of that. Our state matching fund would contribute 10% of that, which is $10,000, and then e-rate will match the state match, adding another 10% off, in effect making the library's cost zero. So there's this project of $100,000, e-rate covers 80%, our state matching fund covers 10%, and then e-rate says, because your state is helping you and supporting you with this project, we're going to toss another 10% discount on that too. So that's like, we get fiber run to the library at no cost to the library or the city. Now, this is at an 80% discount with this nice, pretty math. Of course, if your e-rate discount is less than that 70, 60, you would still have to pay some, but you will get a lot of help from the state and from e-rate to make your discount ultimately come out even higher. And here's just the math. There cost 80% state match, e-rate match. Now, how this is happening here in Nebraska is a few years ago, the governor created a Nebraska broadband task force to investigate how to do better with internet in the state. This is for everything, not just for libraries or schools. This was for across the board, agriculture schools, personal business, everything. Part of that was part of this report that was submitted to the governor just last fall was about the Nebraska Public Service Commission helping put out funding to create this state matching program in Nebraska. The Public Service Commission here in Nebraska, I explained at the very beginning how e-rate has a universal service fund where we all pay into it to provide this service, these discounts to everybody around the country here in Nebraska. We actually have our own Nebraska universal service fund run by the Public Service Commission. So here we pay another little extra tax fee that goes to Nebraska to the Public Service Commission and they have their own programs where they offer discounts to schools, libraries, healthcare facilities, et cetera. So we have our own local program as well for the state which helps out all these areas even more. They have budgeted $1 million right now. They have put up $1 million that can be used starting in 2021 and over the next four years for the e-rate fiber special construction. So if you are interested in doing this, you don't have fiber, you would apply for your e-rate this year for 2021 doing a 470 saying we want to do this. We will help you here at the library commission to create a request for proposal and RFP. You do have to have a special document that explains what you're doing. I'm helping out, I'm doing the work on the e-rate side and Holly Wolt who is our technology person here at the commission can help you with your RFP if you're interested in that. You submit your 470 to e-rate and then in December, by December you submit a separate application to the Public Service Commission saying we would also like to receive the special matching state funds. The deadline to submit that is in mid December. They haven't put out a specific date but on their website and we have links to this off of our website too and if you need information from us on it, they have an application that you then say okay I've done my 470 and I've picked who I want as my provider to do this work. Now I'd like to get your funding as well as a match. By sometime in January the Public Commission says they will make their decision and let you know if they are approving your application to do that. Then you can continue with your next step in the e-rate process and do your second form telling USAC yes we would like to do this and we have the state match so that e-rate knows to add that extra match onto your discount when they do finish that all up for you. So if you are interested in this definitely reach out to me, reach out to Holly Wolt here at the Library Commission and we can help you learn more about it. We did do some workshops and trainings on that over the last couple of months as well so there is some recordings and information about their out there separate specific special trainings just for this state match special construction fund. After the construction is done is when you receive the reimbursement of the guys that's how the state will be doing that for you as well. So look into that. Any questions about category one? Before we pop over into category two all right. So category one is getting your internet service to the building category two is once you have that service how do you make it work so all the equipment you might need to run that. So as I said cables firewalls networks routers racks power supplies any work needed to be done to install all of this all that all those costs you can receive an e-rate discount on. In addition to the equipment itself basic maintenance of these connections as well. So if you have someone that you contract with to do your upgrades or fix something when it breaks put a new cabling if it goes bad upgrade your network software all that kind of work as well so the not just the initial purchase of this equipment but the maintenance and keeping it working in good working shape is also eligible for e-rate discounts. If you're not sure what you have in your closet so as you can see here this picture I have here is actually pretty nice a very neat picture of someone's network closet with all the cables nicely wired up and clean not everybody's closet looks like that not everybody's network connections look like that and you might not even know what do I have what do I need to update what what can I do we recommend using this the toward gigabit libraries toolkit Holly here at the library commission who I've already mentioned and Tom Ralfus whose staff at the CIO's office here in Nebraska worked to help get this project out there it's a free resource out there IMLS Institute of Museum and Library Services funds it and it is a really slick toolkit where you can just go in there enter into this document all of whatever's in your closet and it will tell you what you might need to update how good is it could you get a faster speed it'll put together an improvement plan for you saying well you've got this router you might want this one instead here's a newer model all that kind of information so this is kind of give you a nice guide and a plan for what do I have and what can I do to improve it you could do this yourself if you have a tech person who works with you they could help out and as you can see here it is really designed for people who don't have tech support we have a lot of libraries in Nebraska and a lot of libraries across the country small rural libraries don't have extra don't have a computer person don't have a techie guy and this is specifically for that kind of library so it will help you go through that process we have a link to it off of our e-rate page and our broadband support pages here at the library commission so if you're wondering what do I apply for what do I need under category one what kind of internet connection do I need under what do I need under category one of internet connection what kind of equipment I might need this can help you figure all that out and get a handle on what is is happening at your library internet related now for category one you have an unlimited amount of money you can ask for whatever you buy whatever internet service you have you just get whatever that percentage just kind of off of whatever it is that you're paying for category two for all that equipment everything inside the building works a little differently for category two usac gives you a budget to work with so similar to your your regular budget you get from your municipality it's and I try to describe it as more of like a it's an it's an idea it's a it's not actual money that they say here's the whole budget we're going to say here it is go and spend it it's more just a calculation of what they think you could you should spend over the next five years they're doing it now in five year increments so they calculate a budget as you can see here for that you can use from 2021 through 2025 and then I'll do it again 2026 2030 etc etc forward going forward so for 2021 is when you can start using this new budget and you don't have to use it all up that year you can use it throughout those five years you might only have certain things you want to buy in 2021 and other equipment you buy next year and then the year after that you finally upgrade your internet speed so then that will mean you need to do something then so you get a cost for that year they it's fixed for that entire five year period this is some these are some changes from what it was before 2021 and they only adjust for inflation at the very beginning of the year of the five years not every single year so they'll you'll get an amount at the beginning and that's it through 2025 you will only receive discounts up until you've used up that budget you're welcome to spend more you don't you're not limited to only saying it like if you say you're given a budget of you know $50,000 and your costs end up going over that you don't have to stop spending things at 50,000 it's just that you only receive an e-rate discount up to that 50,000 if you need more services and projects above that that's fine you can keep buying it's just you'll only receive a rate up to whatever your budget is now how much is it how much am I going to get for this for 2021 through 2025 they for libraries they calculate this based on the size of your building the total area and square feet this is all the floors um all the walls so you need to probably if you don't know exactly how many square feet you have in your building might you look at blueprints or talk to somebody in the city or someone who knows what's the size of our building and they just take that and they multiply it by the amount they figured this year for this five year period is four dollars fifty cents so 450 but there is a minimum budget of 25,000 so at a minimum everybody gets 25,000 to use over that five year period depending on how big your library is you might get more if your your amount your space goes above that um you can this budget can be recalculated if your building does change for example you know a lot new libraries are being built so if you move to a different library a different physical building and now it's a different size you'd give you you set that number so they can adjust your budget um if you add an addition under the library expand uh hopefully you don't go smaller but if you do you'd have to update it as well and then your budget would go down if you go to a smaller building so here's specific math to make you really understand it your library is a total of 3,500 square feet 3,500 times 450 is 15,750 but there's a 25,000 minimum budget for everybody no matter what so since your calculation is less than that you actually get 25,000 if your library was bigger and the amount came out above 25,000 you get whatever that was in this case for this library also just doing nice clean math um their discount rate is 50 so you'll actually get 12,500 in funds to spend on category services category two services for the next five years so you are given this budget this kind of amorphous here's your budget but you rate still has discount rates you you'd only get whatever your discount is in this one in this case 50 you've got 12,500 that they'll give you when you're doing your rate applications as you buy things there will be a place in your account where it keeps track of what your budget is keeps track of what you've applied for discounts on and will write will automatically delete deduct from that as you're going through through the years and until you've used it all up or the five years are over and you start again with a new budget all right all right any questions about category two it is a little confusing I think I like that they've they've raised the minimum budget so you have a lot more money to work with definitely look into it though if you're looking about a lot of libraries just apply for their monthly and monthly internet costs that category one and that's all but look at your equipment if you could get something at 50 60 70 80 off and you've got this money to use might as well use it and if you want to know more you need more help with what is my equipment what do I have what should I upgrade holly here at the commission holly waltz who if I mentioned our heady you can reach out to her and she's the person who we've got here now in charge of evaluating and checking out what you have and giving you advice on what you might want to upgrade to based on what you currently have and that would be this category two type services all right so one other thing you do have to pay attention to in e-rate is sIPA compliance and you may have heard of this sIPA is a children's internet protection act and this is to the purpose of this act is to protect children from unsavory things on the internet porn violence etc etc in order to receive e-rate discounts because it is a federal moneys you do have to be in compliance with sIPA for anything you're applying for your internet access and your internal connections interconnections being all that category two equipment that you might purchase there's not very much that goes into a complying with sIPA some things you possibly already have an internet safety policy there's only three things internet safety policy what can or can't people do on the internet and when they're on their your computers using the internet you probably have possibly have some sort of policy about patron behavior already this may be part of that if only you have something somewhere you're good the technology protection measure the filter itself so this is about filtering so whatever kind of filter you have they do not specify what filter to buy what it needs to actually know specifics about it needs to block this list of sites or these particular things it's a very vague just needs to be on there and blocking something and then at some point have had a public notice or announcement most likely through your board meeting a public board library board meeting about the fact that you were doing this some libraries have done all this and you're already good to go you might need to look into it and that's okay some libraries may have got the policy in there or have your policy have your filter on but never thought about having a public meeting schedule something and an upcoming board meeting so that people know hey just updating you all that this is something we do there's information on the USEC website all about it as well on our e-rate web page which i'm going to give you the link to late in the end of the show too we do have some information about just how to pick a filter we don't recommend any necessarily any particular ones it's just too too many variables for us to say here's the one that everybody should use but we have lots of resources on our page about that so in order to receive e-rate discounts you do need to be in compliance with it now on to the actual forms themselves and how to do your e-rate so that's all the basics of how the program works and what goes into it and what you need to know about what you can get here's how you actually do it there are three forms that everybody does every year with only a few modifications and then the last form there under where it's invoicing it would depend on how you receive your your discounts how you do that your first form is the 470 where you are telling companies i want a service and you're opening up a competitive bidding process saying hey who wants to provide me with this service or these equipment second form your 471 you tell us that who you picked to provide the service or the equipment and then the 486 you tell us that they've started giving me the service the services started or received the equipment and then the invoicing depending on if you're receiving a discount on your bills or a reimbursement after the fact and we're going to go into the specifics of each of those so you've got three forms those first three for 70 for 7146 everybody has to do the last one it will depend now how do you submit all of these e-rate has an online interface for everything now the e-rate productivity center acronym is epc but it's pronounced epic so in epic is where you do all this with most recent update they did to the epic system they have this new and i'm going to show you how it works this new two factor authentication extra security it appears to at the moment only be working in chrome and firefox i've had actually just this week a multiple libraries had a couple libraries that contacted me had been using safari which had worked previously and it did safari ie other browsers did work but with this new authentication they don't appear to be having it working successfully with anything but chrome or five chrome or firefox you just make sure now you're using one of those and this is a one-stop shopping for all of your e-rate activities that you may need to do you can submit your forms check up on your status if e-rate has questions to you they ought to reach out to it there you can ask e-rate questions and that's the URL there to get to the main page for it pretty easy usac.org slash e-rate with that hyphen in there so to log in e-rate will create an account for your organization they would already have one in there and will identify one person to be the account administrator usually that's a library director if you don't have one you just can call usac and they will set one up for you you will probably have provided them if you're brand new to e-rate and have never done anything with it before um provide them with some sort of just official documentation that yes i am the library director yes we are a library we'd like to start doing this the account administrator can add additional users if you want if you're lucky enough to have other staff that you might want to pawn this off on or have help um that they can help you complete forms they can be a full user or they can do everything they can just work on adding the info to the form but you are you have the ability only to submit it and actually send in things or you can give someone access to just look at things and not actually submit or do any forms so that'd be up to you most of our libraries here in Nebraska your small shops one person you know not a lot of staff and it's usually just you as a library director or one person who's designated as you be in charge of e-rate so this is the homepage for usac that usac.org slash e-rate and there's two buttons there that both say sign in that you can use either one of those to actually log into your account the first thing that will come up is all this information about what you need to do if you are since they have this new they call multi-factor authentication and f a which is it basically if you've ever used some program some online services now where they whenever you log in on a new device they send you a text message with a code or something that kind of thing is what this is they've now instituted that for the e-rate system for epic just just extra security every time you log in now you're going to have to log in with your username and password and then get this code and enter that as well the first time you do it you will have to go through this forgot password process here but after you've done all that and just set it up to begin with you just continue and go on into logging in so I'm just going to show you how that works after you've set it up you put in your username and your password and you check the box to accept all the terms and conditions and you sign in however when you sign in it's going to say now you have to actually add have an email sent to you with an additional layer of security so it's this is actually already prefilled in there that great email address you don't enter it it's just filled that in from where you had entered it here you just say go ahead send me the email and then it will pop up with the screen waiting for the passcode usually not even 30 seconds you get an email that says here is your code and enter it in there if you don't get it they've got a link there just to resend it I've had to do that sometimes I you just never know if you don't get it with a minute just go ahead and hit resend email and it should do it you will get an email that looks like this and this is not a real this is a code from like back in august so this is not a code to use it's going to be a new six-digit code generated every time so it will say here's the code that you need to enter you'll go back to that page enter the code in there and verify and then you'll be able to get into your epic account so it is a multi-step process you do have to set that up first the first very first time you go in but after that you don't need to do that reset password thing um and you to create it you just go through the steps that I just showed you and then you get to your landing page this is your home page we're doing everything in your epic account and we're gonna I'm going to show you some things in here um we're not going to go deep into everything like I said this is the basics of e-rate and how to do things we are I'm going to go with this pretty quickly um I have I said full training coming up I'm just going to highlight a few things on here on this uh one thing to note in the middle here and I'm zoomed in here all all libraries schools who do business with e-rate who work with e-rate are assigned a build entity number um or an entity number and your number where you'll find it right there in the middle of your screen very often this this will come up as this kind of like a social security number for a person it's the number for doing e-rate for your library um so if you ever ask what that is that's where yours is also at the very bottom of the screen there of your landing page is this link to search if you're wondering where where are your forms where the status is did I remember to submit that form did it get approved or not um this is where you can go and look up all of your applications all of your different forms and you can look up any form you submitted your 70 or 471 46 and for multiple funding years going back to when they first started doing this in 2016 um here I looked at a 470 for 2021 and it came up with two that I had been I had done you can see over here on the right the status one's incomplete one's certified certified mean it's done I've submitted it e-rate use that has it incomplete I have not finished this form I might need still to go back and do some work on it so that's how you can check the status of any of your forms um that you may have submitted and in e-rate now you'll receive lots of notification notifications what they call in your news feed and there's a news option way up there at the top of the blue that's news for everybody that's not your news feed to get to your library's news feed this is a tip you click on your library's name where it says welcome and whatever your library's name is and then you have a news item there in your menu and this will give you any sort of notifications from you sec that have come to you so you'll see a lot of things say they'll send you this notification in your news feed they're going to send you this update um this this letter whatever in here that's where you would go to find your own personal news for your library you have your own profile in here as well that you can update and edit you click on the little silhouette head over there and then profile that pops up in profile and this is where you can update your name email address etc anything about you as the person logging into the library's account here um there is a notification error message whatever basically right here it comes out you says hey look edit profile don't use that as this note says down here use this manage epic user profile button on the right just tip and this is where you can change your name phone number job title address etc this is about you now if you are we have library staff that change off sometimes and a new director comes in if you have a if you are a new director if you're new or if you're going to be switching to a new person to do this and they're still using the same email address you don't have to create a whole new account for them you can just go in here and change the name so for example if you have a generic email address for your library like you know you know so-and-so public library at gmail and the new director is going to still be using that so-and-so public library at gmail all you'd have to do is go in here and change it to you new name of the newest new director coming in and say that same email address and just update that you do need to add a new account for that we can show you how to do that too if it is a whole new email address you can also manage your library's information here on the upper top menu there manage organizations and you just check your library uh for most of our libraries here in Nebraska you are just a single entity they have you check this this here because in other larger um multi libraries that have multiple branches or schools that have multiple locations you'd have to choose each location which one you're talking about so you choose your library hit manage organization and this is where this is very hard to read I know but I just want to show you this is long page with all the information about the library address mailing address where they're located all this other information and I'm just going to zoom into some of this here to show you so if you do your library does move you do get a new building you can update the um address the name of the library phone number um whether you are urban or rural if you move if that changes for some reason um if you have other information you want them there to contact you uh what kind of library are you public private academic tribal if it's you have a book mobile kiosk all that information you'd want to check here um something I want to point out here too I talked about your category two budget is based on the square footage of the library this is where you tell us that what the square footage of your library is in the library's organization profile information um and something new you need to have something in there in order for your rate to work for from now going forward uh it used to be you just put anything in there but um it needs a number in there you can see it actually has an asterisk now that is required field previously it wasn't um so figure out what your footage is and make sure and update it into your library's profile there also there's other numbers here FCC registration number this is it will also show the school district that your library is associated with I told you that your new school lunch numbers are what are used to calculate your discount this is where you can choose what school district you are actually in it will possibly have one by default if it's not the right one you can always run a search and fix it so that's all your library's info now um any questions about the profiles before we get into the forums uh yes somebody asked I see it asked for latitude and longitude yeah it does um that is for determining where the library is uh for for where it's located from being urban or rural it's another way of determining that it's just an optional way of doing it we're using the urban or rural status determined by the by the census instead it's just was another way that they had put in there that they could possibly do that you could enter it if you want if you know but it's not a required one since we're just using this urban rural census data instead there's a lot of um leftover things extra things this was a new server new pro new system that they instituted and I think they put in some things that they weren't sure how they might use it and there's some of the stuff is still there but you don't have to use it if it doesn't apply to you I guess is the way to say it as long as you've got this urban or rural status marked correctly you're good to go all right so um we'll get into doing your forms now it is getting close to 11 o'clock I know our show usually goes 10 to 11 I did start a little late with my info about um the pandemic and everything but I'm going to go as long as it takes for me to get through all the forms here so we will probably be a little longer than an hour but I'll go and keep recording until I'm done through all this if you have any questions you know any ready you're able to stick around great if you do need to leave don't worry we are recording you can always come back and watch this later so your first form that you submit which is actually available right now for 2021 is your 470 this officially opens a competitive bidding process and you're just putting out there saying to server service providers we're looking for someone to provide us with this service whether it's my monthly internet or equipment I want to buy you start your form 470 and I'm not going to go through all the steps of the 470 that's for the full training I'm just showing you where you get to it here in that upper menu on your landing page is this link for FCC form 470 and that just starts you out with inputting putting in your basic libraries info based on the um library's profile and then you would go through this form at telling them exactly what you're looking for let's see oh we do a question so if you're only applying for e-rate at this time not yet applying for the fiber assistance you still need to go through this process you just went through yes um yeah the fiber is a special thing the special construction fiber is something special extra that you can do if you want to if you know you're interested in having fiber run to your library that state match in that funding is actually as I mentioned available for the next four years so this is the first year you can do it if you think you're ready to do that it's a major construction project that might need to be done so you want to make sure you're ready you and your municipality is ready for it if you're not sure you could just do your simple I just want to discount on my monthly internet cost that I'm getting right now and I'll start investigating new fiber over the next year and maybe do it next year and that's okay um and you can do them separately you can do multiple form 470s if you want to one just to get your basic I need to discount on my monthly costs one and then go in and do a new 470 a second one that's just for your fiber or that's just for my category two because I want to buy some new equipment you can do multiple ones if you want to so it depends on what you're going to be wanting to discount on what you would apply for yeah oh you have to receive e-rate in order to qualify for the fiber it's not about receiving the fiber well yes if the state match from the public service commission is a match to an e-rate application so yes you can't just apply to the public service commission for that money to get fiber and that's it you have to first apply for e-rate a 470 saying I want to get the service and then say to the public service commission I've applied for e-rate can I I'm also applying for your match to my e-rate if I am approved so you do have to be doing e-rate in order to get that fiber help from the public service commission yes it's all connected um so if you if you want to know more about that like I said we do have other information on our mother trainings we did and you can even call me or email me or hollywoods and we can even talk to you more about it if you want to really jump into doing that right now so uh the 470 after you get done submitting your 470 this is what I was talking about of the things in your newsfeed you'll get a notification of it what's great about the 470 and the 471 and a lot of all this stuff not it's not all in stone if you make a mistake or need to make a correction or you typed in something wrong you can always fix things there will be ways to do that in there what also comes up in this 470 um is they tell you your allowable contract date we are doing competitive bidding for this and this is similar to if you've done a bidding for a construction project or something major before for the FCC rules for competitive building bidding for e-rate says you need to wait give service providers 28 days minimum to reach out to you um before you make your decision on who you're going to pick so you have to sit back and wait for them to reach out to you and and give you give you your quotes and then you can decide who you're going to go with so when you do your 470 when you get your notification it will tell you what is that actual date when you can make your decision and this is in your news and there is right there the allowable contract date for this particular one is 925 2020 that was when I would do this example so um that's an important date to know because you do have to wait those 28 days before you go on to your step of selecting a provider if you don't wait you and you pick someone too early you will not get your e-rate you'll be disqualified from receiving e-rate so you pay attention to that date um so competitive bidding this is a official I guess informal process that you may have used before when you've done requests for quotes or requests for proposals for the city um where they will reach out to you may get emails you may get phone calls most likely emails mailings of providers saying hey I saw you asked for this e-rate here's what we can give you you can compare all these offers and decide what you want to do after that 28 days has passed it does have to be a fair and open bidding process you have to treat everyone the same the service providers cannot be involved in working on your 470 so you can't have a provider come and sit with you and say okay so put these in here ask for these different things and then I'll respond and I'll get your and then you'll give me the um you'll award me the service that would be highly illegal you can't I mean you have to do this on your own you can ask them for advice on you know if I did want to go with you what would it be what do you have available as services what are the speeds and what are the costs so you know what you're getting into you can't say it's for the purpose of doing my e-rate and then we're going to work with you on this it's just I'm doing feelers to find out what's out there you do need to know it might be available when you do choose your who you're going to go with you go with cost effective cost being a primary factor factor but look at lots of other things related you can look at lots of other things related to this provider are they local do I um know their service their customer service is good or bad other things can go into your decision making process too not just who's the cheapest because as you know just going with the cheapest then we usually work out now there's some questions I've had from people about what about certain situations what if we already have a contract with the company and we just want to do it for the first time but we don't need we're not ready to or needing to sign a whole new contract with them you can do that just do a 470 as you were as if you were looking for new service um wait your official 28 days and whatever contract you have in hand that you now can consider a bid response it's not necessarily that they contact you and said hi I would like to newly provide you service it's just who you're already working with and that can be one of your one of your bids if you did receive other potential contacts from um providers you would then have to compare it to them but you can take into consideration in your comparison not just the cost but oh this is the company I know or um I know they've got great customer service and you're some new company from out of state I don't know you and that's a reason that is okay val that is a valid reason to say no to a service provider in e-rate rules um and then you can start receiving your discount on your current contract that you might have with a provider uh if your city pays for internet sometimes people have said well the library doesn't actually pay for it so I can't do e-rate because it's for the library that's okay you just need to be able to separate the library's internet usage from what the city is it's you can only get a discount on what is being sent to the library that internet service so some way you'd have to figure out is there um a guesstimate or do you know actual statistics that this this amount of internet goes here and this goes here it's okay to guess um and then just apply for the library's portion that is paid by your city um even though the city pays for the internet they might have a bill that shows oh this was for the you know the city offices this is what goes to the library they may trickle down and charge you something and something goes along with the budgets just look for that information and you can do you can still do e-rate it would just be for what the internet that gets sent to the library's building what if you don't get any bids or only one and um so there is no competition because it's supposed to be a competitive bidding process that's okay there just wasn't a competition uh you just say yeah it's the only one we got so uh what's who we're going with and we only have one internet provider um if you didn't receive any after that 28 days you can then reach out to your service providers and say hey we're doing e-rate now we put in the full application you need to respond to me officially about that so that we can get the discount and make this work so as long as you wait this 28 days you're good to go so after that 28 days that's when you do your evaluation you pick you're going to go with sign a contract if necessary and then do your second form where you tell it use that here's who we picked but there's a specific time when you can only do your 471 called the application filing window uh the 471 is as I said you just let us know here's who we've decided on uh and you do it after you've waited that 28 days after you've signed a new a contract if you need to sign something new and during the filing window a filing window is usually sometime in the spring it usually falls sometime now between January February March of the time right before the funding year starts so right now you can do your 470 and then you wait and get your bids but then you've got to wait until the filing window opens to do the 471 even if you tried to submit one it won't let you in the system it's gonna it's gonna say nope it's not available yet it's not announced when that window will be yet it does change every year there are not the same dates every year it's just sometime usually between January January February March sometimes in April depending on when they do it they usually announce it sometime in December so keep your eyes open to me to I will post announcements um it will be on our e-rate website about when that it actually opens up so you do your 470 you wait your 28 days you pick your gonna go with and then you wait for the window for the 471 excuse me 471 is available in the same place on your landing page just up there there in the upper right menu and it goes the same thing as the 470 it opens up a page starts automatically filling in your library info and then you put in who you think you also receive a notice from um about submitting this in your news feed you can also make corrections to it if you want to if necessary after you turn your 471 that is when you sack will review your application yeah sit back and wait for them to look through it it can take months to do that it's not going to be an instantaneous thing they've got hundreds of thousands of applications that come in um the group that does this in within usack is called program integrity assurance pia pia review so you may hear from them with questions they will check and make sure your application is okay if they think anything needs to be fixed they will say hey i think you did you mean this or not you always have a chance to update things if they reach out to you definitely respond to them um if you're confused about what they're asking call me email me they use a lot of what i like to call you sack speak very uh sometimes they're very not clear about what they're looking for because they have to use certain legal terminology but i can translate that for you if you need to so if you do have questions asked you're not sure how you're supposed to respond email me forward me their emails whatever and i can look at it and help you get through that after they've made their decision when they've answered all your questions you've answered other questions and they think everything's good they will then send you the funding commitment decision letter this is the where they tell you if they've approved your e-rate application or not hopefully it'll be approved if not it will say that you might receive more than one depending on if you submitted more than one four seventy and four seventy one throughout your process and if you have issues with it you don't agree there are ways to do an appeal and i can help you with that if necessary as soon as you submit submit your oh your funding commitment decision letter will be emailed to you actually um this is something that you will get email to your whatever email address you actually use to log into your epic account they'll actually send you an email with it now it's not just hidden like you've got to go into your account and find it so you're going to get an email that will be sent to you saying hey here's your funding commitment letter and it's attached with both a pdf and a spreadsheet there as you can see at the top and it is an actual letter you just open up the pdf and i'll tell you if you've been approved or not and you have a lot of details about what is what they've approved if they've denied it if it's been a partial approval that can happen so you would have this sent right to you in your email as soon as you get your funding commitment decision letter if it is approved you can immediately go and you should immediately go and do your next form in the e-rate process 46 this is where for some reason a lot of people lose it in the process of it they've done their four seventy and asked for service that they're for seventy one saying who i've picked they've heard back from e-rate and they feel yay i got my approval i'm good you still got to tell e-rate that you actually accept the funding that you want to do it and that's the forty six so even though you've got a letter that says you've been approved you still got to say thank you i would actually like that money um and what's great about this is everything you need to in to input into the forty six is already preloaded into your epic account you actually don't have to type in and enter or anything you just have to check all the things that you asked for and say yes these are all i want it auto fills it's one of the quickest easiest forms to do but it's where people kind of say don't a lot of people forget to do it because they get this great letter saying they've been approved and they sit back and relax no still gotta do this uh it's also available in the upper right there forty six right next to your four seventy and four seventy one something i will also highlight here and i want to give you a tip on after you've gone through the form you're also at the end of it there are certifications this the forty six is where you actually certify and legally tell us that you are in compliance with SIPA if you need to there are three choices for that and you have to make sure you pick the right one if you to pick the wrong one you won't necessarily lose not get your funding but there will be a delay because it does you know if you're asking for your internet service and you said i don't need to be compliant with SIPA because it doesn't count then they're gonna it's gonna hold up your application so just read the wording here the very first one says i certify as of the date of the start of the services that i have complied with the requirements the second one is i'm in the middle of i'm working on complying they do give you a couple years to get set up for the very first time you do erate you have three years to figure out how you're going to do your filtering and getting it set up that's the second choice we are working towards it the third choice is it doesn't apply there are some small a few cases where it wouldn't apply previously when you could apply for a discount on telephone service it didn't apply but you got to make sure you check the right one oh if you've been doing filtering and erate for a while and make sure it's the one that we are in compliance if you're doing it for the first time and you're figuring out getting your filtering set up you would do that second one where we are in undertaking actions to do this i'm just highlighting this because this is a place where a lot of people have made a mistake and checked the wrong box and then it delays their application usag will reach out to you kia will say are you sure because you asked for something and you really need to be in compliance and they'll give you an opportunity to fix it but it can take a couple of months to get them to get in touch with you about this so just want to make sure you get it right there is a deadline to do your 46 you do have only 120 days after the service starts or whenever you got your funding commission commitment commitment decision letter whichever is later if your letter for funding commitment was done before the start of the sort of the funding year to october 29th is a deadline if it was after that then it just bumps forward based on whenever you did receive your letter in the fall which actually right now in october i do pay attention to if you have submitted this and some people did get emails from me last week saying hey you have not done your 46 yet for this year and the deadlines come up at the end of october so i do proactively look at your information what's been submitted and reach out to you an email saying nudging you saying hey you need to do this usag will also send you reminders if they notice that you haven't done it as well so hopefully between me and them you shouldn't forget completely and miss the deadline um after you do your 46 just like the 470 for 71 you'll get a notification and a notification will be sent to your service provider letting them know you've done this so they can start working on either getting your equipment to you getting your installation done getting the service started and um doing your discounts now the last form in the process is um about invoicing this is how am i going to receive my your how you're going to receive your discount and this is when we'll depend on if how you get your discount whether or not you submit the form or whether the service provider submits the form you have and you have the choice if you want to receive a discount on your bills and your service provider would just automatically give you a discount to bills to start with you can you work with them as soon as you when you do your 46 after that's done you will continue reach out to them at the same time and say okay so how are we going to do this discount and then the service provider submits this form for 74 their their service provider invoice then they give you an automatic just give you a discounted bill and then usack reimburses them for whatever they've discounted you so if you're getting discounts on your bills you don't have to submit anything for this invoicing stage you're done after the 46 you have just three forms to do your other option is getting a reimbursement after you've paid your bills in full will depend on if your provider can do this or if the situation you know it means has for whatever situation you need to do it this way if you are doing it this way you submit the form the 472 and this is the bear form you may hear here bear tossed around a lot build entity applicant reimbursement form so you pay all your bills full price to your service provider and then you submit this form to usack and then usack reimburses you for the cost there is a deadline for this as well 120 days after the last service date or the date of the 46 that you did that also comes up at the end of October so the deadline for this for your previous year and for the and for your 46 for the current year I'll come up at the end of October at the same time I also pay attention to this and send out reminders to libraries if they if I notice they haven't done this yet haven't according to usack don't usack doesn't know how they're in the discount should be sent out I will send reminders about this as well to make sure you get your funding this is a this funding is a direct reimbursement to you to a direct deposit similar to doing when you get direct deposit for a paycheck so they only do electronic bank transfers only they don't issue checks they used to years ago but now it's just direct deposit into your bank account so you will have to if you are going to be doing reimbursements after the fact only if you're going to be doing that kind of thing where you're painful and then get reimbursed afterwards you have to do one extra form and you only do this once the 498 to give e-rate all your banking information for the banking information for the library's account and you also need to know whatever your tax ID number is for the library or the city you can get it from them for that to do your bear form if you do need to do that you actually do it through the same login that you log into epic when you log into epic you're going to have a choice when you first go in there I'm just going into your main account or going and doing a bear the bear form is still kind of they've got it through that security of logging in using that multi-factor authentication but it still lives in its own location where you have to secondly second do a second login to the they call it the legacy system to actually do your bear and this is what that login screen looks at looks like you will need a pin number personal identification number for this if you've been doing bears before you would have one if you don't you can contact usack and request one then you'll be able to do your reimbursement form after the fact if you need to so it does depend on which way you're going to get your reimbursement you might get discounts on your bills you might do a bear afterwards you might do a mixture of both and that's okay depending on the situation you will receive a notification and your search provider will receive a notification letting you know if you did do that bear reimbursement and you will get reports regularly supposed to be quarterly from usack about the funding they have submitted you put out to you so if you are supposed to be getting discounts on your bills check your bills keep an eye on them make sure it's coming through and compare them to the report that usack will send you saying here's what we gave your provider to just you know they said they were going to give you this much of a discount this is how much we reverse them make sure it matches up and that's the last form that's the last step of e-rate is that invoicing any questions right now I know I went through a lot really quickly here but this is just kind of the basics a quick overview of how it all works do you have any questions right now go ahead and type in the question section as I said I will be doing the full workshops coming up soon keep your eyes open for my announcements about those and in those sessions I will do step by step going through each of the form the form so you can see how it works throughout the whole process for submitting all of these all right so some help this is the our e-rate website that I've been talking about here at the library commission um and I'll see Nebraska.gov slash e-rate lots of resources and information on doing your e-rate and there's lots of training from you know I do my training workshops usack has training as well on their websites that I highly recommend you look at as well they have their own self-paced training that you can go through so if you don't want to wait for my workshops because I'm waiting on usack to give us some more information about that they've got their things up there that you can go through they have little videos step by steps about each form and they even break up the form into the different parts each of these videos are maybe four to eight six seven minutes long so not very long showing you demoing um how to go through all the forms and they have user guides instructions pdf so if you want to have like a piece of paper in front of you or pdf up on your screen saying here's the steps in the screenshots they have that as well so definitely look at their website for those things um on our website I have links to anything hopefully you should need training information a timeline of how the process is previous trainings I've done links to the department education website in Nebraska things you know to help guides everything you might need for doing your e-rate so take a look at that page there too for my information if you do need to you can call me as I said I am the state e-rate coordinator for public library so my job is to help you get through this holy process I will as I said I do the training I will handhold you over the phone through everything I will look at your forms to confirm the done stuff correctly before you actually certify and submit I will do all that but if you need to you can also contact OCL or USAC client service bureau that's their customer support if you need to sometimes I may have to refer you to them I can't answer your question okay and there is my contact information uh you can call the 800 number here they will pop you over to my phone line or email me at the moment due to the pandemic I am mostly working from home I'm here in the office just this morning to do the show so if you leave me a voicemail on my phone I get that as an email and I will listen to those and get back to you as soon as I can with um to help answer your question so um you won't necessarily have me answering my phone here um right now but I will definitely get back to every you as soon as I can so any other questions you have about e-rate that you want to ask me right now all right well I hope this was helpful for you as I said it's a lot of information I will be um providing this um this powerpoint will be available to you also when I put up the recording so you'll have access to all of this information afterwards as well um yes some asked did you say there'll be additional e-rate training yes there will be additional training I am I usually do longer full set full workshops about two and a half three hours I am waiting for more information from USAC from their side before I schedule my workshops but hope they just told us they they're getting things ready so hopefully within the next month or so I should see notifications from me announcements about um full e-rate training coming up it'll be um online only I'm not doing in-person training this this year due to the pandemic um and it'll be multiple times in days so that people have opportunity to um attend when might be convenient to them so that they can have be able to ask me questions live um there will be one recorded as well that will be available afterwards to watch too if if not if you're not able to get any more if you want to re-watch something so yes keep your eyes open for announcements about my training coming up all right so back over to the end of the slide page all right so um that will wrap it up I think for today's show we did go a little long sorry about that it's e-rate does have a lot to it but this is a quick overview of it um like I said look for my future trainings on that um the show is been has been recorded and this is where you will find our archives right here underneath our upcoming shows is a link to our archives today's show will be at the top of the list here they're just the most recent ones first um we'll have a recording of this on our youtube channel and as as I also said I will have the powerpoint presentation linked as well so you've been able to have access to that should have this done enough by the end of the week I will email all of you who attended and everyone who registered to let you know when it is ready we also I also push it out to our mailing lists and our very social media and compass live we do have a facebook page if you do like to use facebook you can give us a um like over there and get reminders here's a reminder about logging today's show when our recordings are available um we post them on here as well so if you do like to use facebook give us like over there on other social media we do use the hashtag and come live on um twitter instagram wherever else our social media people are doing things so you can keep an eye on our e um and compass live uh things from there as well um here in our archives I'll show you we do have a search feature here we can search our archives for all our previous shows if you want to look for a particular topic um you can look for all of them or just the most recent 12 months uh the reason we have this limit is because this is the archives for the um entire history of and compass live and compass live premiered in january 2009 so we have over 10 years worth of shows here so if you are searching the entire thing just pay attention to the original broadcast date uh sometimes things may change services and products may be different links might not work anymore some things might shut down completely since um we did the show um but we are librarians we keep things available for archives so we always have these up there for you some things do stand the test of time reading lists certain ongoing projects so just pay attention when you are looking at our archives here uh so that will wrap for today's show I hope you'll join us next week our topic is for academic libraries migrating well it's from an academic library but could be useful to anybody migrating to an open source ILS and an academic library how to celebrate successes and bounce back from problems doesn't always go smoothly um this is from uh colorado college tut library did this and uh staff uh carissa and kate will be on with us next week to talk about how they did this so please do sign up for next week's show or any other shows we have coming up we've got all our november dates booked and i'm starting to get december dates up there too so please do um join us for next week in any very future shows thank you very much everybody for being here with me this morning and hope we'll see you another time when i hope this live bye