 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Christa Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. such a time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do report the show as we are doing this morning, and then it's posted to our website for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. All of the live show and our archive recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, if you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is a state agency for libraries, similar to your whatever state library. So we provide services to all types of libraries in the state, so we'll have topics on our shelf for all types of libraries. So public, K-12, academic, corrections, museums, archives, really, our only criteria is that something to do with libraries, something cool that libraries are doing. Some resources or services we want to offer to libraries. So all sorts of things you find on our show. We do book reviews, interviews, mini-training sessions, demos of services to the product. We bring in guest speakers from across the state, across the country sometimes, but we also have Nebraska Library Commission staff that talk about services and things we're offering to the commission. And that's what we have today. Well, we have Library Commission staff not talking about services that we offer, talking about what they've been doing as they've been going to library school and working in a library at the same time. So with us today, I'm just going to have you guys, so you can introduce yourselves and talk about who you are and what you do at the commission and what you're doing in Library School and get right into the presentation. Linda, if you want to start. Okay. Hi, I'm Linda and I do interlibrary loan and reference services here at the Library Commission. I'm going to go to my first slide. I am a MLIS student right now at San Jose State University's iSchool and I'm in my second semester and it's a lot of work and I like it. And Amy, do you want to introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Amy Irons. I also work at the Nebraska Library Commission. I'm in the TVBS department right now, which is the Talking Books and Brails Service for Blind and Handicapped here in Nebraska and sometimes we outsource to a couple of days. And I am also currently in the University of Nebraska Omaha's library science program. I have a two-year degree from a community college from about 10 years ago. And so now I'm continuing to finish my bachelor's to move on to my master. So I definitely have a perspective on what library school is like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, what it's like now. And I am a big old nerd, so I am a loving school. So I'm about a year in, but I already, so I'm about a junior for my bachelor's right now. I'm a junior. Oh, cool. And yeah, you've already met Krista. Yeah, and I see you put men here that I've been mine. And I actually looked it up because it's been a while. And I will, full of this closure, I will say I received my master's in library science in 1991. And I got mine, I'm originally from New York, so I went to SUNY Albany, State University of New York at Albany, their library science program. I'm going to edit this slide for when we save it so then I can put that in there. Okay, sure. All right, so I'm just going to jump right in. I was looking for recent information about how many grad school students and and undergrad students are working full-time while they're in school. And there wasn't a lot of reliable recent information, but this Georgetown site for the, they have a whole website about the relationship between education and the workplace. And it's great research. Anybody looking for more papers to fill out whatever research project they're on, go look there. They have a lot of good stuff. So some key findings from this report from 2015 were that one third of working learners are 30 and older. Of the 14 million working learners, 19 percent have children. I'm not going to be able to speak to that, but Amy might be able to speak to that. The 25 percent of all working learners are simultaneously employed full-time and enrolled in college full-time. And that 40 percent of undergraduates and 76 percent of graduate students work at least 30 hours a week. That is a lot. And some acronyms that we're probably going to use in this session just to be clear what they are and some links to find out more information. The FAFSA, I would say that if you're even thinking about going to library school or grad school or any sort of school, one of the first things you want to do is fill out the FAFSA. Even if you think you won't qualify for federal student aid, the school that you enroll in might have some grants, might have some whatever sort of scholarships that you might not know about. But to get any of that stuff, you're going to have to fill out the FAFSA. And if you fill out the FAFSA, you can select which schools you want the information sent to. And that's a pretty good way to get those schools to contact you there. If you get your FAFSA information sent to a school, they will be contacting you with some catalogs and stuff like that. The public service loan forgiveness program. This is a whole big topic that you won't really have to worry about until you're out of school, but it's something to be aware of. There's a program right now, and this will probably change before we get out of school. But right now, if you make a minimum payment regularly every month for 10 years, you can then apply for the rest of your student loans, certain kinds of student loans to be forgiven. And it applies if you work in nonprofits and government organizations of certain types and libraries and museums qualify for that. ALA, the American Library Association, this is where you want to look and make sure that the program you're getting into is accredited. You don't want to get a degree from a non-accredited program because a lot of jobs require that your degree be accredited. And I know somebody who got a degree from an unaccredited program and had to go back to school to get another degree, so you don't want to have to do that. MLS, MLIS, there's a lot of different acronyms for the kind of degree that you can get. You might get a master's in librarianship. You might get... There's a lot of degrees. It depends on the school that you go to. So for more information about that, there's... If you click on that link for the ALA, they have some more information there. And then we'll take a look at the links over here. I didn't mention before. This live presentation will be available along with the recording afterwards after the show. So don't worry about trying to scribble down all these URLs or links or anything. You'll have access to this and be able to click on them later to get policies. Yeah. I've put in a lot of links at the end, anything I refer to. There's going to be a screen at the end with reference to check out. And the GRE, everyone's afraid of the GRE. I kind of... I like taking tests, though, so I was actually looking forward to taking the GRE. Call me crazy, but my program didn't require it. Your program might not require it. A lot of library science programs don't. So if the idea of taking the GRE is keeping you from going back to school, you might not have to take it. If you want more information about the GRE, there's information at that link. But your program will let you know whether or not you have to take it. Okay. Finding a program. Yeah. You want to ask the people that you work with, especially ones who share your interests or approaches to problem-solving, people who are doing things that you think are interesting, ask them where they want to school, ask them how they liked it. They might tell you they want to a place that they don't recommend to you, and that's good information to have, too. ALA has a list. Oh, there's supposed to be a link there. I'll put that in. And it's the link from the previous slide that is the list of accredited programs. I've said it already, but it's important enough to say again, make sure your program is accredited. Social media groups are a good way to find out more information. I found out from on Facebook, ALA think tank, people discuss it constantly, talk about what's good and not good about their programs. Let that be the only place you get information, but it is a good way to get recent information, what's happening recently. But you definitely don't just rely on social media for that information. When you're interested in the school, go to their website and find out the requirements for GRE, residency, tuition, any second or third languages that you need. Most library science programs, to my knowledge, don't require a second language, but don't take that for granted. And then, let's see, if the program is online, you want to make sure what the in-person requirements are, if any. And once again, you want to make sure the program is accredited. Okay, that's my dog. And you're going to get a lot of advice, and some of it is good advice for you and some of it is good advice for other people. So, you know, use your judgment. If somebody is telling you something is important or you've got to do something, you've got to do it this way, but it doesn't seem right to you, use common sense and get more information. Yeah, so Amy, did you get a lot of advice from people about where to go to school and what to actually hear at the Nebraska Library Commission, there was only one, like you had to go to a certain school and do the program in order for them to reimburse your tuition from our bylaw. So, you could only have a bachelor program from UNO and then masters from, I think, Missouri? Kent State? Is that where we have our, so I didn't, and which is fine because UNO is very, you know, very close to me, even though I do online, so that choice was kind of made for me, but I know, like, important university, you know, I hear a lot about different library programs across the country that are really good, and so definitely there's a lot of information out there to check out which one would work best for you, and a lot of them are online completely, which is super convenient and really great, especially for, you know, people who are adults and are working full-time like us, and I have a child and, you know, so yeah, it's really flexible and wonderful. I wouldn't be able to do it if I had to do in-person classes. Yeah, and I think there's something important to mention too, you talked previously Linda about filling out the FAFSA form for financial aid, but then Amy mentioned tuition reimbursement from wherever you're working at, that is definitely something to investigate if that would be a possibility. Well, that's the only, you know, that's the reason I went back to school is that because my job really encourages it and really wants people to get their library degrees and had it not been an option, I doubt I would have gone back to school because, you know, you kind of, you don't get into library sciences for, you know, the big paycheck, so I didn't, you know, it didn't cost effective for me to go back to school because I wouldn't necessarily make that much more an hour in terms of my salary if I did, but when it was offered to me, essentially, you know, we'll pay for you to go back to school, I jumped at the chance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm getting tuition assistance too to go to San Jose State, and it would not be feasible otherwise, I don't think, wouldn't not be a decision I made, so that is a thing to look at if you are looking for a job while you're in school that, to look for places that offer tuition reimbursement is, yeah. An amazing amount of grants and scholarships for library students, especially going back to school, I mean, when I was considering doing this before, I mean, the list is huge, so there is a lot of help and assistance out there for library students. Yeah, definitely, and I've noticed that library school programs seem to be, my school was already online, 100% online, even before the pandemic, and so their transition to pandemic teaching was pretty seamless, and that was, it seems that library school programs have, because of the nature of what they're teaching, have been good about trying to make information available in the easiest way possible to their students by offering as much online as they can, so yeah. To move on to the next slide about keeping it professional, so if you're in, if you're going back to school as an adult, you might find yourself in a situation, I have, where you are older than your professor, and even in that case, it's always good to err on the side of formality with a professor. The first time you email a professor, maybe don't call them by their first name, even if you met them in public, you would, you don't know what the professor had to go to, get to where they are, go through to get to where they are, so, but you don't need to be overly formal, if a lot of times a professor will in the early on announcements say how they want to be addressed, and if they don't, you can ask them err on the side of formality, say, good afternoon, doctor so and so, if they're a doctor or professor so and so, if they're not a doctor, and then you can say in that email, how would you like me to address you? That kind of politeness can go a long way. Class discussions online can get casual, they want us to be able to talk to each other, and have a free flowing share of ideas, but watch how casual you get. I mean, judge the room as far as your use of language or description of anything PG or R rated. TMI. Yeah, TMI. And yeah, everybody's going to see everything behind you on Zoom. So, you might be fine with sharing everything about your life, you might not be. I've worked on, for my classes, I kind of made a screen out of all of the stuff, the cardboard boxes I got shipped to my house during the pandemic, trying to make a nice little screen out of that to have behind me, but it can be less visually distracting to, so the people are actually listening to what you're saying if there's not a whole lot going on behind you. So, group work, you want to keep it professional in your group work, there's going to be a whole slide later on about group work, because everybody loves group work, right? And, if you're talking in social media groups geared towards your cohort, don't assume that what you're saying stays in the group. I've seen in a Facebook group that was geared towards my cohort in a previous iteration, where people made comments that were, maybe they shouldn't have made about professors, just remember anything that you put online can be brought up again later, so just keep it professional even when you think that nothing will leave the group. Some things to set up for yourself. Earlier you do these things the better, but it's never too late to make changes to help yourself out. You do want a dedicated place for schoolwork, even if it's a small little table and chair, even if it's one corner of a room in your house, just a place where your mindset can be about school. And if you are lucky enough to have a place like this at home, it's also good to have a backup, in case something happens at home, your landlord decides to replace your roof or there's a power outage in your neighborhood or something like that, to have a backup of a place where you could go, a coffee shop or a library in your town where you know you can go to work if you can't work at home. And if you are doing schoolwork at home, the fastest internet package you can afford is probably a good idea, especially if you're sharing your home with other people, friends or family. You don't want somebody's streaming video games to slow down your class meeting video, that you don't want your homework to have to suffer because stuff takes a long time to download or anything like that. There's a ton of government programs, especially during the pandemic that can, especially for adult students, will give you free internet. We'll pay for your internet, often your school will have programs that you can get, some kind of discount on your internet, so definitely check out those things for your internet providers if you're in school. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for mentioning that. I'm going to add that to the slide, because that is a really important point. It's kind of in flux. Your community might provide all kinds of different services or packages, so definitely take Amy's advice there and look into it. So you're also going to need to talk with your friends, your family, your family of choice, your coworkers as well, about the fact that you're in school and what this means for how available you are. And it's not like you're going to be able to have this conversation and say, well, sometimes I won't be as available to do things. And then it's not like then that's settled and you'll never have to talk about it again for the next three years. So you'll just work on the communication about this and the more you communicate about it, the better it works, I think. It's good to talk to other people that are in your same situation who are working and going to school, either people in your classes, friends and family that you already know or people online, just so that you can talk to people about the frustrations and successes in a way that they will understand that maybe other people in your life who aren't in the same exact situation won't understand. And you want to get as much healthcare as you can. This is a fraught topic and it's different depending on where you live. But one thing, especially vision care, it might be time for reading glasses, it might be time for computer glasses. I've had to wear glasses since I was in third grade, so I don't have any sort of hang up about needing glasses. But I know sometimes as people think of that as a sign of getting old or something, but your eyes don't put on your glasses and be like, oh yeah, I need to wear these. And it can happen really, your vision degrades really gradually. So you might not even realize when I am working at home or during the pandemic, I was mostly working on a laptop. And then when I came back to work and I was working on a screen that looks different than the laptop in my laptop did. And it turns out that what all those diagrams you see about how the ergonomic situation for your desk and how you should be looking straight across at your screen, your glasses are probably calibrated so that you look down to read correctly. So you might, if that's not working for you, if the straight across more ergonomic placement of your monitors is not working for you, you might want to lower your monitors or look into getting computer glasses. I'm sorry to say that, it's true. Okay, there's my dog again. So yeah, you gotta take breaks, you gotta remember to breathe. When I was looking through advice, I asked on one of my social media groups for my cohort, what advice would you give in this webinar that I'm gonna do? And a lot of the advice was, don't make yourself crazy with this, you're gonna do what you can do don't worry about it, just keep your head down and keep working. And then a lot of people were giving advice like, you'll sleep when you're dead, keep going, work hard, you can do it. And so there's different kinds of approaches and you'll know which one is right for you. You might be the kind of person who's happier if you get four hours of sleep a night and work like crazy and get that 4.0. But if you're not that kind of person and you would rather take some breaks and that's how you learn, then just remember to do what is right for you. So, hey Amy, in your studies, are you, do you have the option of looking at certain different things about library school? Are you only learning about archive stuff or...? Well, and here, to interpret this as a library career is that it is so multifaceted, you can specialize in anything that you could think of. There's fashion libraries, there's art libraries, there's law libraries. So the main degree is library sciences and so that really focuses on the actual in the library and most of the time it's focused on public or academic. And so you're learning your reference, you're learning your circulation, your cataloging. And then I think what a lot of students do is their minor is what they would like to specialize in. Like I am an artist and I love art history so I decided to do a minor in art history. Now, whether or not that will facilitate a job someday, you know, my dream job working in a, you know, a museum as their archivist or their cataloger of their materials, that would be amazing. But that's what's so great about librarianship is that, you know, you don't get stagnant or you don't have to. If you like being a children's librarian and you want to stay in that and do that for 30 years, that's awesome. But if you, you know, there's opportunities for you to constantly learning things and librarianship is a growing organism. That's one of the five laws of librarianship is that it's a growing organism that we are constantly evolving to serve the public as we go on. And also we are constantly evolving as ourselves as librarians. We can, you know, you get tired of doing one thing, hey, learn a new skill, go somewhere else and do something else. That's what's so great about it. And so I found that I, you know, when I realized that I could get a minor in art history, I got really excited because I tend to do, I think everyone can see that they, you know, you do better in classes and learning in subjects that you enjoy and that you're interested in. You know, when I was in high school, like I didn't do so well in math or, you know, calculus or things like that, because I wasn't very interested, but I excelled in English and art and things like that. So definitely, you know, go for things that interest you. Yeah. So if you're, if you're working in a library and you go back to library school, it's going to come up that, you know, okay, it's time to do a research project. Do I want to research what I already do because I'm familiar with this or, and it will help me at work, or do I want to research something else entirely? What is, what is the right way to go? And the answer is that there is no right answer. Yeah. You don't want to limit yourself if something really interests you. You don't want to close off researching that because you're never going to get a better opportunity than when you're in school, but you don't want to completely unmoor yourself from what you already know. So if you think, well, I'm kind of interested in, I'm interested in children's library work, you know, maybe look at that, do a little research before you decide to spend a whole class on that, you know, maybe you want to do children's library work, but then you realize that maybe you don't like being around children, you know, that's probably not a good, good field for you just because you like kids books. Your feelings make change. I know when I started library school, I assumed I was going to go into public libraries as a final job because that's all I really kind of knew. I've gone to the public library since I was a little kid. My parents, every Saturday, mom worked and dad took us to the library. It was a thing. I mean, since I was little, I assumed that I would go into and then once I finished my degree, I ended up getting a job in a university and I never looked back. I just stayed there. I never ended up in a public library. Yeah, yeah, that's what makes me love it. And I think now I am in off and of public librarians because now that I hear more, oh, so I was only seeing it from the outside, not the behind the reality. And now I know the public librarians talk about it, and I know I could never see that. Right, right. That's a better. I took government documents class in library school. And I can't remember if it was a required or elected at this point, but it was about doing GovDocs work. And I learned that's something I could never do either as an actual job. No, this is my head just as exploding about this. It just can't wrap my mind around that kind of, those kind of documents. And that's fine. I didn't end up in cataloging at all. I was referenced and that was my, yeah, but I took the class and then learned don't go that direction. Yeah, right. So yeah, you might take a class and then when you're done, you might be like, well, I learned something there. And one of the things I learned is I don't want to do that anymore. I mean, it's nicer now since mark records are mostly online. And so you can sort of copy paste them. But man, 10, you know, 15 years ago, they didn't really have that that much. And so you had to make your mark records yourself. You haven't cataloged your class yet with mark records. Woohoo! Good luck to you. Yeah, well, yeah, that's another people catalogers. Bow down to you. So yeah, I love it. Along that line, it's like, one thing that I look at, I get on as many email lists of things that interest me as much as I can. I have them go to one folder on my outlook, so that they're not coming in all day needing to be read. But when I have time maybe once a week, I just scroll through and see what's in there. And there's a lot of job postings. And it's interesting to see who's hiring. And catalogers are always hiring for catalogers. There's always posts for that. So that's another thing to think about too is if you think, well, I want to be... I have a friend in Washington who's a maritime archivist and he loves it. But if I wouldn't go into school thinking, I'm going to be a maritime archivist because there aren't that many jobs in that. So you might want to think about... I would love to be an archivist at a design house, like looking at couture garments, but again, there's not that many jobs in that field. You'd need to have a very specific plan of attack to get to a job like that. So you want to be aware of drop deadlines and don't feel bad if you drop a class. If you get into a class and you're like, this is not for me. This is a bad idea. Go drop it. There's no shame in dropping a class. If you don't drop a single class the whole time you're in school, you might not have taken as many chances as you should have. Just watch the deadlines so that you don't pay for a class that you drop. I was going to take a couple classes this summer and they're accelerated in the summer. And so I took the first one and it was a lot. It was Young About Literacy, so we had to read a lot. And so then my next class was coming up a week later. He's like, you know what? I'm going to take a break. I'm getting a little burned out. And so I just went ahead and dropped that second class for the summer and just took like a month and a half off before the fall. And I tell you, I needed that. Yeah, that's good. Along the lines when I was getting two kinds of advice, one, take it easy. Don't do more than you can do. And the other one, sleep when you're dead. It's good to, for me, I don't want to take classes in summer. I want to have summer off. It helps me reset for the rest of the year. I think that I do better work the rest of the year if I don't take classes in the summer. For some people, they won't be in school all the time. So it's summer classes are good for some people and not for others. Don't feel bad if they're not for you. But don't feel bad if they are for you, either. Yeah. So even if you take a class that is in a field where you think you know everything, I'm in a database class right now. It's kind of an intro database class that I have to take as a prerequisite for other classes. I basically live in a database here at work. So I could be like, oh, I know all this. I'm not gonna learn anything in this class, but I'm going into it with looking to see what I don't already know or what might change how I think about what I think I already know. You're gonna learn, even if it's a class that you think you know everything, you might get some surprises out of it. So let's see. And when you do end up in a group assignment though, it is good to clarify with your group a level of familiarity with a topic or project or assignment. I had a group assignment where we had to work on a vision statement and budget for a library. And it turned out one of the people in the group had just done this at her library, and she had been in charge of it. And so her coming in and telling us all, like, here's what I'm familiar with, that took the pressure off us thinking that we needed to be... Then we knew we weren't all on exactly even ground. So if you know, if you're going into a project and you have a lot of familiarity or expertise on the topic, just let people know so that they know how to split the project up better. Let's see. And you may have a class where you have a project that is where you get to pick a topic, and maybe you want to pick a topic that you worked on in a previous class. That can usually be okay. You might want to communicate with your professor and say, hey, I did this previous work in this area, and I want to continue working on that. They can give you some advice, and the Writing Center at your school can give you some advice as well about how to not self-plagiarize, how to create work that is still authentic but effective. Okay, back to group work. You're gonna have to do group projects in almost every library school program, and you might think, why do I have to do this now? I work in a group at work. I am an adult. I already know how to work with other people. And I used to be hesitant about group work, and I've come to appreciate it, and you kind of have to frame it for yourself in a way that you'll appreciate it too. It'll be a lot easier for you if you do. My experience with group work in grad school is it's a lot better than it was in undergrad. I finished my undergrad as a non-traditional student. I was in groups with people half my age who were more interested in talking to each other about where a party was and other things like that instead of trying to just get our work done and get out of there. But in grad school, there's a different level of commitment from the people in your group. I'm not saying that you're not going to get somebody who won't do work, but you have a much better chance of like-minded people who want to do the work to get the project done and get the project done well. It's a good way to learn about other jobs, other libraries, other perspectives. Again, I said this previously, but you do want to clarify your level of familiarity with the topic or project or assignment. And the school I'm in in San Jose State, they have an introductory class where you have to form a group, and you have to have an agenda, and you have to have a group charter. And it was a really good first step back into the group project waters. Group charters are really important, and I'll put a link to that in the link to examples of charters in this presentation before we put it online. There will be surprises in group work, and your professor knows that. If it turns out that I was in a group project where a really smart, reliable, intelligent student who worked really hard had to drop out because of a family issue. And the professor understood that that's going to happen. It's not like you have to wonder, oh, what is the professor going to do to us because we lost a group member. They'll work with you. Your professor is not there waiting to fail you. Your professor wants you to succeed, and so just communicate with them if problems come up. Another breathing screen. So yeah, don't aim for perfection. Do aim to learn, even if you're used to being the best, even if you hate making mistakes. The most important thing you're going to learn in grad school especially is that you need to let that go. So homework will expand to fill the time if you let it. You could do homework 24 hours a day. You don't have to do that. I agree. It's really difficult to find the balance, especially like adult students or students that are coming back after a long period or have families and children and busy, busy lives, but they want to just succeed so much. I suffer from it myself. I have a 4.0, and I get irritated if I miss a couple points of assignment. Even though I still have A, even though it's fine, even though the professor knows I'm more than capable, and I'm organized, and I do all my homework and things, I still get on myself. And so I try to really give myself a break about that. You really have to find the good balance. For example, I take an art history course, and so it's all online, but you have to watch at least three hours of lecture a week for that chapter in the book or whatever, but I know not to sit down and try to do it all at once. On Monday I'll watch 45 minutes of it, and then Wednesday I'll come back and continue it. And so you kind of have to split it up into manageable bites so as to not overwhelm yourself and really don't try to get so hard on yourself about being perfect or getting a perfect score or anything like that. As long as you're learning, as long as you're absorbing information, I think that's important. And I mean, I'm talking big here, but I also have a 4.0, and it does matter to me, too. I try not to take it matter, but I never had a 4.0 in my life, I don't think. Yeah, well, and you know what, if you're in school and all that's going to matter is just that degree, they're not going to care if you have a 4.0. They don't care. But I don't think I've ever been asked in any of what my GPA was. Real quick, because I see we're getting close to the end, so I'm going to zip through this one. What if I don't have my first library job? So this has mostly been geared towards library workers in library school, but your program will help you. Talk to your advisor. Use program resources to get an internship as early in the process as possible if you don't already work in a library. The library working experience paid or unpaid is probably as important in getting a library job as a degree is, in my experience. Of the three library jobs that have one experience? Yeah, yeah. So take advantage of any reduced rate for professional organizations or conferences. This applies if you're already working in a library. I got to join the society, the SAA of Archives Society for free because paid for through my school, so take advantage of that. Sign up for email list using your personal email. This is a tip for me. Your moves might vary so that you still have access even after you graduate. And this applies if you're already working in a library. And while conferences are still virtual, attend as many as you can. And look for those degrees. You're working in a library as a professional, but you're also a student. Yeah. That student rate option for any of those conferences or professional organizations. Yes, I sign up for student rate. Definitely. So some self-care. Don't quit. Don't quit. Your program will have resources to help you if you feel like quitting. You might be able to take a semester off if you have a bigger life event that makes school feel impossible, but it's easier to take a semester off and come back than it is to quit. So don't think that just because something is going on that you have to quit. And if possible, have some scheduled nights, days, or weekend days where you do not do any homework. For me, that's Monday night. On Monday nights, I am tired. It's not very effective use of my time to do any homework. So one possible I don't do homework on Monday nights. So schedule your homework time and reschedule as needed. You could do homework 24 hours a day if you let that happen and you don't want to let that happen. So just try and figure out times in the week when you look at your course load. Like, okay, on Tuesday, I'm going to do some reading. On Wednesday, I'm going to do my posts. On Thursday, just try to make it a pattern and it'll be easier to fall into it. And if one week goes badly, that's okay. You can make the next week better. A whole other webinar, Plan Easy Nutrition. You can tell I used to be a food blogger that I put that in there. And then take full advantage of any counseling or healthcare that your program provides. Be kind to yourself. You can do it. One of the things that, a piece of advice that doesn't work for everybody, but I say like, eat the whole donut. Like, don't take half a donut. Just take a whole donut. Some technical tips. Using a tablet to read PDFs can give you more flexibility. You can read them curled up on the couch if you want to do that to yourself. So figuring out a way to use a PDF that you need to read onto a tablet if you have one can give you more flexibility than sitting at a desk and reading. Depending on your tablet or device, you might be able to set a night reading function that is easier on your eyes, back to the eye health. Your college or university library is your friend. They can help you and they want to help you. In our library alone, that's what I do. It might be a possibility for your textbook. So I bought my textbooks because I like to underline. I got a copy of one of my textbooks on Interlibrary Loan so I can have it here at work at my desk. So in case I take a coffee break and have a minute, I have it to read. I haven't actually opened that book yet though, that copy. That's funny. I've only opened it at home, but it's there if I need it. It makes me feel secure. Social media groups for students at your school might be another source for used textbooks. I see that in some groups I'm in. And if you still want to read for pleasure, of course you do. Audio books. If your eyes get tired of reading, you're tired of reading, listen to some audio books. Let someone read to you. I just finished one in the car on my way to work today. That was so good. So here's the references. I'll add a couple links to this before we post it. Thank you for attending. Yeah. Thank you, Amy and Linda. I actually want to bring in someone else here. And I'm going to unmute you now, Laura. I've unmuted you from my side. You can unmute yourself. Laura, Laura Inklin-Biggs is a library director at our Keen Memorial Library in Fremont. And she is actually in the University of Missouri, the Missouri program right now. So she is in things in the program. Hey, Laura. Hey, actually I'm not in the program now. I graduated in 2006, but I work for the program. And I'm a library liaison for Nebraska. So if anyone has any questions about attending University of Missouri at Columbia's MLS program, they can reach out to me either at Keen or at englandleatmissouri.edu. I also run the practicum program. So I appreciate you're talking about how important those internships and practicums are. So when you were in the program yourself, it was when you were actually working too, though, right? Yes, I was working full time the whole time. And everything you said, big amen. I love the being respectful with your professor and asking how they want to be addressed because I'd rather you call me Professor Inklin-Biggs and let me say call me Laura. Yeah. But yeah, for other respect library students, there's a huge network of librarians. All we want to do is help each other and talk to each other and network. And there's so many resources out there. And anytime you want an internship, or I swear, you will meet at least 12 people who are just as zany and insane about libraries as you are. And they just like, we'll just try to convert you into our tribe. The University of Missouri is like San Jose. We are completely online. We do not require the GRE. There are resources for scholarships, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, put my plug in for the Tigers. I know a lot of people here in this area have gone there because it is nearby. We do offer in-state tuition as well. Oh, nice to Nebraska. For Nebraska. It's a reciprocal agreement. Nice. I had a question. Oh, practicums. Yes, dating experience at an actual library is a great idea. We highly encourage that as well at the library commission. We offer internship grants to libraries to pay paid internships for libraries to bring in someone who's a college student or high school student who hopefully might be interested in becoming a librarian afterwards. So we highly recommend libraries to reach out to us to apply for one of those grants if you know someone who's interested. Or if you're interested in it, contact your local here in Nebraska, at least contact your local public library and say, hey, can you apply for one of these? Right now our internship grants are open. Just give a little push about that for next year. Also, and Krista would know more about this than I do, but if you're watching this and you're in Nebraska and you're thinking you want to do this but you're not sure, the commission offers some library education and maybe you want to take one of those classes and that can give you a feeling for what it would be like to be back in school. That's true. Yes. We call our basic skills program, which is for anyone to take who is a working in a Nebraska library or just a Nebraska citizen, if you don't have to be working at a natural library, and it's a series of classes throughout the year on different aspects of librarianship. The main reason is for some of our staff who have not been through an official library school program, but they need some of the training and education for that, they can take these courses. It's kind of like a mini version of going to full-time library school. Overview more, but anyone who wants to can jump into those Nebraska citizens and try one and see what, and you will talk to lots of other librarians. It's a good way also for you. That's a really, that's a fantastic thing that the commission offers. That is one of those things. I remember when I first learned about it, I was like, that can't be real. That's such a good tool. So definitely look into that and I'll add a link to that to the presentation, even though that's on our website already. We were talking here about working in a library and going actually to get your MLS, your Master's in Library Science, but we here at the Library Commission, we know being in a very rural state with lots of small communities and small libraries, one-person libraries. We do have a lot of library staff, library directors who just don't have the ability to go to school. It's just not going to be able to be a thing for them, but we know they need the training to do their jobs. That was the original reasoning to this basic skills program is for all of the people that just library school, they can't do. They can get the training to do it. It also has other purposes as well. They can get their public library and certification by taking those classes, which helps get any jobs in Nebraska whole connection. But that's not a requirement either. You can just pick a class because you want to. Yeah. All right, so we did just hit 11 a.m. central time. Anybody online have any questions, comments, anything else you want to share about your experiences or questions you have for Linda, Amy, or Laura, who's here with us too. Go ahead and type into your question section. And what I'm going to do while we can see, I'm going to pull the central control back to my screen. So I want to show you guys all the way in here. There's just gotta go in the next thing. Thank you so much, Laura. Hopefully people will be in touch with you. The grant says just talking about the internship grants if you want to work in a library, but also we do offer here in Nebraska. And if you're not in Nebraska, look in your own state to your state library, continue education and training grants, CE grants that we can help you take certain educational courses for the grant internship here. And these grants are going to open up for the next year in October. So you can do online learning courses. We can help you pay for attending conferences or workshops or doing major content CE or training projects at your library with these courses. So if you're looking for other kind of continuing education and training, that's another way to go. I took one of those cataloging classes, which I think will help me when I take the cataloging class next semester. All right. So I think we're out for that question. If you have any questions, desperate urgent questions you want to ask right now, that's fine. Contact Amy Lindo for Delora if you're interested in the Missouri program, if you do have any questions. Our recording will be available here is our end compass live website with our upcoming shows and then our catch a link right here. Today she'll be at the top of the list. By the end of the day tomorrow, at the latest, as long as YouTube and GoToWebinar cooperate with me. Everyone who attended this morning and register for day show, get an email from me letting you know when it's available. There'll be a link to the recording on our YouTube channel and a link to Linda's slides, which is going to do some editing and updating too. And then we'll get the updated version on here. We do have a search feature I'll mention while we're here. So you can see, you can search our show archives. Do you want to look for any other topics we've had on the show? If there's been a topic you're interested in. You can search the full archives or just the most recent 12 months if you want something to limit to just current. That is because this is our full show archives. And I'm not going to stroll all the way back, but this goes back to when NTVS Live premiered in January 2009. So we're at what 12 something years and they're all here. So it's a huge list. Just pay attention though then since this is a full archives when you are watching or recording when the original broadcast date was. Many of these shows will stand the test of time and still be good useful info. But some things may become outdated. Services or programs may have changed drastically. Links may be broken. Things might not exist anymore 10 years later. So just pay attention. But we are librarians, archivists as you mentioned Linda, and we'll keep as long as you have a place to host them. We'll keep all of our archives up here on the recordings on the page. Encompass Live also has a Facebook page. If you like to use Facebook, give us a like over there to get reminders about our show. Here's your reminder to log in to today's show. When recordings are available, here's your reminder that last week's recording went up. We'll post them on here. We also have a hashtag and comp live that we'll use on Twitter and Instagram that we post things on there. So if you'd like to keep an eye on us there as well. My camera decided to die at being there. Oh, you're back. So thank you everyone for being here this morning. Thank you, Linda and Amy. This was great information. Hopefully we'll get some more librarians in the field interested in attending library school. Awesome. Thanks so much. We encourage and support it. Thank you, everybody. And I hope you join us next week when we're talking about education, but a different way to connect at Nebraska. It's a way of schools getting wireless internet access and that they can actually work with libraries to expand that. I'll let Brett Beaver explain it more next week in more real. I only half understand exactly how they're doing this, but it's a great resource for libraries in school to help with getting internet connection to students. And also any further upcoming shows, go ahead and register for them. As you see, I got September all filled in here. And I've got another October today that I'm going to get put up there. So keep your eyes open on our schedule. One reminder is coming up. Once a year, we do not do Encompass Live, and it's the week of our State Library Conference, the Nebraska Library Association Annual Conference. So this year it is on the week of October 13. There we know Encompass Live that week. So attend NLA if you're in Nebraska. You can see here there is partially in person day and there's virtual day. So you can do whichever works for you. So thank you everybody for being with us here this morning. And hopefully we'll see you on a future Encompass Live. Bye.