 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, over here on the side here, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly online event, a webinar, webcast, online show, the terminology for what you call these things up for debate. Some people have strong feelings about what they do and don't want to use. But whatever you call us, we are an online show. We're here live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. If you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. We do record the show every week, and you can go to our website and watch our recordings. We have recordings going back to the very beginning of the show, actually, which was January 2009, was the first show, so you can go back and watch everything. We post the recordings on to our YouTube account, if there's any PowerPoint presentations as we have this morning, those will be included, and any websites that are mentioned, we save into our delicious account online so you can have access to those afterwards as well. We do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, mini-training sessions, interviews, website tours. Basically, our only criteria is that it's something library-related, something libraries are doing, something they're involved in, something that might be of interest to them. Some of our topics you might think are a little out of the box. You might wonder sometimes, why is that on the show? But trust us, everything comes from the libraries in some way. That's my criteria. That's really the only criteria. We do have Nebraska Library Commission staff, since we are hosted here by the Nebraska Library Commission, that come on shows sometimes. But we also bring in guest speakers, and that's what we have this morning. As you can see on the slide there, bedbugs in the library is what we can be talking about this morning. As far as I know, we don't have any to display or show. We didn't bring any examples except for in picture form, so good for that. You're happy about that? Yes. I think my surprise would not be happy if that wasn't me, because of the live demonstrations. This is a session that's actually done at our state library conference last fall, and I believe you've done it elsewhere as well. And it was recommended to me by multiple people. I did not attend your session there, but it was recommended to me by multiple people to have it on the show, because it was something very interesting and useful in something a lot of libraries are having to deal with. We have with us Julie Vino and Katie Mertha, who are from our Lincoln City Libraries here in Lincoln, Nebraska. And Dr. Jody Green right next to me, who's from the Press Extension Office here, based in Lincoln as well. Yeah. Sound Street. So they're going to tell us all about the wonderful world of bedbugs and how we can get rid of them, not have them at all, protect ourselves, protect ourselves, yeah. So I'm trying to use the mouse to click on the slides first, there we go, and then you should be able to... There we go. There we go. This is just our agenda real quick for the day. We are going to start out with a video and I'll turn it over to Katie. I'm going to have to turn the volume up on that a bit. We'll get the volume up a little higher for you so you can hear it. I turned it down earlier when we were testing things. And this is very typical of kind of what we go through when we've had to deal with bedbugs, and that's why we included this little clip. It's from Orange Is the New Black. Yes, if you're a fan of the showy. Black Is the New Orange. Orange Is the New Black. If you're a fan of the show, you might recognize it. Hey Doody. Calm down, when I'm replacing any books there's not a reason for anything. Isn't that right, getting it? Bedbug. There ain't no bedbug. Luff and crumb. Why are you books on the expert on what that is? Stay like I'm not an expert on muckin'. Bedbugs are fast. Once they're in, the only way to get them out is wipe out their notes and crayons. Did you get to spice yourself in here? Steamed the books or something? You can't even be a boy. What do you think, Mr. Dakota? 100% sure. 75%. I'll show you that there's nothing wrong with that one. That one is out. I'm sure. All right. Cheers. I'm down to like 50-50. So we don't ever eat bedbugs, but we do have a lot of times where we're passing the book back and forth and asking what do you think this is? So we'll turn it over to Dr. Green and she'll be able to tell you a little bit more about bedbugs. So I'm going to talk about bedbug biology. We'll first talk about their distribution. So they're distributed worldwide, reported in all 50 states. They did have, they were around a long time ago before like the World War. And after World War II and the invention of DDT, there was a huge decline in the population to the point where it was kind of a myth that even bedbugs existed. I know my generation didn't ever see a bedbug growing up in the line, good night, sleep type. Don't let the bedbugs bite was kind of just a cute little thing. And since the 1980s, there's been an increase. And even in the last 10 years, a huge increase. A lot of reports and they're showing up everywhere. Do you know why it came back? Or like what happened that made it suddenly? Oh. Okay. Oh dear. Oh, all right. Maybe I shouldn't help. Well some of the reasons why we think it's increased travel, we're just able to go to many places in the same day, right? And we take all our belongings with us, especially our outerwear and our bags. Our pest control practices are, I guess, a little more environmentally friendly, which makes it a little, there's less pesticide around to kill any residual bugs that are around. So when we used to spray a lot of DDT for cockroaches and mosquitoes and whatnot, nowadays we don't do that. So any bed bugs that are there hiding cracks and crevices won't be killed off accidentally. There's a lack of awareness, which is a big problem. People don't know bed bugs exist, so you don't protect against them. You don't look for them and inspect them. So that increases the problem. And insecticide resistance is a problem because of all the pesticide use over the years. The bed bugs have evolved to have a thicker exoskeleton or cuticle. It's a waxier exoskeleton, and so the insecticide doesn't penetrate as much into the cuticle to affect them. And then they've also, scientists have shown that they have evolved faster metabolisms, even if it does get into their system, they're able to detoxify and get that out of their system faster. So we'll talk about what they look like. So the human bed bug is a pest of humans. So it's an insect, and it's in the order hemiptera. And we call those half wings. The sub-out order is heteroptera, and you might know them as a true bug. Entomologists call things by their order. You know, we've got beetles and we've got flies, but this one is actually a true bug. You might know some true bugs, like stink bugs or Harlow and Quinn bugs, box elder bugs, milkweed bugs. The bottom right one there is a leaf-footed bug, which is an overwinterer. So when you see those, they sometimes come into the house. They are all characterized by their piercing, sucking mouth part, which they hold underneath their body, and it kind of looks like a beak. So that's something they all have in common. And a bed bug is no exception. So this is the ventral side of a bed bug. So they're under side, two different bed bugs. And you can see they've got this mouth part. And so it's kind of just like a straw. So they pierce into the skin or the plant, whatever they feed on. And most of them are plant feeders. There are some predatory ones, and bed bugs are one of them. Their scientific name is Cmex lectularis, which means bed or couch. To identify these, so this is an adult bed bug. Its general shape is oval. We call them dorsal venerally compressed, which just means they're flattened from the top. If you see a bed bug, sometimes they are like thin and like paper. They are about a reddish brown. Sometimes people call it mahogany. And adults can grow up to about a quarter of an inch. And the only problem with that is that that's an adult bed bug. So there are a number of sizes that are smaller than that. And so they're different size ovals. And then this is the same bed bug, an adult. And on the left, you can see that one's pretty oval. And then on the right, that one's elongated and engorged. And that is the difference between a hungry bed bug and a full bed bug. So even the same bed bug in a different feeding status will look very different. When you put one of the true bugs under the microscope to try to find out if it is indeed a bed bug, these are some of its identifying features. It has vestigial wings, which means they do not function. They're actually, they're not there, so they do not fly. It's very important if someone sees an insect flying by, it's not a bed bug. It's got a three segmented beak, four segmented antenna, and it has golden hairs all over its body. I do want to talk a little bit about the way they mate. It's a process called traumatic insemination. And this is where the male bed bug pierces the female's abdominal wall with its external genitalia. It sounds pretty gory and it kind of is. And he eliminates right into the body cavity. And so the sperm travels eventually to the ovaries where it does fertilize the eggs. There are adaptations in the female exoskeleton to make that area or that wound heal faster. So that's part of evolution. And that is one of the big stories of sexual conflict between males and females in the, I guess, biology. So what that does for the male is it ensures that his sperm is the one to fertilize the eggs because it's the last sperm in that actually counts. And the female doesn't want to mate with multiple partners because it is so traumatic to her. And after she has a blood male, which she needs to be able to lay these eggs, she lays these eggs individually, two to five per day. And they're glued onto surfaces such as luggage, bad clothing. And they hatch anywhere between seven to 12 days after they're laid. And in her lifetime, she can lay 200 to 500 eggs. Bed bugs undergo incomplete metamorphosis. So they go from egg, nymph to adult. That's very different from like a caterpillar or something that goes through complete metamorphosis where they've got a larvae and then a dormant phase. So these guys are active the entire time. And a nymph is just a smaller version of an adult under normal, I guess, environmental conditions. We say their life cycle could go from, you know, five to six weeks. Here is their life cycle chart. It doesn't like me. So it starts off as an egg. And we'll see that if that's about a clock, that's around two o'clock. So the eggs will hatch, and they will hatch into the first instar nymph. And an instar is just a phase of development. And so each, there are five stages of development or instars before the bed bug becomes an adult. Between each of those, the nymph requires a blood male. And so, you know, unlike mosquitoes where it's only the female that requires a blood male for egg, all forms of bed bugs do require food in the form of blood. So between each of those, it needs to molt because it is an insect that has an exoskeleton. So it sheds that exoskeleton each time. And this is a good diagram because it shows what the, which each instar looks like, fed and hungry. And then the difference in sizes between male and female. And the top picture is what a bed bug looks like when it's shedding its skin. And the bottom is the exoskeleton that's left behind. And you can see that mouth part. You can see the antenna. And you can actually see that the hind gut. And there's a little bit of blood left in there. Turn it down. I'll see if that works better. Oh, here. I'll use the mouse then. Okay. Sorry, everybody. Oh, no. That's okay. There we go. The rate of growth and development is really dependent on food and temperature. You know, in order to survive for any pest, it needs food, water and shelter. They get food and water from our blood because they are their blood feeders. And then they, you know, they find shelter close to where we are. They can undergo three to four generations per year. And their lifespan is typically six to 12 months under optical optimal conditions, which is about 70 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which is, you know, the temperature we live at. Their life cycle can be completed from egg to adult eggling female in one month. And I just put a little note at the bottom that there are some temperatures that are lethal. So that would be zero degrees for four days and over 120 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. This picture here is a couple bed bugs with an apple seed. Many times we compare the shape and the size and the color to the apple seed. So there's one for comparison. Sometimes people bring in things that look exactly like a bed bug. But if you put them under a microscope, you will see that it's not a bed bug. And this is important because a bed bug and an eastern bat bug look very similar, except you can see the length of the hair on the bat bug are much longer. A lot of times they say if the length of the hair is longer than the diameter of the eye, and I just think, well, it's kind of, it's longer hair. It's long, beautiful hair. And then I started singing the hair musical. The bat bug, it's important to be able to identify if it's a bat bug or a bed bug, because the bat bug primarily feeds on bats. And so they're going to feed differently. They're going to live somewhere else, mainly in attics. They have behavior differences. And when you find one, it could be on your bed, but it might not be living and have a whole aggregation in your bed. The treatment difference is you don't want anyone spraying close to your bed or treating your bed. You want to be able to remove the bats and treat the proper locations. Here's just a picture of a bunch of bat bugs and then one, a full-body bat bug and a bed bug. You'll just see probably better on the computer screen that one's just a lot hairier. So the necessity for survival is going to be food. It's going to be blood. How do they detect us? Well, we can't stop breathing and they can detect us by our body heat, carbon dioxide and our human scent. They can consume up to three times their body weight in blood. And if you ever want to look at something gross, there's a bunch of YouTube videos. You can just watch them go from this flat insect to a totally engorged bug. And it usually takes anywhere between three and 12 minutes for them to get that blood meal. Their feeding behavior is not daily. The adults will feed every three to five days. And they'll typically feed on exposed skin while the host is sleeping. And if you work nights, they can adjust their schedule to meet yours so they can get their food. They do not bite the scalp though because they just are not adapted to be able to navigate through the hair. They do inject compounds that aid in feeding similar to other blood feeders so that your blood doesn't coagulate and clot so they can get that out. The reactions of hosts, sometimes it's a delayed reaction. Sometimes it's right away. Sometimes there's no reaction. It could result in itchy red welts, bumps, hives, people reaction all different kinds of ways. And again, 30% of the population don't react, which is part of the reason it could get out of hand before we know we have a problem. The photo there is on the right. That's actually of my risk this one time that I fed bed bugs. And I had a delayed reaction of a week. And then after I fed a bed bug again, I swelled up right away really badly. And I never did that again. Learned my lesson. You said they don't navigate hair removal. Does that mean they wouldn't be able to affect your pets because of the fur? They don't usually feed on pets. I know people have found them on their dog, but it's not something that they're like living on there. They might have fallen on the dog. But maybe in the absence of a human, they might do something normal for survival. So post meal, what they're doing and the reason why they only feed every five days or might not see them is because most of the time they're resting and digesting. So they're hiding somewhere in a cracker crevice close to where you're sleeping and where you live so that they can digest and molt. So the nymphs will molt to the next instar and the adult female will lay eggs. And this is the period of time where they kind of just wander onto things and they hitchhike because they don't fly or jump. They're just going to walk onto things and we're the ones carrying them around. A lot of times they'll go back to their aggregation site or they'll find a new site close to their hosts. And that could be a couch, it could be a bed. The adults and nymphs live together. When there are great populations they can mit a very strong odor. I can't really describe the odor. It's a really sweet kind of peaky smell but it's sweet. Their harbourage will contain fecal stains. They eat blood so they will poop out blood. There'll be a lot of dark spots. You will likely see a lot of eggs, those shed exoskeletons or skins and some live bugs running around in there. The places that you want to check are around the bed so it's not just the mattress. You want to check the box spring. You want to check all the places. Some of these pictures here you'll see the tag on the mattress. The tacking that's glued or stapled to the bottom of the box spring. Those corner guards are good places to hide. You want to typically check anywhere that's undisturbed. So if you're changing your sheets all the time like a hotel it's not typically going to be the top mattress. Any upholstered furniture next to the bed or in the bedroom. Your nightstand. A lot of places so you're going to look for those dark marks and those cast skins. How do we bring them into our houses? Well sometimes we travel. A lot of times we have purses, bags, computer bags, diaper bags. When we put those down places and they can crawl on. Here's just an example of little bed bugs stuck to the zipper of a bag. So the bed bug comes off when you get to your house. And could feed on you. And you know, maybe you got a book nearby. So this is when the library gets involved. Thank you Jody. Welcome. Do you want to switch back to your presentation? You should be able to. There you go. Okay so in 2012 I had a customer come in and it was the first time a customer ever asked me could you get bed bugs from a library book. And I had never heard of that. I did a quick Google search. And I didn't really see anything. And I kind of gave them, you know, oh well we don't have that issue here. It might happen. But two years later we actually had an introduction where somebody dropped off books in our book drop that were infested with bed bugs. And we talked about an introduction versus an infestation. We've never had an infestation at Lincoln State Libraries. The first time it happened, the way our circulation desk is set up there's a spot for customers to return the books and then we pick them up from that spot and put them on carts. And then as we have time we go through and check them in. And so these books were on a cart for a little bit. They're mixed in with other returns from other customers and when we were finally getting to them we started looking at these books and there were a lot of food stains on them to begin with but then there were other things that we thought this is really strange. They felt really tacky. And then the bugs started kind of coming out and then it was kind of pandemonium at the circulation desk because no one wanted to touch them. Everybody was kind of like, what's going on? So we realized that these books just couldn't be treated the same way we treat most damaged items. We weren't sure what exactly it was although somebody guessed that it was a bed bug so that's when we got the county extension office involved and we asked them to look at it and to actually make that identification. And then after that we decided to form a committee because there were so many issues and problems dealing with these books. Like I said, they just weren't typical damaged books. All right, some of the things that libraries need to consider are policy considerations, providing training and determining best practices for staff, how to treat materials, determining workflow procedures and letting customers know and providing information to the public. We invited Jody here because it's very important for us to know what a bed bug looks like in all the different stages. At Lincoln City Libraries we have large posters in all of the back rooms showing the different life stages of bed bugs so that staff can be aware of what they look like. It's really important that staff get past the itching stage when you see a bed bug. You have to stay calm and know what to do. So we will talk about all these different stages that we went through. So one of the first things we dealt with were policy considerations. What are we going to do with these materials that come back? Because in this case we had two sets. We had the books that were in, we thought were obviously and had some sort of bed bug damage to them. But then there were also books that were just sitting on the cart next to them and bed bugs are hitchhikers. So they could have crawled out from one book to the other. So we were going to treat everything, we were going to discard things. We had to kind of come to an agreement on how we were going to treat these materials and talk a little bit more about that later. Then another really touchy subject is how to contact the customer. Because the woman that brought the books back with our first one you know she just kind of to me lived in a different reality than the rest of us. She said that no, she never had any problems and she didn't see anything wrong with the books. We tried to start pointing out things that we thought were damaged. And unfortunately she had several brand new books so she was the first check out on them. Yes, this was the customer that was bringing these in. But you have to be really careful on how you talk to customers. One of our workflow policies is to actually put hold on items that are still on a customer's account if they've returned something that we suspect has bed bug damage. We had a situation where a woman had several children's items on her account. A book came back that had a bug in it and it wasn't a bed bug but it wasn't proper training at the time and so it was assumed that they were bed bugs so they went through and put holds on all of these items that were out on this woman's account and then she called the library because she tried to renew them and after about the first fifth book she tried to renew, she kind of got a little bit frustrated. So when she talked to a staff member the staff member looked it up and saw that the next hold on it immediately told the woman, oh well it's because you have bed bugs and that just created another whole set of problems so you really have to think about what you're saying to customers and you have to kind of have a script and we do have some things out there for you to look at we have a template for a letter that we've developed it's gone through our legal department explaining to a customer that items that they've returned have bed bug damage and giving them instructions on how to return them because we really don't want those items coming back into our book drops then you're going to have to consider are you going to ban this customer from the library some libraries that have infestations have actually done that we haven't done that at Lincoln City libraries what we've done is we've charged them the cost of the item our customers can't check out if they have more than $10 of fines and so far we've found that to be a pretty effective way to immediately stop them most people who have bed bugs have bigger problems than a 30, 40, 50 dollar library fee so that's kind of what's happened to us and if we have a reoccurring customer that's checking things out getting charged for them we'll kind of address that when we have that but so far we haven't run into that another issue are you going to ban personal belongings we went to one seminar and there was a person talking from a library that had a huge infestation and they just went to banning everything they banned bed rolls, they banned book bags they banned a whole bunch of things because they needed to make sure that people weren't bringing in bed bugs on their personal belongings we had a situation where an elderly gentleman came in with a messenger bag and sat down at a computer terminal and the person next to them looked over and saw that there were bed bugs crawling out of this messenger bag and they came to us and said we had to go to, we tried to as discreetly as possible go to the gentleman and ask him to bring his bag out and had to talk to him about this is what we see and we asked him to remove the item so we've actually that's part of our policies that we will ask people to remove anything that has it's more than just bed bugs I think it's termites as well but any kind of insect but that's something you're going to have to think about where you're going to set those lines and then finally if you are going to ban a customer how are you going to reinstate them some places require proof of treatment most of the counter applications you can get are not effective when we talk to people who exterminate these they say that they're not effective so are you going to take a receipt from somebody who tried to treat it themselves usually and Jody might be able to jump in here a little bit more usually it takes several treatments in order for the problem to be solved so you have to think about that as well like I said we have not decided to ban customers so we haven't had to go to this step but if you choose to ban a customer you are going to have to think about that how are they going to be reinstated alright the next our next item of emphasis then was to talk about staff all of the staff do we have eight locations in Lincoln City libraries and we felt that all staff needed to be trained on how to identify bed bugs but bed bug damage looks like that's why I was talking about the poster earlier we have volunteers that check in books so we also want to train the volunteers so that they can recognize the evidence in the books and what a bed bug looks like we developed workflow procedures and that's something each library needs to do exactly what do you do if you're checking in a book that shows bed bug damage how do you show it on the customers record what do you do with the book just we've got like two pages of instructions that we decided that staff that for staff to know so that they can follow as Katie alluded to we had to talk to them about what to say with the public you don't say Jody that book has bed bugs you've got bed bugs in your home there's kinder ways to say it such as the library has found evidence of bed bugs in your books you're willing to talk to the people and that's a very hard conversation to have you don't know if they're going to react with anger with surprise if they're going to admit it just what they're going to say but just think how you would feel if somebody said oh we found bed bugs in your books so we had to talk to staff about that we had to we talked about how to prevent transporting bed bugs from home to the workplace and from the workplace back to home there's all sorts of precautions you can take one thing that that we've been told or that people will talk to her that professionals do if they're working with bed bugs hopefully you have an attached garage you may want to take all your clothes off in the garage throw them right in the dryer so that you don't bring them in that's a pretty serious case but it's something that all of us have done and we hope you have an attached garage you might want to think about that I just called her husband and said please put clothes in the garage for me so there's ways around that but it's a conversation that has to be had with staff about how to keep yourself safe we recommend that you tumble that you put your clothes in the dryer skip the washing machine go right to the dryer and keep them in at high heat for at least 30 minutes or more and if you're wearing clothes that are dry clean put them in sealed plastic bags and also if you find this is what we use two gallon size plastic bags in the library to put things in too so if we find books at the circulation desk we put them immediately and not one bag but two bags and make sure they're sealed so that was another thing with staff we had to make sure that they all had the bags and knew where they were and how to recognize them and again our handouts are attached on the library commission website on the session page for this show Julie sent them to me yesterday there's three handouts there where documents you can download it's their letter their best practice or bed bug prevention and FAQ for dealing with library customers so you'll also be able to get those after the show if you haven't seen them out there already we did not put our workflows on because that's pretty you know it's something each library has to determine on their own if everybody wants it we could kind of edit it to make it kind of generic if they want so oh and the one thing I wanted to mention too is that in Nebraska at least we have at least 70 extension offices so you can go to your local extension office and talk to them they don't have people in Jody's position at each of them but they will send pictures so they'll get you the information they'll get the information to Jody and Dr. Jonathan Larson who works in Douglas County hey in terms of workflows we went to inspecting every item that came in and we trained our staff to know what to look for so when items come in we kind of do a quick determination if it's obviously damaged so this would be something that has like the fecal stains on it or the blood splatters on it or something that's very obvious or then something that might be suspected if it was just right next to it in the book drop or on a book truck we we wanted to treat everything so we just decided that it would be better to treat everything and we'll determine if we're going to charge a customer later if it's something that we think it's obviously damaged and we're going to charge that customer we try to put that charge on as soon as possible and that usually prevents them from doing further checkouts and then the other thing we have to do is go into their holds look at what they have outstanding on their account and any holds they might have and anything that's currently outstanding we put a hold on for bed bug damage and that means that they're not allowed to renew it and then when it comes back and when it's scanned in our system shows this is on hold for and it gives the customer name so bed bug damage that we've trained our staff to really look and if you see it's on hold for bed bug damage you need to be aware that this book you should treat very carefully back to the plastic bag we don't want our aids or anyone checking in to move the book from that point you bring the bag the plastic bags to the book and you seal them up then and then we also have them whoever's checking it in is kind of responsible for putting together the template the letter template that we send to the customer and then our branch managers are the ones who actually send those out to customers so then once we have them in sealed plastic bags they go into our freezer for at least four days and then after we're done freezing them then they come out and then we do a post treatment inspection and we look at it anything that we think is fine can go back into the collection and those would be usually the books that are just next to maybe an infected book will go right back into the collection anything that has any kind of damage on it at all gets discarded these are the things that we use at Lincoln City libraries for treatment we started out with a heat treatment oven it was a large cardboard box that heated up to at least 113 degrees on the inside we would keep the books in the double bags we put them in there and what we lovingly call the bed bug bakery we would bake them for at least seven or eight hours the issue with this is that you need to have somebody kind of watch it you need to start it you need to stop it one time I forgot to shut it off and I went home so I had to come back because I worried about it being a cardboard box now they make them more like the soft-sided cooler bags so I think they're safer these are affordable options for libraries this one cost I think they cost around $140 the last time I looked so I think it's a reasonable option it's you can't put a lot of books in you could probably get 30 or 40 in which you think maybe at a time but then we did some more research and found that you could use you can freeze the books or the items they need to be at least in a freezer that goes to zero degrees and they need to be kept in there at least four days when I went out shopping for the freezer all freezers are not the same so make sure you ask for one that will freeze to below zero degrees to do it and this was fairly I think this one cost around $300 so it's a fairly reasonable option too the freezer makes it really easy we keep it in the CERC work room if we find something where we're checking in books we double bag them and put them immediately into the freezer so we're not carrying them all over the library we do just have one at this time for Lincoln City for all of our locations it seems like our library that we're in the Bennett Martin public library has the largest we find the largest amount of bed bugs in our books some other things to have are lots of Ziploc bags in both sizes the gallon and the two gallon latex gloves sometimes it just makes everybody feel better if you wear gloves when you're handling them and Plorox wipes if we find them on if we're checking in from a book cart we find a book on the book cart with bugs in we immediately put the whole shelf you know in there and then we'll wipe down the cart again the whole goal is to you know you're going to have an introduction of bed bugs because they're everywhere but we want to stop an infestation okay we also have we're lucky enough in Lincoln to have a company that has bed bug detecting dogs so spots comes regularly and sniffs all of our shelves he also will do all the furniture tables and chairs and he does alarm spots will bark if he smells bed bugs and they do have a new dog now named Ruby and she sits if she sees if she smells bed bugs I guess they go to hospitals and apartment buildings and I guess the people in the hospitals were concerned about the dog barking so now there is one if you have an infestation you might want to take the books from the top shelves down because they can't sniff all the way to the top but they can get four or five feet up I believe to smell them so one of the other things we did was we drafted and published some FAQs for the public so we wanted to have something to say if customers called and said you know how are we addressing this so we have a little script that our staff can say you know this is how Lincoln City libraries are addressing the threat of bed bugs and one of the things we emphasize is that libraries are not great environments for them to thrive they're usually nocturnal and they need a human host to feed usually you don't have people in the libraries at night so there are libraries like a lot of public buildings you know you can talk about any kind of public building a movie theater restaurants you can have introductions but it's just they're just not a great place for bed bugs to thrive and that's something that's really important that we tell the public we also want to tell people how to return items our worst case scenario is when they just come back in the book drop and then they could have infected anything that's in that drop so we want the customers that might have bed bug infected books to make sure that they're put in sealed ziplock bags and brought to the attention of a staff member they shouldn't just be put into a book drop and then we also provide a link for finding more information about bed bugs and this is back to the county extensions their resources there are excellent yes one other thing I wanted to mention too that at then a Martin public library we have a garage so one time we found spots alarmed at a love seat we had in our services area so we put the love seat into the garage for six months at least so it went through I think winter or summer I can't remember which one it was but then when spots came back we had them sniff it again and it was fine so that's another option and if you do move furniture around in the library they recommend the extension office recommends that you wrap it in like shrink wrap or put it in a bag so that the bugs don't fall off as you're moving it what I've done is have spots follow the trail to make sure he doesn't sniff anything else so that's another option to all right here's some examples this is a book that we found when you first open the back cover there were two little we think blood smears on the side of the book so that's one of the first things to start looking for that should raise your radar right there that maybe there's bed bugs or bugs in the book we then looked at the bottom of the book and you could tell there were fecal spots blood smears all sorts of things going on with that book and then we opened up and we looked inside the cover in there where you could actually see a couple dead bugs inside the cover so as Katie was saying it's really important to take a good look at the books because you want to stop it now this was probably one of the worst books that we had with would we say those were the blood spots fecal spots on them yeah and these were all over the book and I didn't keep the book and I kind of wish I would have but this was where I first got to know Jody because I thought I'm just going to take this book over here because number one it's good to get to know her and another thing let's just figure out what's going on exactly so the extension office has wonderful facilities they have magnifying glasses that are magnifying computers that will blow up everything so here we are and see I had to take my glasses off we were searching to look at the things up close there was some more spots that were on this book we kept searching and we did we looked at them for a long time and finally Jody took a pair of pliers or tweezers and picked out something from the inside of the cover I think it was and this was about the size of a grain assault it was very very small so and then she put it under the on the computer screen and there it was we found one it was not visible you really need the right kind of equipment to see it yeah and part of the reason why I went over is because I wanted to educate myself more you know and the extension office is wonderful to work with you know I'd also say when you're looking at books at check-in flip through all the pages what happens if a bed bug has just recently had a meal they might be crawling across the book and we have people that take their like index finger and push down on the bug and in that case it splatters the blood on the pages so that's another telltale sign that this might be a book that's bed bug damaged is if you see these blood splashes all through the book and we don't want to send out a book that looks like that no I keep thinking if I see spots in books when I'm reading them at home it's like oh what is that and I'm so happy when it's food hahahaha alright so these are just some of the things that we do that we've talked about I think the most important thing is to stay calm we've shown a lot of pictures because we do need you to get past the itching stage but I think I'm getting that even if you know we've had people drop like four or five books on the surf desk and live bugs have come crawling out and I can guarantee it you're going to itch but you need to stay calm and take care of it so someone do you want to know where do you hire the dogs special bed bug sniffing dogs I think when whatever area you're in if you just do a search on the internet doesn't it like an extremators type office would do or pretty specialized this one this is the top hit if you put in bed bug sniffing dog it's a $10,000 dog and it goes through extensive training before they get it and once they get it then they have to kind of train it how to work in public areas how to behave that's why the last time they came they have a new dog named Ruby and she's seven months old that she's came to learn how to I said yes bring her along because this is a good place to learn how to do it I just googled on here bed bug sniffing dog and here for Nebraska the first one that comes up is K9 bed bug detection of Nebraska and Lincoln and then something from pest solutions in Omaha meet Decoy our bed bug hunting dog yep so they're around we're glad they come yeah hiring a dog isn't for every situation but in situations like a library or a dorm room when you need a lot of ground to be covered, investigated and inspected pretty quick a dog is the way to go but when it comes to a bedroom you do want a human to go and confirm and flip things over and this is something we can tell our customers that we do quarterly we check all of the libraries and we should also say that it's a line item in our budget now to hire the dog to pay for it and you always learn a lot from them because they're telling you about where they found bed bugs before and what they do to prevent them so it's a good time to have a good conversation yeah we do have a couple questions coming in so if anybody does have any other questions you can type them into your questions section of your go-to web on our interface and we'll grab them here so let's know first for obviously Julie and Katie when you talk to people in the library do you take them away from the desk to a private place try and keep it private and on the down though go back in the office and it's probably something you've dealt with other situations with customers that you've got to let's go off somewhere else over here a conversation that oh we found bed bugs and we've also had to tell staff that's not something to talk about there's a lot of we usually have two people at our customer service desk that's not something you should be talking about just in general you don't want to give the wrong impression to people that are in the library and you don't want to offend the person that might be and staff are busy it's like and this takes a lot of sensitivity so another question I think this is for you the pest control person said that bed bugs can live up to a year without eating that is true I would say that is true but it also depends so that would be an adult bed bug and they could I don't personally know I know scientists have said up to a year but that would be a bed bug that's not actively searching for food spending energy that may, I definitely I think six months so when people want to leave their premises I'm just going to leave for a year and come back and the bed bugs will be dead not always the case that's probably what the pest control person was saying they've done different experiments with other aged bugs the smaller ones they need they'll dry out if they don't get a blood meal pretty fast they need that moisture they'll be dead not just dormants so I mean an adult an adult I think it can live quite a long time without a blood meal so yeah unfortunately that's true so you really want to actually have it treatment done not just don't avoid it you want to yeah and someone wants to know for you guys from the library what staff is on your bed bug committee who do you have on the committee and where are they from there it started out with I volunteered to be on it and then we had another librarian that volunteered to be on it and then at the time the person who does our damages when we have items that come back into the library that are damaged we have every branch has somebody kind of assigned to deal with that so he joined the committee who else was on it initially I think just another we have kind of a flattened organization so we've got library aids, library service associates and then the library service supervisor and librarian so we have the library service associate you know join us people that are at the front line desk can work with them so basically I'll see who will volunteer because it you know I think I was like shortly after I think they called me to come up you know when you see what havoc this could you know you want to be there you want to say okay we need to find a better way to deal with this so that was kind of one of the reasons that I was doing it and I think I was the library service supervisor at the time so I was in charge of the library service associates but when you have somebody bring in six books and the bugs start crawling out then you understand that you need to have some procedures in place we took this person outside and you know he put all of his books on top of our book drop and I had a kind of a quiet chat with them and he agreed to take them home and freeze them and then bring it back and back so that's the thing you've got to the panic because people hear bed bugs now that you hear the horror stories going to hotels and things and coming back covered and I'm sure when people hear that or see that staff they just panic and run potentially they could because they don't want to bring it into their own house well all of us we still talk about it if we find them and it's like do we take precautions we always have luggage and laundry in our garage before he even goes into the house when I was the supervisor in charge of the AIDS I always told the AIDS because they were the ones primarily dealing with check-in make sure you're wearing something that you can throw in a dryer something really, really nice I try that to wear a lot of clothes that are directly known to me but days when you're presenting to the public or something I might be in it and it's usually those days and I would say it comes in waves too like we haven't had any in quite a while but it seems like we'd get like three or four from different people in one month and then it would drop off and six or seven months would go by and we'd get another batch so it's kind of interesting actually somebody had just asked them jumping down how many incidents have there been since 2014 when you had the first we have a really kept track we have the spots comes four times a year and I bet that he has found all of the libraries at least 50% of the time he's alarmed for either a piece of furniture or a row of shelves books so they're there you just don't know and then you just take care of that section so that's a question for Jordan I think if a single bed bug is brought into a home if that's even possible will it die off because it will not be able to breed it is possible to bring one in on your shoe or your purse or something like that if it's a male bed bug yes likely it will die because it won't be able to breed if it is a female that has already mated they only need to mate once most insects can store sperm so they just need the blood meal to be able to lay eggs so if you get a fertilized female that one bed bug can can create an infestation so yes and no it will depend better to be cautious whenever you see anything differently okay this is a good policy question I guess keep a book in the collection that has been treated so you didn't have to get rid of it toss it do you still charge the patron for it do you have like do you pass on for the cost of the treatment how does that work out well since our treatment is really just putting it in the freezer for four days no what's being returned to the collection is something that looks a nice book and it's usually what's being returned to the collection is something that might have been right next to on a book cart or in a book drop right next to a book that has the damage pretty much anything that has damage we get rid of right away our normal policy with damaged items is to leave them available for a customer to come in and inspect them when we charge them and then if they pay for that then they can take that item with them we don't do that with bed bug books the customer doesn't get a chance to see them they go right out to the trash outside of the building yes yes and the ones that you treated are the ones that were just nearby don't have any visible damage so that you can still like the one picture we showed with the spots you know we don't want those to go back in the collection you don't want anybody to see that about getting icky books from the library and I would say that's true for all damage books the rule of thumb is what I want to check this out and take it to my home and if I'm looking at a book and it's kind of you know leave food stains on stuff there's all kinds of stuff that comes back with library books so anything that we wouldn't normally put back on a shelf been treated and since the treatment doesn't cost anything extra there's no reason to charge someone just because it was nearby and did get to you we're doing that to protect the integrity of the library too so yes only things that are obviously damaged to charge a customer because then you got to replace it alright we're just hitting 11 o'clock which is great perfect timing you guys are worried about going too far over or something anybody have any other questions any last minute questions you want to get out while we're here you can see there is contact information for everybody for Joe, Julie and Katie up there if you want to contact them afterwards any other questions you come up with you can if you want to ask anything right now since your last chance get your typing in there any last final wrap up things you guys want to say well it's certainly nothing I ever studied in library school I know but it's out there and it's not going to go away so the best thing you can do is learn to have these policies in place know how to handle them when they come in know how to have your staff know how to be trained to identify it have the staff know how to protect themselves and you know it I don't itch as much it's just another day I would agree with Katie as the manager it's like I want to make sure the staff are trained I want to make sure the customers are handled the books are handled responsibly that we talk to customers responsibly and we just have to do it we have no choice it's too bad that you have to you actually end up getting used to it because it's come up often enough and we've never had an infestation so that's kind of our goal that's good to not have that do as much preventative as you can well it doesn't look like anybody typed in an urgent last minute thing so I think we will wrap it up for today thank you very much Jody and Julie and Katie for being here today very informational very good very itchy but I'm okay just you know mental kind of thing oh let's ask where can we download the documents actually I'll show you that right now because I'm going to grab back the mouse here and we're going to switch over to the website here so yes we've been recording the show right now and it will be on our website if you just google the website the only thing out there called this yet still which is great so come up first on your search results the information for today's show it's already bumped off of here but I can show you the items that Julie sent me yesterday are on the session page right now you can download them right now from here FAQ best practices in the letter that they have for a template you can use those downloadable from our website they will also be included when I send out the link to the recording as well we should be copying this right over to our recording link which will be available here on our Encompassly website we've got our current show upcoming shows but right beneath that is our link to our archives and this is where we'll have a link to the YouTube recording of the show it will be right here at the top of the list when it is done this is last weeks a link to the power points that they will share today and those documents will all be there as well probably by later this afternoon sometime I'll have the recording done as long as YouTube cooperates with processing and uploading and all and you'll all get an email that you know when it's available there so that will wrap it up for today's show I hope you join us next week when our topic is something completely different no bugs I hope in archives and special collections I actually can never know but I don't think that's what they're talking about next week so we have a couple of standards for public services and archives and special collections and Amy Schindler who is from UNO she contacted me about doing a presentation about this on the show she's going to be on next week talking about what they're looking at looking for comments on it still and she's bringing along a couple of colleagues Meal Harbin from Harvard and Christian Dupont from Boston College you're going to be on the line remotely with her for next week's show so please do sign up for that one that's for just Nick on next Wednesday and any of our other shows I hope it's coming up for the next couple of months here new ones are always being added I've just got two confirmed for March so far but other ones will be coming in so take a look keep an eye on our schedule there also if you are a big Facebook user and Compass Life is on Facebook we have a Facebook page you can like our page over there we put notices of when a new show is coming up recordings are available no I don't want to log in right now thank you very much Facebook so if you are big on Facebook here's where I put a reminder I'll get on the fly for today's show so if you want to like us over there other than that that wraps up for today's show thank you so much all you guys for coming over today and thank you everyone for attending and hopefully we'll see you next time on Compass Life bye bye