 Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on a Wednesday, that's fine. We do record the show as we're doing today. And it is then posted to our website in our archives for you to watch later at your convenience. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the shows we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, here at the Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries, so we are similar possibly to your state library. So we provide training and services and resources to all types of libraries in the state. So you may find shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries, public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, anything and everything. Really, our only criteria is something to do with libraries. Something cool libraries are doing, something we think we could be doing, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff come on the show to do presentations about programs and services and things we're doing here through the commission, but we also bring on guest speakers. And that's what we have today. Today we have Regina and Diana are both joining us, both from Florida, correct? Yeah. And they're going to talk about something which is a very popular topic I know from the number of people that signed up for today's show, technology skills assessment and training, which is something that we, I know everybody needs and a lot of us struggle with, I am sure. So I will hand over to both of you to fully introduce yourself and tell us what you have for us this morning. Hi, welcome. I'm Diana Silvera from Navar Library Services and I'm here with Regina. Regina's at the Panhandle Library Access Network. A little bit about our organizations before we get started. So Navar Library Services is a consulting company. It's basically me. Now and then, but and Regina's with the Panhandle Library Access Network, which we call PLAN, which you'll hear a lot today, the word PLAN. PLAN is a multi-type library cooperative here in Florida. We have our state library, just like you have in Nebraska, but then we have five regional organizations that do something similar, very similar CE group purchases, training. Regina, I don't know if you want to pipe in and talk about more about what PLAN does a little bit. Well, the five multi-type library cooperatives are established by statute and we share resources amongst our member libraries. PLAN has 16 counties in the state of Florida. We're in the northwest part of Florida, the Panhandle, and the other multi-type library cooperatives are throughout the state. Like Diana said, continuing education, training, cooperative purchasing, advocacy for libraries, kind of those things in general. So that is just a little bit of background about ourselves. Personally, I got my degree from University of North Carolina Greensboro a way long time ago that we don't like to use dates anymore and an undergrad in psychology from Catawba College in the 90s. So, and I relocated from North Carolina back down to my home state, which is Florida. So we both have huge library backgrounds and Regina, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit more? Sure. I was until a couple of weeks ago the director of professional development for PLAN. I just recently received a promotion to assistant director of the, thank you, thank you. I have an undergraduate degree in history from New Mexico State University and masters in library science from the University of North Texas in Ditten, Texas. But I too, like Diana, am back in Florida where I am from. I am also a native Floridian, which is not, there's not a lot of us, but more and more. So that's a little bit about me. So the two of us, a little bit about how this came to be. And then we're going to, the agenda for today will be about how this whole thing came to be with the background of the project is what we did for the project itself. The findings we found and how we think this could help you. And then technology training resources that you can use at your library. And at the end, there is a link and a QR code to the slides and project information, sample surveys, all of that stuff for your community. So you don't have to try and jot a huge amount of notes down if you don't want to. At the end is also our contact information. So if you had follow up questions, you're encouraged to contact either of us. That said, I am a very casual presenter and I love questions. So put them in the chat box, the question box, however you want to ask questions during the session. Regina and I, because there's two of us are able to kind of monitor that. And it's always better to ask your question the moment you have it versus trying to wait until some arbitrary point later in the presentation when you can't remember what you were going to ask. So feel free to ask your question when you have it in your mind. And as soon as we can, we will get to it. So a little bit about this project. This is an ARPA grant during COVID. As you know, ARPA grants were created to help bridge this huge digital divide that became very evident very quickly with COVID. And this grant focused on three main parts and we're really only going to focus on one today, but it had multiple focuses. And these were all targeting very rural libraries, which we're going to talk about in a minute in a minute. I can't speak today and I really apologize for that. So the first was to help some libraries get websites. They had really older websites that were built with like a website builder back probably one websites first came to be and the libraries had a really hard time getting new content put up there. So we worked with five little libraries to create for the libraries and one one project to create new WordPress websites that they can easily update manage and kind of take control over so that they're able to present information to their users and so we worked really hard with all of those libraries. The second part was technology planning and this included some actual grants from Regina's organization for new emergency technology. So we, Regina and I traveled the panhandle looking at every wire at every library talking about what their technology planning goals are and their technology immediate needs. I'm Regina's organization. I'm going to let her say it because I'm going to forget a couple, but do you want to go ahead and say what the some of the technology where the fund was. Sure. So probably the largest purchase is we actually bought a server for the one of the small and rural libraries in our membership. And it was really a great thing that they did it was at end of life. It was probably a little past end of life. Let's let's be honest. And that's very common. Small rural libraries. Absolutely. And it was really good that we did this because I think about three months after those new server was installed. The old server just went kaput. So they would have, it would have been a mess, but so thankfully we were able to save that off. We also purchased, remember this was during the pandemic, we purchased a lot of Chromebooks and Wi-Fi hotspots for one library that they were able to loan them out so that people would have internet access at home. Because the library was had limited hours that they could get to the library. We also bought, let's say Wi-Fi hotspots, Chromebooks. We bought barcode scanners for some libraries because they were they were out of service. We had some large print keyboards for visually impaired patrons. Just a lot of things like that. We also were able to even get some a few cricket machines for programming so that when people were able to come back into the library that we were able to provide some some programming materials. So that's basically what we, we spent quite a bit of money on for this equipment, but it was all very, very useful. And these libraries would not have been able to purchase any of this without this funding. So we, and then the third prong, of course, was the technology training, which is why all of you are here to learn about this. So we're going to delve a little bit more into that a little bit more. So we focused the whole third part and with the rest of the session today is going to be about is this technology training. So we focused in on six counties and some of you might be familiar with the Panhandle in Florida. And often when you think of the Panhandle Florida, you think of Panama City Beach and all of these giant mansions on the water. But if you explore the Panhandle a little bit, as soon as you get off the beach, you go very rural, very fast. Gena's area, I think we said like a thousand, it's like hundreds of miles. And some of these counties are huge and they're very sparsely populated. Even the counties like Walton County, where you see that 80,000, there's a lot of people at the beach, but Walton County actually goes is very narrow and north and south. And as soon as you get to that upper part of the county out of that initial beach area as you go up, it gets more and more rural. In fact, that was the library system that Regina and I actually had to go on a dirt road to get to the library. We were actually off-roading and they didn't actually have really good central air even there. So these counties are really rural. They're identified in Florida, we have something called, the name escapes me, but we identified them as rural. Ready, thank you. Ready counties, rural economic development initiatives. Great out of my head. It's a four letter word. I apologize to everybody. I'm not normally this guy. So these ready counties are identified as having really rural, they're very economically depressed. They have technology challenges. So a little bit about these areas, 83% only have a high school diploma, 16% have a college degree, 19% live in poverty, only 87% of households have a computer and only 78% have access to broadband internet. So this is an extremely area that is really hit by the digital vibe. I talked to some staff members and said, yeah, we have ebooks. It's great, but the patrons have to get in their car and drive to the library hook up to our Wi-Fi download their book and then go home. And so, you know, there's the library might be the only place in some of these communities where people can connect to the internet. So public Wi-Fi is so important at these libraries. And these counties all did get other money from other places, ARPA money in their county systems to start getting a little more broadband access. So it's coming, but it's not an immediate fix. So that is still a huge issue at some of these libraries. So what we found is the patrons, of course, need technology help a lot. There's a lot of needs. There's a lot of people that don't need, you know, they come into the library as maybe in your libraries. It's the first time they're using technology and they need help from the staff. So this is one of the quotes from one of the directors, and I'm going to expand on this in a second. But it's simple as she's like a disconnected cord. She was saying like one of the smaller branches there only maybe have one staff member at some of these more rural libraries, and they'll call and say the computers aren't working. And they'll put an out of order sign on it. And it could take her a couple days because she's the library director. She's the only person there that has they don't have a tech person. And they don't have all of these other resources to drive out, you know, 45 minutes an hour to this location, look at it and fix it. And it could be something as simple as a disconnected cord when she gets there. And that so people who didn't have access to the two computers public access computers for 2448 hours. And that's a significant need. You know, the other part of this too is just the patron experience. You know, so you might have a mother like mine. I love my mother very much. She's, you know, in her late 70s, she lives off of Libby. That's how she's she can't see that well so she can't read. She doesn't want to read books. She wants to read on her iPad so she can make it really big and nobody will judge her for it. But she, you know, she's not the most techie person. So as she walks into her library and says I'm having trouble with Libby, everybody there needs to know how to help. I can't say, well, you need to come back on another day when somebody's here to help. So how do we get everybody at the library to have these core competencies that technology for staff is not a barrier to helping your users. And that's really where this project came from is how do we help everybody get connected. So what we wanted to do first is identify the issues. We didn't want to come in and say we know that you don't know how to do this because we don't know. We don't know where the sort of the weak spots are in people's knowledge. So we created based on the digital learn PLA survey from a couple of years ago we took that and modified it. And we had two sections. The first 10 questions were actually defining terms. You know, what is an app? What is a browser? And it had multiple choice answers they had to answer. Self assessment was the rest of it. And this is a sample question connecting to a wireless network. I don't think I can do that. I probably could manage that. I could do it okay. I'm confident enough to show and tell others. And really what we were looking for is this last answer that they were so confident in this skill that they can, they could do it. Fair, okay, that's all right. You can do it and you probably can muster your way through a patron transaction, but we really wanted people to be confident enough. So this was a large quiz survey. We, all of the participating libraries had made a commitment to Regina that their staff would have time to do all of this because that is a huge issue. If you think about all of us we don't have enough time in any day. So having that time to do this pretest, the self evaluation, and then and really think through their skills and then also detonate the time to have for training and learning these skills that we've identified. So we went through what we considered the core sort of technologies. You don't notice there's no high end stuff. There's not, do you know how to code? Can you program a robot? That kind of stuff we kind of tried to see but very core and what was at those libraries at the moment. So general vocabulary. Do you understand, you know, main, the main technical terms that people would use computer basics. Can you turn computers on plug things in sort of that basic, you know, open up an internet browser. Can you do sort of those basic things? Can you manage an operating system? Do you understand what operating systems are some basic word processing spreadsheets presenting software? Are you able to manipulate columns? Are you able to change fonts? All of those basic things for helping people do resumes of your running reports. If you have to do patron training presenting software. Are they able to use the internet and web browsers? This also included being able to determine what fake news sort of that sort of stuff in there and surf the internet safely. Email, can they can they manage their own email and help people set up email? A little bit about devices. As you know, working in a library, people bring in all sorts of devices for us. So are you familiar enough with these devices that you could talk about them a little bit? And then library databases. What we focused in on the databases that all of these libraries had access to. So these are things that they would need to be able to answer questions on and help their users. And including their library catalogs. And then if they're able to manage social media, because at these libraries, there's not a marketing person doing their social media. The library themselves is a social media person. So in each section had about 10 questions. So it wasn't like very nitty and gritty. Each of these sections was an overview, but it's still a huge, it took about 30 minutes for each person to commit on average. So it was a commitment to go through this whole exam. So it was a commitment to sit down and do that. So the average score was 64%. That's what we found. So in even when you're looking at the skills and you go, Oh, those are really basic 64% is not good. So we really had to kind of pull back and look at what, okay, how are we going to train all of these people. If anybody familiar with the panhandle, the panhandle is very large. It is very long and narrow. So from one library that's participating to the far one on the West from the East, we're talking about a couple hundred miles. So it's very hard to set up in person training for that because people have to travel hours. There's actually a time zone change in there too, just to kind of keep everybody on their toes. Regina is in central time, but some of her libraries are in eastern time so she's got that challenge as well. So we decided that self paced training was going to be the sort of way to go with this. And we also just looked at all of the stuff that came in and we looked at anything that 55% of people could not say they were confident enough. Those were the skills that we focused on as the most need. And we used niche Academy, which if you're not familiar with niche Academy, it's a self paced learning platform. A lot of states and organizations like Regina's already had this where they put their training in there and it's viewable only to their members and the nice thing with it is the content is in there. Regina gets really nice reports that she can see who's gone through it, how many people have completed it. So it's a little more robust on that end. And so it helped us kind of focus in on how we were going to do this. So I'm not going to read through this whole list, we're just going to spend a little bit of time on this. These are some of the skills that we decided that we had to kind of pull together. So we did have things like 3D printers because a lot of the libraries did have some maker spaces in there. We found Gale databases, which is our Florida, our state library provides Gale databases to all Florida libraries. So this is a core resource everybody has access to. And it's really important running reports in their ILS systems. Fake news, troubleshooting computers, social media, lots of stuff with browsers that they didn't know how to do. Evaluating websites for reliability and accuracy, identifying, preventing and removing fake pop-ups and malware. So all sorts of lots of core things that we're dealing with. Some stuff a little more of that sort of advanced stuff like Rukus and Amazon Firesticks and other streaming media and everything. Why do you need to know that? But if your library has access to Canopy or Hoopla, your patrons can put that on their devices. So they're going to ask you about it. Kindles, of course, how to connect the laptop to a projector. Being able to sort columns. So lots of stuff like that. You can kind of go through here some Microsoft. And even identifying some common social media networks. So it was all over there. So what we did was we went through niche and one of the nice things about niche Academy is there are free trainings available. Some libraries will create training and they'll put it up there and they'll make it free and available to other libraries. And other organizations will do this as well. Niche creates its own content as well. And then you can upload your own. So it gives you a lot of flexibility. So Regina and I went to the marketplace there first. And we looked through all of the free training, all of the training, even the paid training. And we kind of looked through and we found some training that would be exactly what we need, like basics of Excel, how to use scale databases. So we found some of this training already existed. So we created a special section within Regina's niche Academy and put this training in there. And then we found what we didn't have training on and we created short sessions and they were very targeted. Some of them were 10, 15 minutes. Some of them were 30 minutes, depending on the content. And they were very much... We had a whole training that we developed on how to use plugs and how to evaluate news and very focused in on where we saw those knowledge gaps. Because people don't have time to maybe watch a whole thing. They don't have time to sort of delve in. And we just needed to give them the facts that they needed to know and the nitty and gritty of that training. So here's a little bit more of what we created in-house. So troubleshooting 101, just focused on PCs because that's what most of them have in their libraries. How do you fix a slow computer? What are sort of the steps that you would go through when you're trying to do that? And while we're doing that, let's talk about the vocabulary of that computer. Tools that you might use like shortening URLs, cloud storage and devices, web browsers, practical tech and social media. So we created training for all of these things. And first and most important, we created a training called how to use niche Academy. Because one of the things we realized is not everybody is familiar with niche Academy and we didn't want the format to be the barrier. It isn't really hard. You have to create an account with the way it's set up. If you have a library email address, the domain name of the email is previously approved by Regina. So you just go right in. If it's not, it goes to a moderation and Regina has to approve or deny access to it. So we focused in on this training. We put it all together into a little pocket in niche Academy. And then we gave them two months. And I say that we gave them two months, but all of that training is still available. So if somebody came now and they wanted to do this, they're more than welcome to take the training. They're just not part of the study. The two months, because it's an ARPA grant and we had to have an end date so we could turn in all the reports. So we had two months to complete the training. As an incentive, we gave a prize to the person who completed the most tutorials and tried to make it a little gamification in there. It got highly competitive. I will say we had directors calling and saying how many has so and so watch. Are they the top one they want to know. It was it was really fun. We did have a couple people tie at the time and then we had to randomly pick one person to be the winner. But I do think that that little incentive helped a lot. And during that whole time, of course, we were available for questions, anything like that. We were constantly getting feedback. And then when we finished, we did a post survey. We sent out the same exact survey again and asked everybody to take it again. So we did hit a couple of stumbling bots. And this is part of the problem with being an organization like Regina's where you're not the people's direct supervisor. We had some people that took the pre and not the post. We had some people who took the post and not the pre. We didn't have the authority to force people to do anything. So, you know, if they decided they didn't want to do it. It was up to their supervisor to kind of move them through it, not myself and Regina. And of course, time is a huge issue. You know, staff, especially when you're the only man at the library, you have to do it during downtime. And so some stuff had a challenge of getting the tutorials completed in time. However, overall, we had a 10% increase in knowledge. So still not perfect. Nobody, everybody's not perfect in the world. But we did have that 10%. So we did see a good bump in the training. And we have 6,875 tutorials access in two months, which is a huge number. They were really watching these tutorials. And in niche, you can see watch versus access to this was people who access them and we could see that they watched them as well. So we're really happy with the results, but the results are not the end for Regina myself. We have been working really hard at continuing what we learned because what this gave us was an understanding of what the training true needs truly are in our region. Not just what we think the training needs are or what people identify, but what they actually need. So we. Excuse me, Regina has been using this as a curriculum guide for creating additional training. She continually offers continuing education to all of her members. Not just through this corporate grant, but a huge portion of what they do at the plan organization. So as she's developing training, she looks back at this and I'm just speaking for Regina now and creates and adds stuff that will hit these needs. There's also a tech, a planned tech day conference and this was in March and this is usually it's where we bring all the toys, you know, all of the robots and printers and crickets and VR and all of that is there and we what we did this year a little bit different is we created a high tech and a low tech track. So we had Brian Pikmin came and he was doing, you know, AI and all of these really high level kind of courses and then at the same time concurrently. I was presenting on sort of these more basic skills we talked about we had a security session. You know, and we kind of focus in a little bit more on that and then what the technology we also had some lower in technologies there and so people could explore those as well. She's continually adding niche content. Again, that fits this need and beyond that but also make sure that she hit some of these basic skills and web based training as well. One of the things that for me it was a takeaway I I've done technology training and work with libraries for technology with technology for the last 20 years. And one of the things I've training has always sort of been focused on what's the next and biggest greatest thing like everybody wants AI training right now everybody you know and this grant really for me was a moment to pause and really shift my paradigm a little bit and say, that's all well and good and we need to we don't need to not do that. I think it's really important to stay on that cutting edge and do emerging trends, but we can't leave people behind to make sure that our training fits that whole scale, and that we're going back and making sure that we're bringing along the people that are maybe technology reluctant, especially now. You know, and it's not everybody coming to libraries has a huge background in technology and you know it's it is such it's a key part of what we do. Everybody who staffs the desk needs to have some confidence in all of these technology skills so that they can, especially in our rural libraries like you all are dealing with and here in Nebraska to. We have people who they've never went to library school. They're, you know, they're running the library, you know it's half of their job and they're half is running the post office in the town. I mean, it's, and they're just barely keeping up with the basics of running a library and then this all becomes from something it's absolutely something they need a lot more. Yeah, well that's it. You know, and sometimes we just get like caught up in what's the newest and I love the newest so I'm never I'm not saying anything negative about the newest but it's important to make sure we have the time and the focus to make sure those core skills are there. And people don't have a huge library background, even some people that have gone through library school might not have this huge core background, tech is not their thing, you know they want to not but they have to have it, no matter what. So does anybody have any questions before we get into sort of the resource part of this session. Yeah, I don't see anything right now yeah of anybody has any questions go ahead and type into the question section of your go to webinar interface monitoring that year and I can see those questions and read them off to presenters today. And yeah anything you want to ask about anything you want to share. If you've done something like this in your library or your library system, I'm sure we'd love to hear about that too. You haven't done it formally are there skills that you learn you look around and go yes, that's the kind of stuff we need help with just just kind of a security. Yeah. Well I don't say anything right now but I'll keep an eye on things. I'm going to pass it on to Regina and let her talk about free technology training resources that are available to all of us that are on listening or live or on demand, and then again at the end we'll have a little discussion so think up some questions as Regina's talking. Great. Well thanks Diana. I'll just have you for advanced the slides, if you would. Okay, so next. So what we talked about earlier the plan is one of the five multi type library cooperatives in Florida here's a nice pretty map of all of us. I you may have something similar in your state of organization and nonprofit organization that provides continuing education. We charge Florida library staff for any of our continuing education programs, because they are all grant funded. So, we are open to everyone in the state even if you're not a plan member, as long as you're in the state of Florida then you're good to go. Next. And also, in our state we have the division of library and information services that is a division of the Florida Department of State. They provide a lot of resources for librarians and library staff. It's free of course and then they also subscribe to tech talk on behalf of us. It's available again to all Florida library staff. It's a great newsletter if you're not familiar with it. It's a weekly newsletter that's sent out with just a, you know, one short tip on technology. So, you know, today's newsletter may be talking about PowerPoint presentations, how to do certain things in PowerPoint, and they also, if they talk about PowerPoint, they also talk about Google slides. So, whichever one you're using, they cover it. And that is a great resource. They also provide webinars, a couple webinars every month that's also free for library staff to attend. So, they get a lot of free training from tech talk. Next. And then we also have statewide programs such as Nebraska does. There's Nebraska Library Commission. They have these webinars and everything else. We have that in Florida and you might have something similar in your state too. Next. And I always recommend if someone needs some free technology training as to go to the source. I am really bad about this. I always forget. That there is free training on these programs that we have spent a lot of money. And because these organizations, they want you to use their product so that, you know, when it's obsolete, you have to upgrade it and give them more money. But they really want you to use it so they have a lot of good training available for you. And it's all free, of course. And just take advantage of this free training that's provided by these companies. Tech Smith, they have Camtasia and Snagit and a few other programs. Very reasonable programs if you purchase them. But their tutorials are excellent. I mean, if you're looking into any video creation, then I recommend this. It's very reasonably priced. And the video training doesn't even just talk about how to use the product, but they talk about best practices for videos, for training videos and such. So I really like Tech Smith. Next, please. Next. Oh, okay. And then look at things you already own for your technology training. So like Diana said, plan subscribes to NITCH Academy. I think all of our five MLCs in the state now provide NITCH Academy to their members. Tech Talk, the newsletter again that's paid for by our state library. LinkedIn Learning, if you've already paid for it for your patrons, you can use it for staff to universal class. This is one of the cooperative purchases that plan has for our members. Patrons use it, but it's also great for classes for staff. They have tons and tons of classes you can take. One of our multi-type library cooperatives has created an expertise database where you can contact other library staff around the Neflin area, which is the Northeast Florida area, on technology or anything else. Maybe you have a question about Excel and you know that John at Jacksonville Public Library is an Excel expert. Reach out to them. And GAL courses is another resource that you may subscribe to. And these are all great. So take advantage of things you already own. Next, TechSoup courses. Some TechSoup courses are paid, but they also provide free courses every now and then. So if you subscribe to the email for TechSoup courses, they'll let you know when anything free is coming up. And I did want to make a note about TechSoup. If you do not use TechSoup to buy technology for your library, I encourage you to get an account and do so. It's free. The account is free. You can get a lot of reduced prices for software, hardware, Wi-Fi hotspots, things like that. Recently, our IT guy found out that we were able to get Microsoft 365 for free for our organization. They gave us 10 free licenses for Microsoft 365, which is nothing. Yes, it is very huge. You do have to set up an account. You either have to be a library that's listed on the IMLS. List of public libraries or a nonprofit organization in order to join, but it is a great, great resource to purchase. Yeah, we recommend that here as well. Last year with the ARPA grants that we gave out to libraries, and I think even the year before with CARES Act, we did subgrants to our libraries. Many of them did need to upgrade software and hardware and whatnot. And we recommended every single time go to TechSoup, you will get more bang for your buck, definitely. You wanted to probably get four. Right. If you just went direct to your local computer store or Dell or Best Buy or something. Yeah. Yeah, we just received Adobe Express for free. And that gave us a few other creative cloud things too. We're going to purchase creative cloud this year. And I think it's like a 50% price reduction over what you would pay on the, if you went directly to Adobe. Now TechSoup does normally charge an admin fee, but it's usually very nominal and that's just to keep the site going basically. We have a comment from someone in the audience who said TechSoup can save you a lot of money. Yes. Next slide please. Okay, you may have heard of this GCF Global. It used to be the Goodwill website where they provided a lot of free training that is still going. Now it's a, they've just rebranded it basically. I have found that some of the training is out of date. So maybe they're still offering Word 2010, but they seem to be updating it pretty well. So you can find something more recent too for that. Next please. And digitallearn.org, this is put out by the Public Library Association. Some of the courses are free. Some are not. And this is, like Diana said, this is where we got the Technology Skills Assessment template and then modified it for our region. Next please. And then Code Academy. This is for coding. So it's more for the higher level. But you know, so even just the Learn SQL class, if you use Ko-Ha or something similar to that, then SQL is something that you need in order to run reports. Well, you don't need it, but it can provide more customized reports for you. And just your basic HTML, even if you have WordPress, which is very user friendly, sometimes I know I like to get into the HTML and do a little tweaks that I can't do with the WordPress access that they provide to for their builders. So that's another free source. Next please. And then Senior Planet from AARP. You don't have to be old to use these. These are free classes. They have live classes. They have on-demand classes. They have a lot of things. And it's just a great resource for everybody. Next please. And then if you, TED Talks are great for more, not necessarily training on specific technology, but more of the kind of the high level technology issues, technology trends, such as chat, GPT and things like that. So if you kind of want to learn about a technology, not necessarily how to do a technology, then I recommend searching through TED Talks. Next. And then there's virtual conferences. For instance, in Florida, the Florida Libraries Online Conference is put on by the five multi-type library cooperatives. We cooperate with each other for this conference. It's actually tomorrow. Again, we offer that conference free to, well, Florida library staff, but if there are spaces available, you are welcome to come too. I don't think we have any specific technology training in this year's conference. It's about the libraries have heart. So it's more of the community engagement, inclusivity topics such as that. And then the big talk from small libraries, which I'm sure everyone's aware of that by the Nebraska Library Association is another conference and library 2.0. That is out of San Jose State University. They offer some free trainings and they also offer, I think at least two virtual conferences a year. So I get their news, their mailings too. Yeah, they do some sort of like mini, I think they call them mini conferences or mini events or something. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And those, and those are free. So check those out too. Yeah, and big talk. That's the conference that we do here through the library commission that I host. Yeah. Yes, you all submitted for that. And it's, it's every, every, for everyone who's been aware, it's the last Friday of the last Friday of February every year, free online for everyone. But we always get more proposals than we can fit into the one day. And so luckily I have this show, my weekly show I can put things into and we do have a mixture of things to the way technology things in there and we've got the full history archive of the conference going back to the previous year. So if you're looking for some particular look into their that page to define previous recordings for whatever topic you might be looking for. Great. All right, next please. Khan Academy. This is again coding, but they also have some more basic things such as like the internet online data security. There's general computers so there are some more high level classes, but some, some lower classes, level classes too. I highly recommend the code one there the hour code is great for someone who's like I know nothing and I don't even know how to even get started and it's just so much it is literally just do it in small chunks. So don't be afraid. Amazon actually has cyber security awareness training and training on how to be an internet bodyguard. So I think where we we're all afraid of staff who click on fishing links and everything and and which could allow hackers into our systems and that would be devastating. So we want to make sure all staff are aware of, you know, how people are trying to get your information and trying to get access to your technology so that they can do bad bad things. So that's free training that's available to next please. And then also for cyber, cyber security, there's the National Cyber Security Alliance that's a federal government program. They have training they have toolkits available. And you can also I think they have a class where you can learn how to train others on cyber security. So that's something that you can learn yourself and then also share with your patrons. And in Florida here we have cyber Florida, which is the Florida Center for Cyber Security. They have provided us with webinars for our members and they they've not charged and it's it's great they they partner with the University of West Florida and Pensacola, and it's just a great program. And we're able to take advantage of that here you may have something similar in your state to next. And then other ideas for free training. You know, talk to your local government agencies if you have an IT department in your city or county. Maybe there's someone there that could do some training if you work for an academic library. Other academic departments may be able to provide you with some free technology training. I mean, look in your own library you have books in your collection, not just your print books but also Libby or your ebook collection, magazines in your collection. Of course, there's, you know, PC magazine and Mac world, all kinds of things like that that also provide technology information. You may have other staff members in your library or library system who they do know something about a specific technology and would be willing to to share that with with other staff members. And then there are tons of YouTube channels on how to do this how to do that Excel seems to be hugely popular I didn't list them all because there are so many but if you just go to YouTube and search for videos for training on something you will find more than you could watch. Next. So these are some of the books and magazines that I found in our Libby. Cloud security office 365 the iPad user manual. Next please. Next. And that's all that we have. This is our contact information. As you see here, Diana is going to be at LA so if anyone's going to LA, please visit her at her booth 2042. And here's the QR code and the resources and slides there's a link. You'll be able to get these slides and all the list of all the resources and then some that we covered. And if anyone has any questions for me or and for Diana, then just please let us know. We thank you for your time and attention today. Yeah, awesome. Yes, anybody have any questions we still have some time. Definitely. In our official hour I'm just getting that link for myself to training in Nebraska. Whoops. I got to spell things correctly if I want to get to them. Don't die. Yes. And since I know Diana won't I will plug Diana's book that she has it's technology planning and, and more. No, that's the name of our grant technology planning. I'm sorry. I think for today and tomorrow. Yes, and the grant that we did did the libraries created technology plans. They also. So that is covered in the book, the technology assessments. It's covered in the book. All kinds of stuff. It's a it's a great book. You can contact her directly to purchase. Or, of course, it's on Amazon. For everyone to I inspired everybody a little bit in general like to get a little more. Look at your stuff. Look at yourself and figure out what's missing in your training and how to get it. Absolutely. I think I would hope so. Yeah, I actually learned. I mean, some of the training resources you listed I knew about some I did I wasn't didn't like that hadn't really thought about myself so I'm always we're always trying to find new things to send to libraries of where to go to get their training and I think I forget one of you made the comment that we provide a lot of things for our patrons because we know they need to learn about it, but we can use them to there's not like here's just the stuff that only library staff can use and this is the one the trainings for the patrons know use the same everything that you paid for for your patrons for yourself as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so if anybody have any questions comments thoughts anything that you want to know more about dig into more or anything you wanted to share about training successes failures tips whatever at your library. I'm going to see if I can get this. Yeah. I was just checking through the QR code on my phone. You bring that up very easy. There it is. Yeah. So, go ahead and type in the question section. We have some thank you, thank you for the resources. Definitely want to look at more of these. And this is something that is with it's, you know, big talk in small libraries is where this all came from. And that's what I was talking about earlier the people that just don't. I figured this all out themselves. And this is, you know, this I think is a great resource for the library staff there so I hope, you know, I'm going to share this out to our big talk website as well when we get recording up saying hey, all you small rural libraries this is this is the thing you could definitely get some great tips and ideas and when I'm glad you did this this grant and the actual research on it to I mean we know off the top of our heads. We think we know what people need and what they want and what our library staff is looking for but things very important to have that official scientific background or you know results that if they do need to say I need to attend these classes or I need to pay for this service or whatever. And here's the data that someone else has done the research to show this is what, you know, people need those library staff. We're struggling with yeah that I think that help will help some to, you know, back up their requests for these kind of things for their own lifelong learning and professional development. Any other questions coming in one just let's thank you thank you very informative. Thanks for all the helpful resources. Yeah I think you definitely did good. I'm getting this out there but let us be able to help you get this out. So, are you presenting this at LA or are you just doing the booth there. I'm actually just doing a booth this is one of my first I'm doing a booth at LA so it's I'm very excited. So I will. I will be there talking about training so if anybody wants to stop by I promise to have lots of chocolate for everybody. It's a key absolutely. Alright, so I think if we don't have any other questions I will I'm going to pull presenter control back to my page and do a wrap up here of our show. You all can just stay on the line here and get my screen up. I think it comes up when you do use that that bitly link that shirt and link that you'll get to that has all information about their project and the slides that you all just used today. Right here a quick list of the training opportunities I think is a great resource. So, I will also add a link to this when I put up the archive page for today's show. There we go. I should apologize I just realized all of my stuff for aliens actually behind me which is why I look like I'm a hoarder over sort of my shoulder. The box is back there. Get ready for the trip absolutely you need to. So, yeah, we'll have a link to this so thank you. Everyone for being here today with us. Thank you Diana energy. This is great session, like I said awesome resources. I will definitely be digging more into this from my own knowledge and also just for sharing out to our libraries that reach out to us for resources to. So, here's the session page for today show. I'm going to go to our main encompass live page to show you. If you use whatever your search engine of choices and you type in and compass live the name of our show we are the only thing called that on the internet. So far, nobody else is allowed to use that name. We haven't trade market or copyright or anything but so far no one else is using it so you'll find us you'll find our main page. We're here you see if our upcoming shows for the next couple of months already scheduled and here's the link to our archive so this is where today's recording will go. These recent ones go to the top of the page. And there'll be a link to like I said the recording to the show on our YouTube channel and then I will have a link out to this page with all the slides and the resources from the project and the training resources that you can get to everyone who registered for today's show and attended today's show will get an email from me letting you know when the recording is ready. It should be done by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me. While I'm here I'll show you there is a search feature here, where you can see if we've done a topic on anything that you might be interested in you can search our full show archives or the just the most recent 12 months if you just want something very current. And that is because this is our full show archives, and I'm not going to scroll all the way down but you can see the little scroll bar over here, it's pretty, there's a long list here. This goes back to when and compass live first premiered which was in January 2009. So we're in our 15th year here and we have all of our show recordings here. Just pay attention when you're watching something to the original broadcast date they all have the date when they first broadcast resources and services some things may still stand the test of time be great. Things to watch but some things may become old outdated services may no longer exist anymore links may be broken. People might not work at the same library they worked out when they, you know, presented for us 10 years ago or whatever. So pay attention to that. But this is something that libraries do we keep things for historical purposes and as long as we have a place to place to host them which right now is our library commission YouTube channel. We will keep all of our show archives on here. And I was actually just looking up you mentioned senior planet. We actually did I searched for planet. But free tech programs over the brasskins we actually did a show last year on senior planet we had our people from our senior planet working with Nebraska specifically to do a presentation about that that one service so you'll never know what you'll find on our show archives. That's really cool. Okay. We do also have a Facebook page you see I've got links here and from our session pages if you'd like to use Facebook. I'll give us a like over there here we have a reminder about logging in today's show. We do a little introduction to our speakers and when the recordings are available. Here's the one that I just did yesterday recording for last week show that posted. If you like to use Facebook give us a like over there. We also use the hashtag and comp live a little abbreviation of our name to post on to Twitter and Instagram. So you can follow us there as well. So that wraps up for today. Next week, I'll be talking something very Nebraska specific topic. Nebraska public library laws. Chapter 51 is the main section of Nebraska state statutes that applies to public libraries. I'll be talking about that and other related state statutes that may affect libraries. This is very Nebraska specific so if you're concerned about that are wondering about Nebraska public library laws sign up for next week show. We also are doing a kind of I can't think of as a companion because it's also state statute in July on the Nebraska Open Meetings Act. We're specifically for Nebraska library Scott Childers, who's part of our regional systems we do have regional library systems in Nebraska, we have four. And our southeast library system director Scott he's great at these kind of things open meetings and library laws so he's going to be on with me to talk about those. So please do join us for that or any of our other upcoming shows we have. Good topics coming up. I'm looking at your E rate see when I'm. That's a great topic. Yeah, I actually do this is actually we have a new person on staff, Andrew Sherman, Sherman, he goes by. He's a new on our computer services team and he's doing a couple of sessions on computer things and this is one that we I handle the E rate training for libraries in Nebraska to. And he and our other IT people help out me out with the more techie side of it I said you know I like you're talking about some people do know all the tech and some don't I know enough. Oh no. But when a library wants to know well what do I really need to buy what piece of equipment that's like beyond me I know how to get them discount any rate, but I refer them to people like Sherman or other computer team people say, here's the router you should get here's the whatever. And so he's coming on to talk about that. That's like a very overwhelming topic, especially for new directors and they just, oh my gosh, and it's so great when you can, you actually go through the steps. Yeah, and he's also doing the end of this month securing about securing your computers for public use. So he's doing two different ones that he wanted to come on. At the end of the month, our last Wednesday of the month is always a pretty sweet tech session, where we have an technology innovation librarian Amanda, sweet who comes on and does presentations and all sorts of things. You'll notice your pretty sweet tech, pretty sweet tech. I see them all in our archive so if you're into some tech you all in tech stuff, I go look at some of her shows she does all sorts of things. Anything techy related is is her purview, but sure, also being our IT version is coming on to do a couple of sessions. But yeah you can see we have a mixture of things that we do in the show. You know, got a one book for one Nebraska kids and teens program coming up. And I've got a guest presenter from our Bay rate public library here in Nebraska. And they did their library centennial celebration so yeah as I said we are all over the place with our topics. That's great though libraries is our topic. That's the thing with libraries we have this, like, so many things, everything. All right, so no new comments or questions came in so I think we will wrap things up. Thank you everybody. Thank you, Diana Regina again great to have you on. I'll let you all know when the recording is ready and hopefully we'll see maybe some of you attending some of our future and compass lives. Perfect. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Yes. Bye bye everybody. Bye bye.