 Okay, good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly online event. Yes, we are a webinar. You can call us that. We will not be offended. We embrace it, where we cover anything that may be of interest to librarians. We do the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but all our sessions are recorded, so if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You can always go to our website and see the recordings of all of our sessions back to the beginning and watch them there. We include the recordings. If there are any PowerPoint presentations, if there are any links, or if you are our websites that are mentioned, any handouts, all that is there afterwards in the recordings. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, any training sessions, book reviews, interviews, basically anything related to libraries, we're happy to have it on the show and share it with you. We have guest speakers that come in sometimes, and sometimes we have commission staff that do presentations, which is what we have today. Next to me, this week's show is the title, Get the Word Out with Books Are Just the Beginning dot com, which is a new program resource, you'll find out. I should campaign that we are starting here at the Engress Library Commission, and next to me I have Mary Jo Ryan, who's a communications coordinator here at the Library Commission. Hi everybody. Next to her is Joanne McManus, who is the program manager of our VTAP grant. They're both going to talk, that's where the money has come from to get this thing going. They're going to tell us all about this great new campaign that libraries can use, so I will just hand over to you guys to take it away, and we're all good to go. Thanks, Krista. Hello everybody. Good morning. It's a beautiful morning here in Lincoln. I hope it's gorgeous all across the state, I'm sure it is, because we're getting a little bit of glorious fall. We want to talk today about a campaign that we think might be useful for libraries all across the state. We've got some materials that we'll share with you, and we want to especially say that Joanne and I will be at the Nebraska Library Association, Nebraska School Librarians Association Conference next week on Thursday morning at eight o'clock. We'll be doing a session on this, and it'll be actually a session to talk about all the things that we wanted to share as a result of our VTAP grant, our library broadband builds Nebraska communities project, and then also how this resource and campaign grew out of that project. So that's what we'll be doing, and so that's our first paid political announcement for next week, and we hope you'll all join us. If you can't join us at eight o'clock, I'm thirsty, but you are coming to the conference, please do come by the Library Commission booth. Joanne and I will be there most of the time. So will a lot of our colleagues from the Library Commission, and we'll be sharing materials for this campaign and gathering your ideas about how to make it work. Anyway, let's get started. Very good. Thank you. Again, books are just the beginning. This is a concept that grew out of the library broadband builds Nebraska communities project. It's that concept we all know, which is that our customers want libraries to provide them books, and books, and more books, but also everything else. So books are just the beginning. And so how can Nebraska libraries use this campaign to communicate with their target audiences? And I guess that spacebar is not going to work. Okay. Spacebar moved it. All right. And of course, to sustain all the good work they've done in developing and enhancing public computer centers. So as of September 30, 2013, our library broadband builds Nebraska communities project moved out of the active phase and moved into the sustainability phase. But before we move into the sustainability phase, maybe Joanne, if you wouldn't mind going through some of the results and just kind of fill us in on what all happened with the active phase. Because we, of course, know that the sustainability phase will be a key to that will be the programming and communication tools. I think I moved too far here. How do I go back? Back arrow. Back arrow? Oh, Mary Jo is getting that. There it is. Sorry. I just wanted to mention to our funders, the Department of Commerce, the National Telecommunications and Information and Industry. The federal government is the one that provided us the three-year grant. They gave us $2.4 million. And we got another $1.2 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So obviously, without those two funding sources, we would have not been able to do our library broadband Bill and Melinda project. We had 147 libraries across the state involved in that project. They did have to qualify based on certain conditions that was within the federal guidelines. And so we have been working with the last three years with those 147 libraries. And we have spent, as you can see from the slide, over $2.3 million directly on equipment, software, and computer furniture. As you can see from the numbers, we supplied over 1,400 computers to those libraries, which was 126 percent of our goal. So we have surpassed our goal on all of the pieces of equipment. So we provided computers, printers, scanners, projectors, laptop charging carts, and the desk and chairs for those public computing centers. And so we have a lot of good things happening at those libraries. But whether you were a participating library and got all this wonderful equipment or not, what we have to say today is certainly going to be applicable to all libraries, about getting the word out about how people can come into your libraries. And all the different kinds of things they can do, such as use these public computer centers. One of the things I noticed, Joanne, and I know that the audience is probably noticing, is that we were way up over our goals on this equipment. Can you kind of explain that a little bit? Yes. First of all, some of the equipment did come in at a better price than we originally anticipated. But quite frankly, probably the biggest difference is that we didn't spend as much as we needed in travel and staff. And so that money then had to be spent on something. And what better than to spend it directly on the libraries that we were working with? That's great. And so I think our libraries were very excited that after we got them their original equipment that we had promised to them, we went back and we were able to fulfill other requests that they needed for other equipment that they needed for their public computing centers. I wanted to also talk about some of the other things that we did other than buying equipment. We also worked with our libraries on broadband upgrades. 122 of our libraries did upgrade their broadband speed during the time of the grant. And our goal was only 45 of our libraries. So we really surpassed how many libraries we were able to work with on that. And 31 of the libraries actually moved to a fiber. Which is fantastic. Yeah. That's fantastic. Yes. And of course, since the libraries were getting much more equipment, and of course, as every library knows, people are coming in with their computers and using your Wi-Fi. So if you don't have a fast speed, it's going to get very sluggish. So even increasing their speed, they had to do that really to maintain what they were doing there. We were really excited about being able to have that many upgrades. That was a wonderful thing that you were able to go that far. Yes. And of the 122 upgrades, their average speed moved from 3.8 meg to 40, excuse me, 20.4 meg. So that is almost a 17 meg increase average between those libraries. The library customers will notice that much. They will really notice that change. They will. And we do get a lot of comments from the library saying that people are very excited about that faster speed. And we've had examples where news media and others are coming into a library to download stories that they aren't able to download anywhere else in those communities. So some of those are really becoming some nice little hubs for those communities, not for all the other stuff, but for also that fast, fiber speed, or that upgrade speed. Now we did spend 261,000 directly on those broadband upgrades. So the libraries did benefit from that, obviously, financially as well. We also did, we were able to do electrical upgrades in 47 libraries and spent $72,000 on that. And then we were also either able to send Holly to install their equipment, or we were able to do contracts with IT professionals coming in and install those. So we spent another 51,000 on those contracts. And then, of course, providing Holly as well. And Holly answered a lot of questions like a telephone help desk for people and email help desk. Didn't she, as part of her job? Yes. And of course, when we have equipment out there, not that it isn't the library's equipment, but they know that Holly is still a good resource to call in and say, we're having some difficulties, what do you think it might be? And Holly is still more than willing to answer whatever questions that she can. And for people who are not aware, even though the active phase of the project closed, September 30th, Holly continues to work for the Nebraska Library Commission as part of our computer team. She's resourced two libraries across the state, answering their questions and giving them advice about local equipment, local, well, whatever kind of local networking issues they may have. We should have had Holly here to describe what she's going to do. But you'll find out. Yep. Also, just to give you an idea, of the 1,400 pieces of computers that we have out there, more than half of them, 789 are brand new stations. So in other words, yes, we replaced some computers, but we were also adding stations at those libraries. And so there are a lot more public computing stations in the state because of this grant. And that's only good for anybody who is traveling the state or in those communities. And we also did training. And I don't want to spend too much time on all the little facets of things. But I think one of our most, we had several partners, but probably the largest portion of our training funds were spent on the community colleges to do computer training in the libraries. And I think libraries are finding that their patrons and community folks who took advantage of those classes loved them. And I think that many of them will be looking to see how they can continue those classes or do the training themselves. But we did of those community college classes. They taught 484 classes. And those are all different kinds of classes on computer skills. It could be anything from how to do internet searching to how to use the software. Or Excel, Facebook. It was a lot of different things related to the computers. Great. Yeah, 85,000 total training hours, Joanne. Yep. Very impressive. Yep. Very impressive. And that also included not just community college classes on computers, but training that other partners did, such as the Department of Labor, did training on how to use their resume writing software or how to search their employment website. Our partner, the court system, did training on how to use the online courts. We had the Magugin Library of Medicine helping out so people could understand better how to use those medical resources. We had quite a bit of assistance from a lot of different partners. Yeah, and Center for Rural Affairs actually also taught some computer classes. They did. That's right. They did a great job, especially for women-owned businesses and Hispanic businesses. Those were really well received. Right, right. Yeah, and also the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, sort of a business focus on local people who want to start businesses. So those are the kinds of things we learned about what people like being able to receive from their library besides books. Not to say they don't want books, too, because they do. But they want everything. They want us to do everything. And in some cases, obviously, we can't do everything. But we do, I think, need to be very conscious in our decisions about what are the things we're going to offer. What can we realistically offer to our communities and being realistic in our own minds is understanding that books are really just the beginning of library service. I mean, I was just looking at the Pew Internet Report, and they said that it appears as though internet service, public access to the internet, is at the same level of expectation in our communities as books. So our community members expect us to provide the same percentage of people of our community that expect us to provide books, expect us to provide public access to the internet. That has really changed. That is not what it was 15 years ago, 10, or five years ago, even. So we know that our communities expect this of us. We've just got to figure out what can we do and how can we meet their goals and their expectations. Anybody have any questions on the Library of Broadband Builds Nebraska Communities Project before we move on to a little more about the campaign? OK, so this slide was out of place. Anyway, feel free to type in any questions or type in a request to speak on your microphone. We'll be happy to break into anything we're doing at any point. Basically, after Joanne finished talking about the active phase, we want to talk about the sustainability phase. We have a team of people who have been working on the Library of Broadband Builds Nebraska Communities Project. And Richard Miller from Library Development here at the Library Commission is one of the people on that team. And he's always bringing us back to the question of sustainability. It has been an important issue for him all the way through. And at one point, we were all talking about this. And we talked about what are the things that could help libraries with sustainability? How do we help libraries when they need to replace a computer and we don't have federal funds to pay to replace it? Or when the community expects resume writing workshops, but yet the State Department of Labor can't get out to them? Or they expect workshops on how to use Excel and the community college doesn't have federal funds to pay for their staff person to come out to do it? So we started to think about, well, what are the things that really build sustainability and help a community feel strongly that this is such an important service that community funds should go into it? And we think that a key to that sustainability, as we were all talking around the table, was programming the kinds of training we've been talking about and communication, being able to communicate that this is what your library is to your community. So we thought, well, we could continue to work on programming issues and we will, but also we should probably have some communication tools that could be used for sustainability. And so we began to think about this concept of books are just the beginning. The idea being that in no way are we dismissive of the role of books in libraries, but we know that there's a lot more happening in libraries. And I hope that's what we've been able to do as we've developed this project. We've developed a website, which is really a WordPress site, which many of you are familiar with. It's a very simple site and it has some very simple tools for you to use in any way you want to. And we're gonna go through this website. I've got slides, but I think I'd rather go through it live. I've got slides just in case it doesn't work so well. I'll try to go through it live, but let's see what happens when we go through it live. Okay, this is the live website. As you can see right here front and center or I guess front left, we have a link for you to watch videos because actually these videos are for your customers, your library, your community customers. Maybe these are for people who've never stepped foot in the library so they can see what the modern library is like. We also have a link here for people, those customers who come here and go, what the heck is this? Just search if they want to. We have a homepage, which is very, very simple. The homepage tells what this is all about. Books are just the beginning. Our libraries offer books and so much more. These are themes that we've actually been using over the years a lot. Now we're really focusing on them in a campaign. For the local person who maybe doesn't even know where their library is, it says right here, click on the library directory left, define libraries near you. So if they do that, it takes it to the library and commission directory. Let's see if I can get back. Yes, isn't that nice and that works. Okay, for a person who wants to know more about what's going on, there are library blog posts to the right. And right now we've put in a few library blog posts but what we are inviting Brasco Libraries to do is to sign up to be a blogger on this blog and to enter your library blog post so that if there are things that are going on that demonstrate in your library, books are just the beginning, you can put it in our blog. See, there's the blog post and if you click on one, it takes you to the actual blog page. And this blog page will give people the opportunity to comment, even if they're not registered. But if you want to post a blog post, you really do need to get ahold of us and we'll give you a registration. And then the last thing on this page is a feed from newspaper articles. And as you all know, everything that goes in the newspaper right now about your libraries can be fed from their web pages to, we are very happy that we are able to do this. And just to give you an idea, these are just a few things that have been in Nebraska newspapers. And here's one right here, resume database classes at Carney Public Library. Let's go to that one. Obviously, books are just the beginning at the Carney Public Library. They have resume database classes. So you can see this is a great opportunity if a person gets here, comes to this, books are just the beginning, they can find out what's going on in Nebraska. They're gonna be driven to this because of one main reason is that our videos are here. And these videos, again, are not intended to show everything that goes on in every library in Nebraska. But just to give people a quick idea of what does that really mean, books are just the beginning. Well, this is what it means. You can go on and turn off the video. These in place where you can explore ideas, creativity, fun games, and a variety of great resources. The best part is that it's all free. What do you think of when you hear the word library? Books, right? Well, at the library, books are just the beginning. Look at all these books. Books are not only greatly to learn, but also a fun way to spend your time no matter where you are. The library offers internet access to everyone. Look up information for your homework. Get health information, access government services, read some logs, or visit your favorite social media sites. You can check out DVDs and even games to enjoy at home. Audio and e-books are awesome. They allow you to enjoy your books on your favorite devices while you're in the car, on the go, or at home, relaxing on your couch. Yes, the library even has games. Aside from a variety of classic board games, the library also has fun console games for you to enjoy while you're here. Need help with your homework? The library is a great place to stop in for resources to help you with those tricky homework questions you have. Looking for a job? The library can also help you find jobs that match your skills and even improve your resume. So as it turns out, the library is much more than just books. From free internet access to audio books, games, DVD rentals, homework help, and a variety of other awesome resources, the library is a pretty cool place. So the next time you think about the library, remember, books are just the beginning. So it seemed to us that if a person came here because they saw a pencil, for example, with this website on it, or because they saw a mouse pad at the public computer center with this website on it, they would start to get some ideas about what's going on in Nebraska libraries that really demonstrate that books are just the beginning. If there are any questions about any of this, I went over that pretty fast. Let me go back to the videos just real quick and show that we do have a video that is closed captioned in Spanish and a version that's closed captioned in Arabic. If there are languages in your libraries that you think would be good for us to see if we could get the video closed captioned in, and that's a very real possibility. We'd have to see what we could do about funding because as you know, we don't have any more funding from the federal government for this project, but it's possible that if there are other languages, we might be able to get it closed captioned in other languages. So we got to thinking, all right, here we've got this video and we've got this great site that shows people what's going on in libraries all across the state. How can we drive people to this site? How can we get this message across? So part of what we decided to do is put together a campaign packet for libraries to use locally in any way they really want to use it in any way they think it might work best because as we begin to talk about this, we thought who are the best marketers to really communicate the message books are just the beginning. Well, of course, one answer would be that the Nebraska Library Commission could do some marketing things to communicate this message. And in many cases, we have done some statewide campaign work. However, what we really know is that in local communication, local people do the best job. It just never fails that we do all kinds of things on the state level and one visit from you, the local librarian to your radio station can get PSAs played 150 times. Where they never got played before by us sending them out and sending emails and reminding them and asking them how they like to receive PSAs or whatever it is, we just haven't had the success that a local person has and that makes all the sense in the world. And I think too, a local person might listen to it more if they recognize that it's coming from a local library rather than from a statewide agency. Exactly, I agree. So what we've asked ourselves is what can we do to create some materials that are generic enough so that local libraries can use them and can customize them and use them. And then we also said, what's the next thing? We have to help libraries find ways to ask the question just to ask. If your local people don't ask you about what you're doing at the library and you don't get the chance to tell them, then a lot of these messages don't really resonate until they hear from you, the local people. So how can you use these materials? Well, to start out with, we have a campaign folder with tools for your library staff and volunteers. And the folders will be available at the Nebraska Library Association, Nebraska's School Librarian's Association Conference. Wow, that's mouth-watering. That's next week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be there, they'll be folders at the booth. And of course, we'll be handing them out to everyone who attends our session on Thursday at 8 a.m. We have to really put a lot of plugs in for that, don't we, Joanne, because that's so early. I hope you guys are all coming early to the conference and you'll come to our session. The idea being that this campaign folder should have some tools that you can use and you can customize to make them work for you. We'll also have some multiple copies of materials for you to pick up at the booth. In the folder, you'll find mouse pads. Those are really great for your public computer centers, for people to sit down when they're using the public computer center and they're waiting for something to link up, they look down at it and they go, books are just the beginning, welcome to your Nebraska Library. That's the message we wanna send. So we hope that you'll like these and you'll be able to use these. We also have some buttons and you can't see because the camera's so far away from us, we're wearing them. The buttons are, I think emblematic of what we're trying to do here. So I'll spend a little time on these. The buttons are not literal. They are purposefully open to interpretation by you, your staff and your volunteers because we hope you'll wear these buttons and that it will cause your customers to ask you, well, what's that all about? Because it says just ask on these buttons and it's got a icon that might not be as specific as some things because we want people to ask you and you can interpret these anyway you want. Like Chris and I were talking today, this one here that looks like a speaker, if someone asks you about that and you're wearing it, you or your staff or your volunteer is wearing it, they can interpret it anyway. They can say, well, our library offers free Wi-Fi. So if you wanted to bring your computer in and hook it up to our Wi-Fi, you could do that or they could say our library offers free audio books. And if you want a book that you can put on a CD that's on a CD and you can flip into your CD player in your car when you're taking a trip, we offer that. Or our library offers free audio books that you can download from home at night in your pajamas when you run out of books and you wanna listen to a book. You can download it through our overdrive program. So it's purposefully a little vague because we want you and your staff and your volunteers who are wearing these to use these as conversation starters. So- And you can even look at that and say, and I'm happy to come and speak at your service organization. Exactly, yeah. I mean, as you start in, you could say, for example, the one with the airplane. Now that could be very specific. You could say, oh, we can help you sign up on travel sites and you can plan your own vacation on a travel site. And that could be a real transformative thing for a person to be able to do that themselves and make those kinds of plans themselves if they've never used a computer to do that. Or you could take that in an entirely different direction. And you could say, our library helps your imagination take flight. We have programs for adults on scrapbooking. We have programs for children on creative activities. So you could go any direction you want with any of this. I think it provides that kind of trigger for conversation. And you're starting to get the idea, the whole point of this campaign is for to enable you to talk to your community about what the library's all about. And of course, with the internet, you can travel the world right from your library. There you go, yeah. You don't even have to leave the library. We open up the world to you, exactly. So again, we do have some other materials, which are a little more traditional, what you usually see. These are, the books are just the beginning bookmarks. You usually see bookmarks. And I scanned this yesterday. And unfortunately, the person who helps with our scanning wasn't there, but we tried our best to do this, but we didn't get it big enough. You can't read it. But you can see that these are stickers that you can put right on these bookmarks. They are clear plastic mailing labels. And you can have them say anything you want. You can customize it to your library and what you do. Exactly, yeah, customize it to your library and use these as an opportunity to hand these out and get people to know about, but obviously visiting your library. But over on this column I've got some other things such as sign up for health insurance with the new health insurance plan. We have special health available Thursdays at noon. Or this one over here says resume writing workshop, Monday night, October 24th. You can just customize these for specific events and hand them out. It gives you an opportunity to have a conversation with somebody and say, oh, you might be interested in this, this is a reminder. Here's a bookmark to remind you about the class coming up. Additionally, there are business cards. You can put anything you want using, again, those sticky labels, clear plastic labels. You can say call your library. You can say friend your library. You can say Susie Q reference library. And here's my email address. You can put anything you want on these and use them to facilitate that conversation some more. Continue facilitating that conversation with your customers that come in the library, but also those that haven't come in the library. We have posters that you can use and you can again customize them using the sticky labels or any way you want. Again, the message is books are just the beginning. Welcome to your Nebraska library. So the important thing I wanted to share here is that these are just tools and what we need to do is share the message directly through outreach. And again, a lot of what we do with these tools usually is using in the library. I want to encourage everybody to go where the customers are, partner with organizations, just like Joanne said, make a short speech at an organization. Ask your staff what organizations they belong to and if they would be willing to make a short presentation at an organization they belong to. So you enlist them as your marketing professionals, your staff, your volunteers, your board members. And if you don't have a lot of staff, sometimes you have a patron that comes in all the time knows all about the library and they might be able to be willing to do that as well. Yeah, maybe they just haven't been asked. I mean, they might love the library so much they'd be willing to talk to the city council or they'd be willing to talk to the Rotary Club because they're a Rotary member. That kind of thing is really very useful and this offers you the opportunity to do it. So I have to do this sometimes. Yep, sometimes that's it. For some of you, your radio station in town has interview shows. I really recommend you try and get on those. Sometimes they're early in the morning. I know I've been on our radio and TV interview shows way earlier than I ever wanted to. But believe me, people watch them and listen to them. It's shocking how many people have said, heard you on the radio this morning? I'm like, really? You were up there early? And they were. So I mean, people do, they do it. Again, you can co-sponsor community events and activities. You know these things. These are not new. But this is just a reminder that these tools can help you do this kind of outreach, including off-site delivery of library services and off-site displays. For those of you who have laptops and you want to take them out to a senior center or community center, that's a wonderful way to get people to know what more is going on in the library. And books are just the beginning. So how do we create this sales and marketing force? Well, I think that is, this is a word I made up, in reach. That's not a real word. But that is the thing that Joanne and I were talking about, is that we have to reach in to our staff and ask them if they are interested and willing to do more. So many of them, I think, would. Many of them, maybe, they come to work at the library and that's all that they really feel they can do. But others are willing and able to go out and to share the message of the library with their friends, family, and the groups they belong to. And I think you'll find, too, that a lot of people who might not be so willing, if you educate them about different facets that you want them to share, when people ask them about their jobs and they're just chit-chatting, they will spread the message, even if they didn't tell you that they're willing to do it formally. Right, even if it's the card group or whatever. It doesn't have to be a formal organization. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to help our staff, our volunteers, and everyone who's associated with the library to be part of who markets and sells the library to our community. And if we're all using the same message, books are still just the beginning, then I think that will help, because that gives them something to start out with, books are just the beginning. Of course, we have books. We have all kinds of other things going on. I think your volunteers, again, some of them come in just-to-shelf books. And that's all they want to do. Or they joined your friends group just because they wanted to work on the library book sale. And that's all they want to do. But there are also some who would be willing to do a short-term project like this. And one of the interesting things that we know about Baby Boomer age volunteers is that they're very attracted to short-term projects. They're very attracted to the idea, hey, I could go in. And these six weeks that I'm not that busy after Christmas, I could spend some time doing some things around the community to get the word out about the library. I could do that. And then I'd be done. Maybe I'd do another project later. Maybe I'd sign up for another six weeks. But at least they can see the beginning and the end. And that's a great thing, I think, to pitch to volunteers. And it's always good to pitch it during a time when they're not as busy, such as after the holidays, whatever. Again, Joanne mentioned library customers. And one of the things we know from the research that OCLC has done is that there are library customers who consider themselves super customers. They wouldn't use that word necessarily. But they come to the library a lot. They view the library as highly important in their lives. They perhaps come to every story hour or every lap sit with their children. They are what we would maybe call super customers. But they don't actually do anything else. And so maybe they are the people that we would ask to wear these just ask buttons. We would ask them, books are just the beginning at our library. Would you wear a just ask button for two weeks and tell people about how books are just the beginning and how you use the library? Or wear it on your code all winter and tell people. The buttons are really for anybody who will talk about the library. And it's a way to get them committed. If you can get them to say, yeah, I'll wear that button for my winter coat this winter. And I don't talk to anybody that wants to know what books are just the beginning is about. I think we have to admit to ourselves that one or two of us or even a dynamic committed library director can't do everything. And that part of what we do is go out and help find people who will help us. And teachers and students would also be good as far as getting the word out. Yeah, the main thing is they have to know that to wear the button means they're a messenger, but they will give the message that they will tell everybody about how they use the library for gaming, how they use the library, or whatever resources they access. So that's the main thing. So what tools can we give them? Well, one of the things that I would suggest is that, and this can take no more than 15 or 20 minutes. But if you, the library director, were to sit down with some staff and a couple volunteers, maybe just over coffee and start brainstorming, what is this audience that we're trying to reach? What do we have in that toolkit or other tools that might help them? Who can we ask to do it? When would we ask them to do it? And what would we expect to be the situation that we would find? Well, in the case of that resume writing workshop, we might say that we're looking at adults in their 20s and 30s. OK, that doesn't mean those are the only people who would come, nor does it mean it's the only people we would talk to about it. But it does mean that we feel there are adults in their 20s and 30s that would need to use our resume writing workshop. One way, this is just one way we're going to try to reach people about the resume writing workshop would be to use those business cards, to ask our circulation staff and volunteers, everybody who's at the circulation desk, every day for a month, to hand out those business cards that have got the sticker on them that say resume writing workshop October 30th, 7.30 PM. Hand them out to people and say just a few words about this resume writing workshop. And what we say is, hey, the library has a lot of things going on. One of them is a resume writing workshop. You may not need this. This might not at all affect you. But I'm going to give you a card. And I'm going to ask you if you wouldn't mind giving it to someone that you think might benefit from this resume writing workshop. And just help us out get the word out about the library. That's one little thing that you ask a staff to do every day for a month. And we might hope that we'd have 50% more workshop participants at our resume writing workshop this month than we had last month. That's just one thing. And that is something that can come out. And you start brainstorming. People are going to come up with a variety of audiences for this resume writing workshop and a variety of different things we can use, and who can help, and when they would do it, and what we think the results might be. So that's what I would suggest. I know it looks like it's paperwork, but it really isn't. You just print this little thing out. These slides will be up on our archives, where we archive this session. And you'll be able to print this little thing out. And it's so simple to do. It's actually kind of fun. It's almost like a little party game. Have coffee and brownies with your staff and some volunteers and some people that you think might be interested in helping your brainstorm this. And just do a little brainstorming session about how we can get more people to our resume writing workshop, or whatever it is. It could be anything. It could be how we can get more people to come to the gaming night that we're holding for adolescents at the library in the conference room or the community room. So it could be anything, whatever you think you'd like to increase participation in, or whatever you think you'd like to communicate that the library is doing. And in some cases, maybe your participation is pretty good. You just want the rest of the world to know about it. Maybe you had 10 people at the resume writing workshop. But you want the rest of the world to know that you're part of the solution to unemployment in your community. So you get the word out. Maybe you'll have more people. Maybe you'll have more people just knowing that the library is part of the solution. So I guess I just wanted to show our Nebraska Library Commission reference desk staff. They've got their just ask buttons on. The picture is a little glow circle on there. Yeah, see, they've got their little buttons on. They're ready if someone asks. And I just wanted to also let you know that Joanne and I are very open to answer any questions, to help you in any way that if you're thinking about how you might use this. We'd love to have questions now, if you have any. If anybody has any questions or comments or ideas or thoughts, type it into the questions section of your GoToWebinar interface. And I've got that all here. I can monitor that and pass it on. Or if you have a microphone, just say, I'm UV. And you can ask your question that way, yes. You're allowed to talk to you. Yeah, absolutely. We'd love to have you talk. Again, I'll say while I'm waiting for your questions that Joanne and I will be at the Nebraska Library Association, Nebraska School Library Association annual conference in Carney next week. We'll be there Thursday at 8 o'clock. We have a session coming up. And we'll be talking some more about the Library Broadband Builds Nebraska Communities Project and what we learned and what our libraries that participated in it learned about public computing centers and training and programming and communication with their communities. And we'll also talk a little bit more about this campaign. And at the booth, we will be handing out campaign packets for you as well as some multiple materials that you might need, you might want to use. I miss bookmarking things on here for the archives afterwards. Everything that comes in the packet, you've got one there, right? Is that the bookmarks, the pens? Let's go back. And there's also pencils. Pencils, oh, cool. So we've got the packet, which is the tools for our marketers. They're the library staff and volunteers. You can't see. I know it's so bad because you can't see it from the camera so far away from us. We're here. Hello. And then inside the packet, we've got mouse pads. We've also got buttons that your staff and volunteers can use. We also got bookmarks that you can sticker and customize in any way you want to advertise classes you've got coming up or just send people to your website. We've got business cards, which again, you can customize. They're smaller and they allow you to put information on there about your staff personally if they want to get a personal call, which some do. Some have want the calls to come to the reference desk and ask for a solution. Yeah, so you can do that. Or your library phone number or your website or your Facebook, whatever you're trying to use these for. Posters. And both the bookmarks and the cards are really nice laminated pieces. So if you put on your library phone number, they can carry that a long time before it. They're heavy duty. They're heavy duty and they're on glossy paper. So they're fancy. They're kind of fancy. We were happy to get something kind of fancy. Posters are nice. You can put these up anywhere. I mean, I would definitely use these in your community centers, in your ask the schools to put them up. I have had people tell me they had great luck putting up library posters in bars. Their bars often have a section where you can put any kind of poster you want, or even let you put it in the window of the bar. We've been doing that for years and I've had a lot of people come back and say, that has been pretty good. And he said, there are pencils as well. There are pencils as well. Yeah. The pictures of those. No pictures. Yeah, I didn't scan. I had enough trouble scanning those flat things. I didn't scan the pencils. So then as a package, you'll get all those different things. You'll get some samples. Yeah, and we'll also have some quantities then. If you know you're going to use, well, say, for example, you know you've got something coming up at the library and you want a handful of pencils. I would advise you, for example, with pencils to do the same thing as I said with the business card. To give them to people and say, here's two. Here's one for you. I want you to give one to somebody that you think needs to know that the library, that books are just the beginning at the library, that needs to know about what's going on at the library. I mean, so much of what we do, we have a stack of bookmarks sitting out on our circulation desk. And we just think, trust that that's going to work for us. I guess I'm saying here, we really want to encourage you in the interest of sustainability, in the interest of library service growing and going forward in your community to have that conversation, even if it's one sentence. It says, boy, we need help. We need people who love the library to tell other people. Makes a difference. It does, especially if it's someone who normally uses the library, but doesn't necessarily tell anybody. Or use it for their one purpose. They don't realize there's other things that they can get. I see that a lot of people. There's one thing they come to the library for, and they love it, and they rave about it, but then they suddenly just go, wait, you have DVDs too? Yeah. No idea. I've just been getting the CDs in the book, so this is great. Well, and I've had people, actually, I have a friend who actually used the library to develop a business that he has been very successful in. And I asked him, I said, so how did you do this? He said, oh, I did research on my own. I researched this. I said, really? So where'd you research it? Oh, at the library. I'm like, oh my gosh. The library helped you start this business? He said, well, I guess they did. Yeah, I did it on my own. But yeah, I guess I went to the library. We do have one question. Janet Sorenson, who's from Elmwood Public Library here. Hi, Janet. And this is true. What about for libraries who are unable to attend the conference to get these packets? OK, yes. For libraries who are unable to attend the conference, we're going to try and find ways to distribute these packets. We have great partners in our library systems. And hopefully, there will be opportunities and events going on in the systems where they can deliver. And one of the problems we have is that because we don't have any federal money anymore, we're a little short on postage money. And so we will try to find ways to get them to you if you're not coming to the conference. And this is because there's so much bulky stuff in your mouse pads and pens and things that's going to be more expensive than mail. We're talking about this fat packet. Yeah. So physically more, too, if there's any meetings or the annual meetings that the systems have. Absolutely. Some of the groups that get together may be the castle group. But when the librarians go together, people are handing out to them. We'll try and get with commission staff. We're going to these meetings. We're going to be in the area to deliver a box load of them to give out to libraries. So it'll be more of a physical person to person delivery. Yeah, it'll be just like we're asking you to do, person to person. But we will try. And if you want them, maybe, if you want to, and I'm just trying to give you a jerk saying this on your behalf, contact Mary Jo or Joanne and say, I'm going to be at so-and-so meeting. And I'd love to have these. I want some of these. What's the nearest meeting near me? And we can figure out and coordinate something logistically that can get them to you. So if you want some packet, contact Mary Jo and say, I'm at so-and-so library. I want a packet. How can I get one? Absolutely. Where's there going to be somewhere near me that I can pop over to to grab, pick one up? And also, if you'd like to be registered so that you can log in as a blogger on our blog and put your blog post up, you can contact us too. And we'll make sure you get registered. So you just need to use your ID and password. And we'll give you that so you can do it. Thanks for the question. That was a good question. Sadly, we can't mail them out to everyone, which we wish we could. Yeah. Any other questions, comments, thoughts from the group? Kathy Berman from Library. She just says they just want to say thank you for putting all this together for them. Well, and thank you. Hope to see you next week. I always like it when we go to conference and we get to see people face to face. We do so much phone call work around here. Yeah, I got that last week a lot at the Association of Rural and Small Libraries conference. Oh, you're the one that sends the emails. I see all your emails like every week. And now I know what your face looks like. That's great. So it doesn't look like any urgent unless any questions are coming in. You've got the contact information. You know where to find us. You do. You do. Yeah, I think unless you guys have any more. No, we hope to see them at conference. Yeah, see you all next week at conference. I'll be there too, wandering around, presenting, doing nothing. So thank you, Krista, for driving and navigating. All right, so thank you very much, Joanne and Mary Jo. That was very cool, yeah. I had been hearing a lot about this campaign, but all I knew was the title. Because the website wasn't up. The materials hadn't come in yet. All this is like barely last minute that we finally got it in time for today. But I'm glad to see all the great things that have been coming up in now that I can wear around. Yeah, so you can be one of our messengers, one of our marketing messengers. So that will wrap it up for this week's show. Thank you very much, everyone, for attending. Let's switch over here. And I hope you'll join us next week. Just switch keyboards here. This show has been recorded, so the recording will go up sometime later this afternoon, possibly. So you'll be all notified when that is ready. Next week, actually, I misspoke. We will not have Encompass Live. The one week during the year that we do not do a show is when we have our state conference. So there will be no Encompass Live next week. Go to the NLA-NSLA conference. We do have a session scheduled for October 16th, but I just got the final details hammered out right before I came here to the meeting to do it. So it's not on the schedule yet, but it will be up there as soon as I can get it up right after this or this afternoon. Speaking of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries conference that was last week, we do scholarships, continue education and training scholarships that Laura Johnson, the CE coordinator, here gives out every year. And this year, all of the scholarships were given to attend the ARSL conference in Omaha, because it was right here in our home state. ARSL travels around the country. So all of the grants for continued and training went to that. And she's gonna bring some people who attended on the show to talk about their experience at the conference and to talk about what it was like on this national conference that came here to our state. And she actually gave out, I got the final number for it, 43 grants to go to ARSL. I had no idea it was that many. Fabulous. I was hearing lower numbers, like, oh, 30 or so. I'm like, that's awesome. And then she said, no, I've got a spreadsheet here. There's 43. That is awesome. Really? So we had 42 people go receive grants for that. So she's gonna have people on next week to talk about, not next week, sorry, October 16th. We're off next week. October 16th will be Reflections on ARSL. So it will be up there for you to register for it as soon as I get it in there. We got to that. We are having Marie Stanger, who is also a speaker at ARSL. She's gonna be on our show. She is won the Besma Library in America Award for 2013 from Library Journal, and she's gonna be on the show to talk about her library, the Southern Area Public Library in West Virginia. They are the smallest library in the state, and they won the award. That's great. Pretty awesome. Yeah, she did good. So that will wrap it up for today. Hope you'll join us for our future shows. We're having some, okay. Yes, Encompass Live is also on Facebook. So if you are a Facebook user also, go ahead and like us there, and you will be getting notifications of when shows are coming up, when shows are starting, when recordings are available. So if you're a big Facebook user, join us there. Other than that, thank you very much, and we will, for attending today, and we'll see you on future episodes, and that wraps up. Bye-bye. Bye, thank you. Bye.