 and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Christa Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that would be of interest to libraries. The show is broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but we do record the show. So if you are unable to join us in Wednesday mornings, that's fine, you can just go to our website and watch our recordings at your convenience. And at the end of today's show, I will show you where those archives are available for you and where today's show will be. We do a mixture of things here on both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So do share our website and our recordings with anyone, friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, even, who you think may have some interest in our topics. We do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of sources or products. Really the only criteria, if we can even call that, that we have is something related to libraries, something libraries are doing, something we think that we'd be doing, some new service or program we'd like to introduce. And we cover all types of libraries here. Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for all libraries in Nebraska. So public, academic, K-12 special, we've had directional facility libraries on. If you're a library, come see us. We do have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do do presentations some weeks for some that are very Nebraska centric services or products we're offering, but we do bring in guest speakers. And that's what we have this morning. We have a group here. And as you can see, we're in multiple locations today. And our topic for this morning is reading diversely. And you can see we have members of the Nebraska Library Association's Diversity Committee with us. And I'm just gonna let you guys introduce yourself with Ed and Joel around. And they're gonna talk about books that we can read ourselves again, our libraries that are just more diverse and what we might be able to use to. So I'm just gonna hand over to you guys to take it away, introduce where you're from, talk about what you're doing. I don't know who's up first. I think Jessica was starting. So actually what you wanna introduce yourselves first from the first slide there? I'm Angela Greger from the University of Nebraska-Domahawk. I'm Elisa Cruz from King Memorial in Vermont, Nebraska. And remotely with us. And Ike Ramirez, Norfolk Public Library. And Jessica Chamberlain, Norfolk Public Library. Great, all right, so. And as we're doing the presentation, if you have any specific diverse books that you'd like to recommend to the group, go ahead and post them in the comments and we can share that list at the end. We can read through the books that you're sharing in the comments. And also if you have a fantastic resource for finding diverse books, we'd also like to hear about that. We can compile these documents and share them with all registered attendees and post them to the website later too. All right, Jessica. All right. So we just wanted to have a brief introduction to why reading diversely is so important for all of us. And this is just a nice concise quote that sort of sums up our thoughts about it in that everyone needs to see both windows and mirrors. We need to be able to have great literature, great books and movies and TV shows that all reflect our own experience of the world. But we also want to expose ourselves and deliberately seek out things that are different than we are so that we can have that window into other people's lives and helping us build that empathy and understanding for the lives of others. So just a little background on why we think this is so important. You can go to the next slide. Here we go. So I wanna talk a little bit about books with that had characters that were on the autism spectrum. This is a diversity that obviously isn't about racial or ethnic experience, but about the experience of being on the autism spectrum. So I'm just gonna book talk a few of these and then, so the first one is the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. This is a pretty popular title. It's been around for a long time. It was published in 2003 and for many of us, it was probably the first book that we read that had a narrator that was on the autism spectrum. So this story is about Christopher. He's a 15-year-old boy and when his neighbor's dog is murdered, he goes about investigating the crime. Pieces of the mystery are interspersed with Christopher's thought processes and the reader not only finds out what happened to the dog, but what happened to Christopher's mother as well. I love reading books that have narrators that see the world differently because I think we all have a lot to learn about each other and this book certainly provides that peak into another world, but it's also just a really good story. The next title is The Rosie Project by Graham Simpson. This was published in 2014. It's a very light-hearted story. It's a little romance comedy that centers around the life of Don Tillman. He's a brilliant professor on the autism spectrum and when he decides it's time to get married, he embarks on what he calls the Wife Project to find his perfect mate. This of course includes a 16-page survey that people are supposed to fill out to find out if they are eligible for the Wife Project. His path crosses with Rosie who although he immediately disqualifies her from the Wife Project, he does agree to help her find her biological father in what he terms the father project. We all know where the story is headed. There are no big surprises, but it's still a delightful little dessert of a book. All right, the next slide. All right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steak Larson. This was published in 2008 and it's a real change of pace from the last title and maybe one that is on the fringes of this category. It's a dark Scandinavian crime drama and it's not for the faint of heart. Journalist Michael B. Fist is hired to find the truth behind a 40-year-old missing child case and coming to his aid is Lisbeth Salander, a genius hacker whom he speculates is on the autism spectrum. Together they unravel secrecy and corruption and even an unexpected connection between themselves as they solve the crime. And the last title that I have is The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin. This was published in 2013. It's a nonfiction title and it's told mostly in first person narration, although Temple Grandin did have a co-author. It's mostly told from her point of view. She describes what her childhood was like being diagnosed with brain damage instead of autism and she really makes a case for the importance of accurate diagnosing of autism as well as for improved treatments, especially for the sensory sensitivities that can have a debilitating effect for some people. She gives the reader a glimpse into her different way of thinking and how it can be an advantage and she even includes a list of potential jobs for those who think like she does. And on the next slide, there's a couple of book lists that'll be available to... The bookmarks are saved, I believe. So those are available just to find some other lists that have lots of titles with characters who have autism. The next slide though talks about how there is a real... There's not a lot of representation in a lot of these characters. They're primarily male, they're primarily white and it's difficult to find not only female characters but characters who are African American or Latino. So that's certainly an issue in a lot of this literature. And so these are a few articles, a lot of them center on TV and it's certainly an issue in TV as well that autistic characters are primarily played as young white men. So it's certainly an issue and certainly something that needs better representation broadly but those are my titles. My name is Melissa. Okay, good. I'm Melissa. So I just have three books that I'm gonna go over today although I could talk for a lot longer about this topic. My first one, it kind of came to my attention because as we started work with the diversity committee we started challenging each other to read something that we haven't read before. So I don't read a lot of nonfiction books and I challenged myself to read something nonfiction which is a memoir. And I'm glad that I read this book because it changed the way that I see the world and it made me, I guess, grateful for what I don't have to face or overcome. This author, Gerard Conley, I guess you could read what I wrote. He invites us into extremely personal journey. He writes about how he struggled. He knew he was gay and he struggled against it because his family was very, very very religious and that was pretty much something that he was told was wrong. He was told he was a sinner, that he was sick. And so reading about that and how he tried to change himself and to tell himself he was wrong is just amazing to me because I can't imagine thinking that way. And his parents, I'm not gonna try to give spoilers or anything because I want everybody to read this as they can, but he's forced into conversion therapy and that I almost couldn't read it. It was very, it was pretty intense to read what he went through and like again, like going back to being told that you are a sick person because it's something that makes you new. I just, I can't even comprehend it. So yeah, I definitely recommend this book. Stick with it because you'll learn that he learned, in the end, he learns that he can accept who he is and he learns forgiveness and it's just a good book. So I highly recommend that one. The next one that I will talk about is Sherman Alexi. Sherman Alexi is a well-known award-winning author. He's from Spokane, he's Spokane native. This is his newest book of poems and short stories. This guy will write about anything. There's nothing that's off the list for him. I mean, he mostly writes about the Native American struggles, the way of life, especially on their reservation and how they live in just poverty and just conditions that most of us don't even have to really think about. He writes about family issues, there's violence, there's addiction and it's just, there's nothing that he doesn't write about which is what amazes me about him. And he's very true, he doesn't care if he says things that people are gonna cringe at. He's just a terrific writer. Anything that you can read by him is highly recommended. I'm actually reading another book of his poetry right now. So yeah, this is, and it's a quick read. It's kind of, it looks like a thick book but it's pretty quick because it's mostly poems and a few short stories. In my final book, I couldn't get the, what do you call it, the cover because I couldn't get a copyright off the internet. But anyway, it's called Queer There and Everywhere, 23 People Who Changed the World. And this came off of our diversity committee challenge as well because this is non-fiction. And so this book is really fascinating. And it's 23 People Who Challenged basically the gender norms and the rules that were in society at the time. Things that I didn't know about. They talked about Frida Kahlo and Eleanor Roosevelt. And then just, it's a new book. It's historical, but it's very modernized in the way that she writes it. So it's fun to read and it makes you feel very glad that there were people that were doing these things ahead of their time that have made life a little bit better for people that are in this, I guess, the struggle still. So this was a really neat book and I hope she writes more books. And that's my presentation. Ooh, it's me. Okay. So I've always sort of just, if a book has essays or whatever, I'm just kind of like whatever. But I read a book recently, a collection of essays that really changed my mind and made me want to try more. So especially the personal essay I found because they're kind of short, they're very to the point, but if a well-written essay can expand into make connections in ways that we wouldn't normally see from another person's perspective. And something as I was getting ready for this that I learned was that essay also can just mean an attempt or a trial or like I have the definition up there so you can read it. And I thought that was really cool because it's an essay can sort of just be seen as the author's attempt to show us how they interact with the world and how the world approaches them. And I'm really interested now in reading more essay and finding topics and authors that are diverse and can sort of be a way to open up my own worldview. And so let's see, you can go to the next slide. I just liked this quote. I'm not gonna read it to you, but you can just appreciate it. Basically like, yeah, academics are all, you know, highfalutin with their language, but when we get down into the reality of our lived experiences, you know, all of that language doesn't necessarily give you the crux of another person's lived experience. And personal essay, what Huxley is trying to say is that the essay is kind of bringing it down to reality and just putting another person's experience out there. So let's see. You can go to the next slide. So each one of these is linked either to the publisher or to an article or review that I found that I thought could also lead you into finding some other titles from diverse authors and that sort of thing. So the first book, they can't kill us until they kill us by Hanif Abdurraqib is actually the book that I read that changed my perspective on essay collections and made me want to read more and seek more out. So he blends music critique, personal experience, sports commentary, social criticism and commentary and offers a gripping observations with a poet's eye for connection and detail. He is a poet. He grew up in Ohio, Columbus in the punk scene. He's African-American, his family's Muslim. So he has this like rich experience and is able to make connections to into our society in really interesting ways. He writes about music that I didn't know about or under, I didn't listen to punk. I don't listen to hip hop very often. And so I was able to use it also as a way to further educate myself when he would be writing about something I didn't know. I could use that as a way to, you know, I'd go to Google or YouTube and look them up and kind of just get a feel for it. The title is taken from a sign left at a memorial in Ferguson, Missouri. So he gets into a whole range of topics from poverty and substance abuse and suicide and race, transphobia. And he talks about these other overarching human experiences of grieving and surviving and thriving in this world that sometimes feels like it's against us. And he does it so beautifully. When I was reading it, I was like, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to observe my life with such detail or like lyrical beauty. It was just amazing. So I just want to read like a little excerpt from it just so you can get an idea of like how he writes in his, in it. I want everyone to read this book honestly. So this is from an essay called On Paris. So in 2015, there was a series of terrorist attacks in Paris and one of them happened at a concert. And so he's writing about how we use, people can use live music as a way to find safety and security for themselves. It's sort of an oasis for themselves within their world. And what happens when there's violence and a terrorist attack in that space. And so a couple of lines. It is a luxury to see some violence as terror and other violence as necessary. It is a luxury to be unafraid and analyze the very real fear of others. It's from page 222. And then on the next page, another line. There are a few things like being feared simply due to having a body. And he's talking about in this particular case, skin color, the way that we dress. Sometimes, you know, people target that. And I thought that was a really like that I stopped. There's a lot of moments in this essay collection that I just stopped and had to sit with this. And then the next is just a little longer paragraph. So it is jarring what we let fear do to each other, how we invent enemies and then make them so small that we are fine with wishing them dead. How we decide what safety is, how ours is only ours and must be gained at all costs. How we take that long coat of fear and throw it around the shoulders of anyone who doesn't look like us or praise to another God. There is something about a dark corner crowded with your people, a song you know and a night you can bookmark to reminisce on whenever the world is calling for the death of everyone you love. So this book, I don't have anything else to say. He's an, I was able to see him at a reading in Omaha. And that's how I found out about him as a writer. And I strongly suggest his poetry and his essays to find connections for yourself in your own worldview. And, you know, I suggest it as a addition to your collections as well, but that's up to you to decide for your, but yeah, so that one, super powerful for me. The next book, gender failure by Ray Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote. So these are two Canadians, they're spoken word artists, musicians, just a whole host of really artistic talents that they have together. And this book is based on a live show that they did with one another, sort of using their own personal stories to break down how suffocating the gender binary can be for folks. And they share really personally and very vulnerably even in stories where they're sharing about how others are not very open to them. And when they don't present in a gender conforming way, they share stories of coming out from their childhood for their choices with hormone therapy and gender reassignment. And they alternate chapters, so Ray will write one chapter and then Ivan writes another chapter and in that way, they kind of keep the narrative going with their stories. This one again, just for me, this was a really important look at an area where, a couple of years ago, there's all this stories in the news about who gets to use what bathroom and all that stuff. And this is someone's lived experience and just because we don't always see that in the news anymore doesn't mean that people aren't living that experience still. And so for me, this was a very eye-opening read to gain a better understanding of what it is to live in a world that is trying to police something as, you know, I take it for granted, I don't have to think twice about where I can use the restroom in a public place. And Ivan writes one chapter called The Facilities and it's specifically about that and how they experience just something that so many of us, that many of us can take for granted. So their stories are very personal and very deep and heartfelt. And the link there is to a review from an ALA round table. So it's a really good review as well if you want some more info about that book. You can go to the next slide. Okay, so we are never meeting in real life by Samantha Irby. This is a super funny book. She is a blogger. Her blog is called Bitches Gotta Eat. So, you know, you kind of get right off right there. You kind of see where her sense of humor lies. She's very blunt about her lived experiences with her physical disabilities, with her weight, growing up with an alcoholic father, with her various relationships and sexuality and with nature, you know, she has funny stories about being a city girl and going to camp and so there's a lot of things in there. There's a lot of swearing and sex talk. So it might be a bit of an alarming read for some folks but just so you know, but I really felt that even though her humor kind of feels like it's a bit escapist at times when she's talking about some really heavy topics, she does it in a way that's very genuine. So you just, you feel like you're in a conversation with a good friend. And so she touches on a lot of things that I could, this was a really good essay collection for me because there was a lot of mirror and window for me just within these essays. It's really funny and that cat's adorable. And then I'll be honest, I'm just gonna be straight up honest with all of you. Tales of Two Americas, Stories of Inequality and a Divided Nation. I was overly ambitious in thinking I could read four new books for all of this so I have not really read this book but I chose it because they are essays and stories written by a lot of different authors from various backgrounds. And so I thought that was a really interesting way to look into a topic that I have interest in. And the link down there at the bottom is to a review that even goes farther into talking about yes, this is representation but these are all really well-known authors and what about giving representation to those writers who are still struggling and don't have the capital to be recognized by this editor or whatever. So I thought that was a really interesting review to go along with it and I do plan on reading it. So get back to me if you read it before me and let me know. But I think it's a really fascinating title at least. So this is the last thing I wanna say about essay and then I'll be done. I really want to start thinking of reading essays as an exercise and being able to remove my own worldview and the inherent judge that is within that worldview we all kind of have it. And if I read something that makes me uncomfortable to just sit with that and keep reading, I want to use essay this format specifically as a way to explore more deeply into a worldview or topics that I'm not familiar with and think of it as a one-sided conversation in which I am only the listener and not the speaker. I think that can get me to a very good place and so I would challenge all of us to do that with whatever we read. I just chose essay for this, so. That's it. I just wanted to mention, while you were talking, you've got the links here and we have those other pages of links that Jessica had to show everyone knows afterwards when we do the archive of this, we will have the presentation that will available as well. So you'll have all the links from there. So don't feel the need to transcribble down all these URLs or anything right now. You'll have all the information afterwards at you. Which reminds me that I have one more slide. I love it. I love it. So. Like these. Available afterwards. Do you have anything you want to say about the slide or? No, I don't. Just go through there. For all the information you have there. All right, so now to Angela, I'm going to talk about comic books because I'm a nerd. And in recent decades, comic book authors and publishers have gotten a lot better about representation of different kinds of people. So this is not a representative sampling of diverse comics, only representative sampling of what's on my bookshelf. And that's what was readily available to scan. So you can see my bias towards stories with female protagonists. And you can also see that the majority of these that I'm showing you are from mainstream comic publishers. There are recent titles that are available from trade paperback and these are all ongoing series. So you can guess at the gaps in my recommendations. This collage is pretty Marvel heavy. That's because Marvel has been in the news a lot lately regarding their attempts to diversify comics, both positive and negative. And so they can kind of serve as a case study for what works and what doesn't. Marvel's recent strategy has been to retire a lot of their classic heroes, sometimes killing them and sometimes moving them into new roles. And then those hero names and identities are picked up by new characters, new people wearing the masks. So the Thor you know from the movies is no longer Thor in the comics. The person wielding the only or now is a woman. Likewise, the mantle of Spider-Man has passed from Peter Parker to Miles Morales, a black teenager. Iron Man's successor is also a black teenager, a girl in Breary. The new Hulk is an Asian-American teen, Amadeus Cho. And the old white Ms. Marvel got promoted to Captain Marvel and the new Ms. Marvel is a Muslim teen and the daughter of Pakistani-American immigrants. Notice that most of these diverse characters are really young. If you want middle-aged non-white heroes, your options are a bit more limited, not non-existent, but more limited. So about these specific titles I'm showing you here, when Kamala Khan debuted as the new Ms. Marvel, there was a lot of fanfare in Bukla and first Muslim girl superhero. I think she lives up to all of that height. The character's really likable and relatable. The comics are a lot of fun. Her family and friends are great, great characters. I like them all. The only problem is this title suffers as most Marvel comics do from excessive crossovers. So it's not uncommon for characters from The Avengers, The X-Men, The New Humans, and others to show up as her hero buddy of the day. And I honestly prefer she got to be the solo hero a lot more often. The series is up to eight volumes now, so there's kind of a lot of it, but it is pretty good. Black Panther, the character has been around since the 1960s, and he was originally created by white authors, comic book legends, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. And I read a couple of the issues from the 60s and 70s, and wow, you can really tell it was written by white authors. Actually a little bit painful to read. The current run of Black Panther is authored by Ta-Nehisi Coates. And it is good, I mean, really good. Coates is an excellent writer, and this is his first foray into comic books. So he really brings a literary quality to the table. I've read the first three volumes of his run of Black Panther, and it is one of the best comic book series I've ever read. It's serious, it's ultimately inspiring, it's a good look at our revolution and reconciliations, really actually a powerful story. And by the third volume, actually my hair was standing on end during certain scenes. It's wonderful. So I highly recommend the Ta-Nehisi Coates run of Black Panther. That woman is a Jewish lesbian, and she is awesome. However, the story is really dark and grim, definitely not kid-friendly. And unfortunately, when the comic changed authors, the story quality kind of went to heck. So of the New 52 Bat Woman series, I'd recommend reading the first three volumes, then stopping. End of volume three, she proposes to her girlfriend. DC's executive came down and said, no, she can't get married. And the author, Jay Williams III said, if you couldn't write the story, he wanted to tell, he was out, and he was. And the story just wasn't good after he left. But the first three volumes of the New 52 run of that one are really excellent, and the art is phenomenal. Lumber James is probably my personal favorite title on this list. It features a group of girls at summer camp. They're racially diverse. There's a sweet lesbian romance. One of the main characters is trans, and that fact doesn't even reveal them till several issues in. And then it's no big deal. Character from the boys camp said he'd rather be at the girls camp, and one of the girls sympathizes with him because she remembers how out of place she used to feel at the boys camp. And that's it, subtle. None of the other girls ever question whether she belongs with them. Lumber James also has a lot of supernatural shenanigans and humor style very similar to Disney's Gravity Falls. So it's kid-friendly, it's funny, it's not angsty at all. If you've got somebody who might be into magic kittens and three-eyed wolves, this is a win. Hereville is a delightful fantasy about an 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl with a sword. It's sweet and it's a lot of fun, and it's simultaneously grounded in the realistic details of her everyday life and fantastical and silly adventures with trolls and talking meteorites. It's a lot of fun, it's really cute. And I'm going back into the mainstream. America is another Marvel offering with all the good and bad that entails, but she's noteworthy because there aren't a lot of Latina headliners in Marvel and DC's Big Two. Their superhero lineups just aren't a lot of Latina superheroes. And this one has the bonus of actually being written, although not originally created by it, but currently written by a queer Latina author. America Chavez might be a little too punch-first to ask questions later for my personal taste, but she has got a lot of style. And last of these, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is a very sweet and charming story about a nine-year-old super genius, and the T-Rex who follows her around has the same problems of crossover overload that played with Marvel, but it's still definitely worthwhile. I loved the first three volumes a lot. Some things happen in volume four that make me fear that the story might be going off the rails, but I'm gonna wait till volume five before passing the judgment on that, but I can definitely recommend the first three volumes of Moon Girl. An employee at one of the local Omaha comic book shops that I frequent relayed a story to me about a young black girl who came into a store and he said, you know, the smartest character in the entire Marvel comic universe looks exactly like you, and she doesn't get dinosaurs. And he handed her this comic and he said her face just lit up with the brightest smile you'd ever seen. And that is why representation matters. Steve Orlando's bisexual writer and he created a couple of gay superheroes, Midnighter and Virgil, haven't managed to get a hold of any of those comics yet. But he said that his readers have told him that his heroes gave them the strength to be who they are. And it's important for people, especially young people, but really all people, to see folks like themselves in media, not just comic books, but everyone needs to feel that they have a place in the story. Everyone needs to believe that they can be the hero and that heroes can look just like them. Not everybody, of course, agrees on how diversity in comics goes down. I mean, read the comments section on any online article or blog post regarding diversity in comics and your faith in humanity might wither a little. David Gabriel, the vice president of sales at Marvel Comics actually said at one point that he thought that diversity was hurting their comic sales. And there was a huge backlash to this and he very quickly backpedaled and acknowledged that some of the new diverse characters like Ms. Marvel and Moon Girl and Miles Morales were very popular in Southern very well. But the executive attitude was kind of revealed by that point. The cat was out of the bag. I'm glad that he's been completely wrong by everything that we're buying. Right, and then comic reader Kendra James explained her take on the real problem with Marvel and the diverse representation and that there's not enough diverse characters to adequately represent all of the multifaceted people who exist in any given community. She pointed out, quote, Marvel publishes a full spectrum of cis-het whiteness, poor whiteness, middle-class whiteness, sciency whiteness, artsy whiteness, wacky whiteness, serious whiteness, list goes on. You know, and really don't even cover black women but into adults with much less managed to capture the many varied ways one can insist it's a black woman in America. And she even acknowledges later in the article that she has a lot more choices than say a Muslim reader who, you know, if you don't like camera work on, you're just out of luck. Another person responding to that Marvel vice president's comments observed that another aspect of the problem is that even if the characters are looking more diverse on the page, a lot of the creators and writing and drawing these comics are still predominantly white and sometimes they get stuck wrong and these representations may be reading false. C-Spec Trotman observed that independence and alternative comics are generally a head of mainstream comics here and this is a gap in my reading. I need to see a lot more independent comics. And then he said that web comics in particular, especially online comics, are going to be a much better place to find a lot of use referring specifically to black but probably a lot more for other diverse groups as well to find comics by diverse authors and not just about diverse characters. I tend to do that myself. I'm a big comic reader as well. I got my husband and I both have quite a few long boxes that are in our house that we're in. And I've tended to lean actually away from Marvel in DC. I look for stories that I like or, and I do do this, I look for the female authors and writers and colorists just because I want to see what they're doing. And I've ended up, it seems most of my collection is falling into image comics as one of them, boom, comics is another, these are publishers, Dark Horse. That's the ones I keep ending up with when I look through them, preview magazines of what's coming up as those, rather than, although as you saw there, there's some that DC and most of Marvel are doing, I just keep ending up there. So definitely look outside the mainstream, I choose big guys. There are tons of, I would say smaller independent, but separate, just as big, doing some great things that are, yeah. Absolutely, agree on that. That's a place where I need to move more into an art meeting. So for finding the comics that I do follow, one of the websites I rely on a lot is Black Peer and Problems. I stumbled across some of their reviews one day and discovered that their reviews are really good. They don't have a specific list of comics or anything that they follow, what they do is they just have regular blasters of reviews of whatever's coming out that week, particularly with the mainstream publishers and their reviews are really good quality. I mean, they're very thoughtful. So if I'm deciding whether or not to follow a new title, I might try to find two or three of their issues, their reviews of various issues of that and if they're consistently good, then I'll give it a shot. Goodreads has a pretty good list of diverse heroes in comics and graphic novels. The list isn't well organized though. Their comics are listed by volume rather than by series. So a series that's been going on a long time might have a whole lot of volumes cluttering up the list, which makes it a little harder to find the one shots in the short running comic series. Florida Library Webinars has a very good list of lists. Overall, though, their list is undated, so I don't know how current the resources are, but most of the particular lists that I looked at from their resources look really promising. And then NPR Books asked people to recommend their favorite comic book, not the best or most important or most influential, just the thing that they loved the most. And so while diversity was not a specific criteria for inclusion on this list, there are quite a few diverse comics on the list. And so I think anybody should be able to find something appealing on this list of 100 favorite comics. And then, of course, all of the usual sources for diverse books, you know, like the We Need Diverse Books website, and that will include graphic novels along with all of the narrative works on the list. So can you check the comments? Oh, yeah. See if anybody submitted their diverse titles. We do have some comments. Yes, so if you do have any comments, any titles you wanna suggest and any of these, all these areas we're talking about today, or any other areas, or questions you have about anything, go ahead and type it in there. Yeah, at the beginning we had a few suggestions. Some of our commission, Nebraska Library Commission staff are watching, Michael. And Susan mentioned some titles that she's, that are about being transgender. Becoming Nicole, the transformation of an American family. I believe Susan did that as one of our Friday reads. We do reviews of books, the Library Commission every Friday. A, one of our staff posts a book review of something they've read. So check out our website for more information about that. Just missing three other ones. Three memoirs by Jennifer Boylan about being transgender. She's not there, is one. Stuck in the middle with you, a memoir of parenting in three genders. And the third one is, I'm looking through you. So those are all recommended by her, right here. Another one that Lisa, the honor of staff watching, is, Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debbie Irving. Anybody's ever read that one, just. And then we have some questions here. Lots of readers. Here's an interesting comment. I've got a couple of different things here. I'm gonna go to the second one first. Someone says, I'm cataloging bilingual kids books. And I just took a look at the pages. They don't put the number in Spanish. It's in English, obviously it's written out in Spanish. It just made me think it's not right. They should have put it in Spanish because it's in the client window or at least both, I suppose. Is this common for publishers to do, or do you guys have any thoughts on, we notice anything like that in these rooms? Yeah, yeah, we catalog. Multilingual cataloging. I've done some multilingual cataloging and it's, it really varies a lot by publishers. Some publishers are really good about having absolutely everything, including the technical publication details on Verso, having all of everything in both languages or all three or however many languages are in a given book. And some are really not. Some will basically have the title page and page numbering and all of the supplemental information in English and only the main text in multiple languages. It really varies a lot by publisher. I think it's best, and I would agree with your comment that whenever everything, including the Verso information page numbers, everything is in all available languages. Yeah, so it's not, you never know what you're gonna get from it. It's gonna depend on the language. Yeah, it really just depends on the publisher and their priorities and their target audience. Sometimes they think they're just publishing a bilingual text to help English speakers learn to read another language and so they think that they don't need to have everything else in the other language. But I would agree with that because that's not how books end up getting used. People could use it either direction. Yeah, absolutely. And so if anybody has any other questions or any other book titles you want to share, go ahead and type it in to your question section. We do have an interesting question here for all of you. How do you present a diverse book without offending some of your patrons? Obviously the ones that don't agree that you're C-sharing the book. Anyway, so you can't control how people react to things. That's an unfortunate truth is you could have what you think is the best book in the world and everybody is gonna be offended by something and you can't control how somebody is going to react to what you're showing them. And you can't actually can't even be, you can't even expect that people are going to be offended by what you think they're going to be offended by. Sometimes the books that you're most hesitant about will be actually well-received and then something you think is no brain or not controversial might be a firestorm. You just don't know. So I don't really have an answer to your question, just sort of you can't predict it, just do your best. Jessica or Nika, do you have any thoughts? Yeah, well I think part of it too is not, so we talk about it in diversely reading or we talk a lot about the importance of diverse literature but I think one of the things that, at least for me I want to move toward is not recommending something just because there's a character who's Muslim or African-American or gay but because it's a good story or it covers the topics that this person is looking for and so because we're still othering if we're saying here are the books that you'll relate to and here are the books that are different from you but you might enjoy. So it's kind of a weird, we have to talk about it to bring awareness and attention to it but as we're recommending or suggesting books to our patrons, focusing on those reader advisory tools that we have so that we're looking at the book itself. Does that, am I, I don't know if I'm saying that. No, that makes sense, yeah. It's balancing between, it's like I think you said readers advisory, doing the reference interview. What is this person looking for? They're looking for what you had mentioned. Representation, something that's neat. So you will present a book to them using that as your push because that's what they want. Here's a book about a Muslim teenager, blah, blah, blah, because you said you wanted that rather than I need a book about struggling in my, in something else. And they just say, well, here's a book that's really good on that topic. And you don't even mention the fact that it happens to have whoever is there. It's gonna depend on what the person is asking for. I think also this question made also refer to the people that you're not responding to directly saying, oh, you asked a book for a book about this here. The ones that just like to come in and complain because you've put up a display of comic books or it's, you know, whatever history month. Yeah. Or whatever history week or day or something and there will be the complaints about that. That goes along with anything and everything in the library that we're not, we're here for everyone. Not just you. That's what I was gonna say that, because I've, we have people like that that come into the library that don't want to admit that there are gay people in the world still, even in 2019. They don't wanna admit that, you know, Hispanic people are here today, whether they're immigrants or not, you know, we're here. And it's hard because I'm so merry. Passionate about this and so merry, you know, but everything I've read, I mean, I've read a lot of cheap run-offs and I'm a Native American and now I'm reading stuff that I didn't really think that I would read before. And if people ask me my opinion about a good book, I don't, I don't care. Like, I read anything and I tell them, I think everybody should read a little bit of everything. So, so probably I'm not gonna have anybody get too mad at me. I think a lot of times what, in my experience, what people tend to get more offended by are not different reading about different races or ethnic groups or things, but are things that are about sexuality or are, you know, gay characters or reading about someone's experience being a trans person. And I always go back to that mirrors and windows that whether you agree with whatever's happening in the story or not, it's a valuable opportunity to learn about the things that you're hearing about in the news and it's a valuable, even if it only reinforces your original worldview, you've had the opportunity to learn about something from a different perspective. And it's this form of yourself more than just your nature, what you said, just reacting to the news. Yeah, I mean, it's an opportunity and it doesn't, it's totally okay if they're like, I really didn't like this and I don't agree with that. Well, that's their viewpoint and at least now they've learned a little bit about it. They've had an opportunity to be exposed to new things. And it's the same thing when we talk to parents who are concerned about their children reading stories with characters that maybe don't match the morality of their family. You know, it's an opportunity to explain things to your children. It's just that opportunity to discuss the world. So. And what's great about, our country is what you said, I didn't like this story and I didn't agree with it. That's, you can say that, that's great. You can have that opinion. That's your opinion. Go off, now you've learned more about it and now you can still read the things you do like and I'm gonna read the things that I do. I like to read, that might not be the same as you. And this goes to things that are even not diverse titles and things like, one thing, I was an English major in college and so I had to read certain titles of by being, you know, classics and whatnot. And I hate the passion, anything by Ernest Hemingway. Which some people are like, but, but, but, he's just because, no, to my brain, he's a horrible writer. And I'm not talking about him as a person or actually this topic of the story, his writing style just drives me nuts. And some people say, oh, but you must have done that's terrible, you know, that's, he's a classic and you have to read everything he's done and I'm like, yeah, but I just can't get past the run-on sentences that makes me want to, you know. And that's just the thing, that's my thing. Yeah, and that's what happens sometimes. And it's, everyone's gonna have different preferences and comfort levels and like as you're saying, sometimes the stories, especially with, you know, with ongoing series, when they change what the writing is or change the writers in comics, that's a common thing to change who the author is writing the story and that changes it entirely. And you just have to decide, I'm gonna keep going or am I done? Yeah. I think to, sometimes I have a hard time separating, I'll just be honest, separating like personal and professional, so, but as library professionals, I believe that we can also be willing to hear a person's opinion as long as it doesn't do harm to ourselves, but we can be willing to hear a person's opinion and help like talk to them about it. It's not our job as professionals to like counsel people through their things, but to be open and willing receivers of that sometimes because I think so often we are, you can hear in a person's voice when they're voicing some offense or whatnot that they're already gearing up for a fight. Yeah. And it's on each of us, we each get to make the choice if we feel safe to be able to be the receiver of that or if we need to find, you know, but if we can be open and willing to having these conversations ourselves because I think what's more damaging is to silence people to not be able to have that conversation. And so I think that's like just having the opportunity to read about another person's experience, take off your worldview and try to see yourself in that person's shoes too. So it's all very, there's no cut and dry with any of this, you know, but I think- So personal to everybody on all sides. Feel safe and comfortable to do so can be open to having those discussions with our patrons or hearing them out at least. All right. Doesn't look like anybody typed in anything while we've been chatting just now. Anybody have anything last minute, desperate questions you wanna ask or desperate things you wanna share? Get it in there because we're just about hitting 11 o'clock here for our hour show, type it in. Do you guys have anything you wanna say to wrap up or vote anything or? What's the diverse you can be gonna be doing next? I think that we've talked about- You know, because we're- Put you on the spot there. Well, we've talked about continuing to challenge ourselves and reading diverse things. So it's been, we did it last year at the conference. Right. And that was really an eye-opening. Andrew and I were actually just talking and really talking about this is I didn't realize how much I would learn just as a person. I always thought that I was so open-minded. And so, you know, and I didn't realize that I took things for granted like Anika said, I've, you know, I'm a heterosexual female. I've never had to worry about trying to change my sexuality so that my family would accept me or, you know, I've been very lucky in having friends and people that have accepted me for the person who I am. And that's reading these books has made me, I guess, grow. And I wanna, we were talking about that. I don't wanna just stop there and say, okay, I learned, I'm good. I wanna keep challenging myself and learning more about different topics and different things that would help me as a person and a librarian. And I think hopefully a few girls are on board. I think we're gonna, I guess, hope to continue doing that because sure, it's helped me a lot as, like I said, as a person and a professional. And if, for any NLA members, if you're interested in becoming a part of the diversity committee or just kind of talking it out, you can contact me. I don't have a slide with my contact information. That would be helpful. But personally can make me added some of the content. Anika Ramirez, our first public library. I'm potentially the only Anika Ramirez in the state. So, you know, possibly be, yes. So, yeah. I think we're gonna try to continue our work as a diversity committee and so on. Even though she left us, but we're still having our online meetings. So, still in the state, this is for all parents. I forgot what you looked like. So, yes, and as you mentioned, this was a session that was done at our Nebraska Library Association. And for those of you who don't know, Nebraska Library Association and School Librarians Association and Joint Conference every fall. It was last October. And I mean, this was a poster session, you guys. Yeah. And we're completely different books. I mean, there's no overlap between the books we talked about today and the books we talked about in that poster session. It's just kind of the same general concept, the idea of continuing to challenge ourselves and continue reading different things. Great. So then maybe in a year or so, we'll have you guys on again to say, what you've done since last time? Since this time. We make this a regular thing. We'll see. All right. So it doesn't look any other questions came in. I think we will wrap it up then. Thank you very much. Just Danika over there. Hi. Thank you. So from here, we will wrap up today's show. So thank you everybody for attending. I am going to... Read our books. Yeah. Read the books. You can escape over there and keep here. And I'm gonna switch over to... There we go. So yes, read the books. The recording will be available. As I said, our website and the slides will be available too. That will have all these books, the titles listed. On our website, actually what you can do and actually I'll see the keyboard here. And on our website, we do have links to our Encompass Live, but our show Encompass Live so far is the only thing called that in the world, according to the Google. So if you just Google it, you will find our Encompass Live website where we have here our list of our upcoming shows coming up in the next couple of months. But then for our archives, I'm gonna show you. This is where our archives are. It's the list right underneath all of our upcoming shows. The link right underneath there. And this is where our archives are. Today's show will be at the top of the list. Most recent one's up first. I should have it done up by this afternoon. All of you who attended and everyone's pre-registered, we'll get an email sent directly to you letting you know when it's ready. The recording will be there and the slides will be there so you'll have access to all those links. And as I said, both the live show and these are free and open to anyone to watch. So go ahead and share these links with any of your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues. Any of us live? We are actually, this is our 10th year of the show. I was shocked when I did the math on that. And we have our archives here on this page. And I'm gonna scroll down fast. Don't get sick as I do this. Going back to the very beginning, January, 2009. So all of our archives all here through YouTube with their links and everything. So search back and look through our archives. Look for other things to watch. Do keep in mind though, this is gonna be some old information. There's gonna be things that are out of date. Stuff has changed. As you guys said, your presentation is different from what you did last fall. Your titles. So there will be some old information, some expired information, some things that don't exist anymore, but everything is dated. So you'll know what you're, when you're talking, what you're looking at. But we are librarians, so we archive everything. Sorry. So that's why everything is there. So please do take a look at all that. There is a search feature here as well that we just recently added to our computer team. Thank you so much. You can search what by, it'll search in the, when you look at a session here, any of the title, present your information, all of this text it will search for, any words you wanna type in there. So you can find what, two scrolls of the whole thing, trying to figure out what it shows on. Do a search for anything you're interested in. Any presenters, any people you wanna see what they've done. And this is how the one for today will be, there'll be a link to the recording and a link to the presentation for you. So that will wrap it up for today's show. I hope you join us next week when we are talking about providing access to the good life for the disabled. This is, Crystal Booker is a, the ADA coordinator for the state of Nebraska. It's a relatively new position created. She did this session actually also last year's conference. And she's gonna come on us and talk about being ADA compliant in your libraries and things you need to know. And to show that there is now this ADA task force via the state of Nebraska that can help you with all this kind of things you might be looking into. So speaking of diversity. So definitely sign up for that for next week's show and any of our other topics we have here. I'm always, I'm adding sessions as we go through, so you can see April and into May is getting booked. So keep an eye on this page for more shows as I get things confirmed for future dates. Also, End Compass Live is on Facebook. So if you are a big Facebook user, give us a like over there as it gets a little bit. And we post when shows are coming up. So here's a reminder to log in today's show on the fly. When recordings are available, I don't want that. So anything here. So if you're, you'll get just notified of reminders that coming shows and recordings available, anything new and interesting we're doing. So if you do have, if you are a big Facebook user, give us a like and you'll see, get notified over there about what we're doing. And then that wraps up for today's show. Thank you guys for driving down here. Thank you guys for being online with us. Thank you for joining us. And we'll see you next time on End Compass Live. Bye-bye.