 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 Wednesdays, that's fine. Record the show as we are doing today and you can watch that recording at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archives. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics you have on the show. Here at the Nebraska Library Commission, we are the state agency for libraries in Nebraska and that's for all types of libraries. So we provide services to all types of libraries and you'll find shows on Encompass Live for anything you can think of. Public, academic, K-12, museums, archives, corrections, anything and everything. Really your only criteria is that something to do with libraries. What we do is book reviews, mini-training sessions, demos of services and products all across the board. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations about services and programs we offer through here. But we also bring in guest speakers and that's what we have here today. Today for our first show of December, yes, it's December 1st, we are going to talk about the Pioneer Consortium. And we have Sammy and Robin and Jess, you're going to talk all about that and I will just hand it over to you guys, you all, to introduce yourself and talk about Pioneer. I think Sammy, you're starting. Yeah. Yeah, awesome. Hi everyone. My name is Sammy Stewart. I am the library director in Valley. I've been in Valley for about three years. If you don't know where Valley is, we're basically adjoining to Omaha, but we're a tiny town of about 3,000 people. And we've been with Pioneer for roughly a decade, little under a decade. Robin? Okay, my turn. Hi, I'm Robin Quinn. I'm the library director at the Hastings Memorial Library in Grant, which is all the way on the other side of Nebraska. I'm about 30 minutes from the Colorado border. I always try and direct people like, do you know where Aguilala is? No. Do you know where North Platte is? If they don't know where North Platte is, it's just feudal. We're just way out west. We're still in Nebraska. It's an even tinier little town. And our population is about, on the slide, it says 1,400. That is generous. Our town is closer to about 12. So, yeah. Hi, everyone. My name is Jesse Zaro and I'm the director of library sales and outreach at Bywater Solutions. So, we provide support for open source products like Koha, the community, ILS, and Aspen Discovery, which is an open source discovery layer. And prior to working at Bywater, I've been here about six years. I worked at a consortium in Tampa, Florida, and I currently live in Gainesville, Florida. So, on the other side of the country. Okay, so we basically wanted to just give a brief overview for those of you who may not be familiar with what Pioneer actually is. So, Pioneer is a catalog sharing consortium. So, if you have, you know, Apollo or Follett or some other larger libraries might have Cersei Dynix or Millennium. We have an open source that's called Koha that we use, that we share. And in sharing this, we don't actually share collections, but we're able to cut down the cost. And so, we all have one login. It's a cloud-based software. And it's awesome. We have 16 member libraries across Nebraska that are listed on the screen. But the cool thing is that all libraries are welcome. Like, you know, Robin said that her library's tiny, mine's a little bit bigger. We have South Sioux, who's way bigger than us. They're probably, I'd say, what, 15,000? And we also have academic libraries. We have Western Nebraska Community College. And so we're really open to anyone who's interested in having this awesome software for their library. Robin, do you want to talk about the benefits of Pioneer? Sure. So, we have been with Pioneer, I think, since 2010. We switched over from Follett. And because our Follett prices were going up, we joined the consortium and were able to not only not see an increase, but see a decrease in our fees. The nice thing about Pioneer is that because we're all sharing the same system, we all support one another. So you can have, as it says on the screen, a state-of-the-art system without paying thousands of dollars for it. Because as we know, especially with small libraries, frankly, with call libraries, every dollar matters. So you're able to save money, but also have a really great system. And also because there are currently 16 of us all the way across the state, obviously, I mean, we have from Scotts Bluff to South Sioux City, you have a networking opportunity with other libraries and other librarians across the state to share information and ideas and support, which is, really, you can't put a price on that. So did I forget anything? No, I don't think so. Okay. And so this is something that Robin and I are very passionate about is how Pioneer wants to grow. So of course right now we already share an ILS and we share that catalog software, but the more member libraries we can get, the more we can grow. I'm going to do other things like collection sharing. Robin and I have dreams of a statewide courier system so that instead of having to ILL everything that my tiny library doesn't have, I could just say, Hey, Robin, do you have that in grant? Could you throw that on the truck the next time it comes by, which would reduce our ILL costs greatly. And then we want to look at group purchasing and e-resources. We've been talking a lot about something like Mango Languages, which like my library could never afford that cost on our own, but as a consortium, you get that cost savings by splitting it up among the group. And then like the broader the group we have for our member libraries, the bigger that network opportunity becomes. Like, I've met so many people. I'm still a new little baby librarian. I've only been in the library field for about six or seven years. And I've met so many people through Pioneer that have become mentors and become friends. And we want to grow that little Pioneer family. And one thing I want to add here is, so you each have, when you're in Pioneer, you have your own individual catalog. So you're checking out your books to your patrons, but you can go in and see what the other libraries have in their collections. And for me, I use that to help me with ordering to help me with weeding. Well, if 10 other libraries have that book and it's circulating well there, maybe I just need to do something else to make it pull here or. Oh, yeah, looks 12 of the 16 libraries have that book. It's popular. I should probably order it. So you do have access to the catalogs. You're just not sharing other libraries collection. So for me, that's a huge benefit. So how to join Pioneer if you're interested and we would love to talk with you more if you are interested, or even if you're on the fence but you want to know more of the nitty gritty details. But it's fairly simple you just we have a short application that just says hey I'm interested that goes to our executive committee pioneer itself is run by a committee of volunteer librarians from member libraries. Robin is currently the president of our executive committee. And so it would go to her, and we will talk about it and just make sure that you have all the information that you need that you are aware of what the fees would cost, then it's just paying your, your hosting fees your setup fees, setting your go live date, and then it's great to work with our lovely friends over at by water, who have been amazing to get all your data ready answer any questions, go through training that kinds of all that kind of good stuff. And then you just sit back and enjoy. We are so excited about how easy to use this ILS is how user friendly it is. And it's quite simple. Now that application is that what's on your current website. It should be on our website. We also have a form that we can email out to interested libraries that gives more information. And then if libraries are interested in what they're kind of what their fees would be they can email Robin or myself or send us a contact through our website and we can look up you know your collection size and your library size, and get you those nitty gritty details of what it would cost for your specific library. It's kind of price dynamically based on the size of your library to make it fair so of course, I pay a lot less than what somebody like saucy city might pay because my collection is a lot smaller. So here we just have a, an example of what it would cost if my library Valley joined pioneer today. For our setup fee we have a static $900 per library that's a one time fee. Charge 8 cents per bib record that you have in your library. So it really does depend on on the size of your collection. Our collection is about 10,000 items. And so we would pay for less than a library that you know might have 50,000 items. Your annual membership fee will also depend on that site, the size of your library but it ranges from roughly $800 to roughly $2,500. So for Valley, we just set a, you know, I have 10,000 ish items. So to transfer my bib records would be about $1,200. I pay an annual membership fee of $800. So my first year investment for that setup fee would be $2,900. But after that first year, my cost drops to $800 a year, which is far less than anything I could get from any other vendor. Yeah, I looked at Biblionics Apollo a few months ago just to see kind of what was out there, and they couldn't beat that cost even with their deepest of discounts they said their bargain basement price was still more than what I pay with pioneer and we get a far better system in my opinion. You want me to talk about this Sammy. Sure. Okay. So what is by water solutions by water solutions is our new ILS software. We are in the process of migration and it has been, if any of you have ever done migrations before sometimes it can be kind of a nightmare. This has been the easiest migration. I shouldn't say anything because we're not done yet, but it has been the easiest stress free migration I have ever experienced. It's December 1. We are going live at the end of January. So one more, almost two more months. Jesse talked a little bit and Sammy, it's based on co-op open source software. The system that we're currently migrating from is also co-op. So, for our current member libraries, it's going to be a lot easier of a transition because a lot of this stuff will be the same. But what we're super excited about is our new patron interface, the patron side of it, the Aspen discovery. It's really quite honestly what sold most of us on yes, this is where we need to go. It is fantastic. It is something that most libraries our size would never even be able to dream of having to offer to our patrons. So, a question about the going live and buy water happening in January. Someone wants to know, so if somebody did want to join, should they do it right now or wait till January? Does it matter? I mean, it's, there is a current existing, you know, catalog that you are all in right now. There's something right went into, but that's being switched over. So how would it work if someone wanted to join right now? Well, I think by the time we would go through the process of applications and figuring out their fees and all of that stuff, we would be, if they were interested in starting right now, right now. I think that by the time we got to the point of actually migrating it would be, it would be good to go. So anybody new would come in right into buy water, they wouldn't have to come into the current version, and then transition, we just start right off that means only a month. If you join something new like this, it's going to take time for everything to get. Jesse, do you agree with that? 100%. I'm just making sure I should have tossed that question to you because you're way smarter than me. No, no. I think that's a really good because I think you're you're kind of through the hurdle of the migration and getting into the testing phase so for another library to come in I think it would be really good for them to come in. Once you're set up and you're live, and then they can go through the process they know what's worked for your current transition and then getting them up on the system. It's a lot easier to join an existing system than it is to set up a completely new, you know, a new website because you're all of the framework is already there. Yep. If you say reach out now, if someone's interested, definitely reach out before January to start the process of talking to Robin about we would like to join and getting all that figured out. Yeah. We're ready to turn it over to Jesse to talk about by water. Absolutely. I'm really excited to show folks what by water doesn't, especially the Aspen discovery layer. Just because you want to use the slides or you want me to give you a screen control now to do a demo. Yeah, I'm good to jump into a demo if you all are ready. Hang on a sec. I'm going to make you present your pop up for you to share your screen so you can switch right over that. There we go. Looks good. Okay, perfect support for libraries. Yeah. So I'll just start here, just so you all know where you have access to some of the resources. If you come to buy water solutions.com, you'll see just several resources I always like to point out. If you're interested in seeing other library partners that we support, you can jump right in and we have a map so you can see which libraries are in your area, you can of course zoom in and, you know, see where everyone's at. And the other one I always like to share is education, because this is a great place where you can come and kind of find resources for your particular needs. And we also have ones that are specific to both Aspen and to Coa and one of the big things about buy water solutions is the focus on empowering our libraries, meaning we create a ton of content. And when we're training you, we work to make sure that you completely understand your system. So, you know, when you're working towards implementing a new workflow or setting things up in the system, you feel empowered to go and do that. And then of course you always have us for support that you can ask a question, whether it's creating a report or, you know, setting up a new item type in your system, whatever it is. So, if you go to either aspen.buywatersolutions.com or coa.buywatersolutions.com, that allows you to easily jump in there and kind of find what you're looking for. Everything from the migration process, you know, pre-training or post-training, we have a lot of self-paced learning, meaning you can go in there and do some on to, you know, on demand tutorials. You know, and kind of pick the module you want and go through and learn all of that material. So it's a really nice way. If you're, you know, thinking about making the move, this is a great place to start. And then you can explore co-hob by location. So it's a really nice way to come in here and familiarize yourself with the system. So now we'll jump on to the fun stuff. So what I decided to pull up today is one of our library partners that is in a very similar situation as you all are. So back in 2018, we migrated CLIC, which is the Colorado Library Consortium. And their library consortium is rural libraries in Colorado, both public, and then they also have a few community colleges, so academic libraries. They also have a couple K-12 libraries as well, so some like middle school and high school libraries. So I thought they would be a great example. They also came from CoaLiblime over to the Coa community version that we support at Bywater Solutions. So they're very similar to y'all at Pioneer. And so what we're looking at right now is the Aspencat catalog. That's what they refer to their catalog as, is Aspencat. And this is the main page for the consortium. So as a librarian, I always love to go and look at other libraries' sites, you know, to get ideas and to see how they are doing things. So if you want to check this out, they've been live since 2018, catalog.aspencat.info, and you can go around and just search and see what they're doing. So some of the things I always like to point out about Aspen is one, the number one goal of Aspen is to make sure that all of your resources are in one place. You know, Sammy brought up the mango languages. A lot of times our patrons will come to the traditional catalog, they'll perform a search, and they don't know about all those incredible resources that we have subscriptions to. You know, maybe it's mango or it's overdrive, or you have a subscription for creative bug or, you know, something that allows you to highlight those outside subscriptions. And they really don't find that in the traditional catalog. Maybe we have it predominantly displayed on our website, but it's not in the catalog itself. That's what Aspen's goal is, is to bring all of those resources in. So if I search for a language, I get a pop up that says, Oh, hey, we have mango languages, or I search for a title and I can also see that it's available as an ebook in addition to print. So bringing in all of those resources in one place is that main goal. So your patrons and your users find everything that your library has. One of the things that I really like for consortiums is the Aspen Discovery interface allows you to prompt the user to log in and find it the first time. So let's say they didn't have a bookmark for the specific library. There's this great select interface where they can come in here and actually find their library. Now click has about, I think they're up to about 128 locations that they have in their system. So you can see the list is here, they can come in, they can select their library and that will take them into the individualized page for that library. So that's one really nice advantage for consortiums. Each branch or location, each library has their own customized look and feel. So you're still going to be able to see what's in the consortium, but you can also see what's at your library first. And I brought up two examples to show you. So Pines and Plains Library is one of the libraries in click. And then you can see here that they have their own look and feel they have their logo prominently displayed and then they even have their own colors that are brought in. The team at Bywater Solutions works with your Pioneer Library Consortium to be able to come in and set all that information up. We walk through it with you so you can see how to bring in those colors. You can even customize the language that displays. Now the first thing I always like to show off in these catalogs are the browse categories. These are an awesome way for staff to curate collections that you may have at the library. Whether you're highlighting new books that you've just acquired or new DVDs that you have in your collection, you can easily bring that information out. So this is a great way for staff to say, hey, look, here's what we have at our library. I've been checking out some libraries and now I'm seeing holiday ones pop up, you know, they're curating holiday collections for, you know, everything that's coming in the new year. And it's just a really nice way to highlight that information. You can also create lists. So if you have a list, you know, in Florida, we have a sunshine state list and there's a list for every different grade. So, you know, as a parent, what your children need to read in first, second, third, fourth, and so on. And so those are great ways for staff to be able to push that out and highlight it in the collection. You can also bring in the New York Times bestseller list, and that's an API that automatically feeds in. So you don't even have to do that by yourself. It will look for those titles in your collection and populate that list. So it saves some time for staff to go in there and manually do that. Now, when the user comes through and they look at these different lists in the collection, another highlight of Aspen Discovery is the grouping together of all formats. So if I was coming in and I was looking at a particular title, if there were multiple formats available, I would be able to see that right away. So in this case, I can see that dogs on the trail has a copy of a book. But as we're scrolling through and, you know, we look at different things, we may have it available as a book or an ebook or multiple formats. And so what I'll do is we'll do a search so we can see some of those results. I'm going to use my go to gone girl. And you'll notice that it gives me predictive text number one. So now I can see titles. This is perfect for when your user forgets how to spell the author's last name, or they were told about a series and they can't remember one of the specific titles in it. It's going to give them that prediction so they can actually see what's in the collection, whether it's a title and author or a series. When they're searching, of course, they have options. By default, they're going to be able to do a keyword search. You know, we're all so used to doing a search in Google where we can type in whatever we want and it brings back results in the system. With Aspen Discovery, we get that same feel. We can come in, do a keyword search, and it's going to bring back the most relevant results to that keyword. And then they also can choose from a dropdown here. And in this case, we can see Pines and Plains has two options, the traditional library catalog or lists. You can also integrate your website, any history archives or genealogy that you have, or any websites or databases that you subscribe to. So it's a nice way for them to be able to find that information. Now, when I perform that search for Gone Girl, we get results back in the system. So a couple of things that I want to point out, over here you'll see facets. That allows the user to narrow down their results. So if they knew exactly who they were looking for, they can do that. And as a consortium and as a library yourself, you can actually customize these facets so you can choose what shows up. In the center of the screen, they can narrow down by a particular format. So if they're looking for just audio books, they can do that and say, you know, just show me what audio books are available. Maybe they're getting ready to take a long trip, a long road trip, and they're looking for something. The next thing you'll see, and again, this is a strength for consortiums, is how they can narrow down their results. So right now it's showing me the entire Aspen cat or click consortium collection. But if I just want to look at what's available at Pines and Plains, I can select that. And that will show me what's available right now at Pines and Plains in the collection. So it's a really nice way for them to narrow down the results. Now, as I scroll through, you'll notice that when I look at Gone Girl, now I'm getting that ferberized look or the grouping. So I can see the book, the book on CD, the e-audio book, and the e-book in, of course, various formats. So it's a really great way. Again, even if I want that large print, I can see all of those in one swoop rather than having to scroll through a long list and see one result for the book, one result for the large print, one result for the CD. It's grouping all of that information together. And then again, another strong suit for consortiums is you'll see here it shows me what's available at Pines and Plains, but I can also see what's available from another library. So again, you know, as working together as a group and resource sharing, you can see that information and set up your circles dependent on if you allow that sharing. And one other example I'll show here is a community college. So this is a community college that's part of CLIC in Aspencat. Again, you notice they bring in their branding and they have that look and feel. You'll even notice that their browse categories are different. So where we saw new books and new DVDs in the Pines and Plains, here we see new books, ESL collection, and then even faculty DVDs. So each library can customize their own browse categories. So it's a great way for each library to kind of individualize their collection and have that stand out. But again, I love hearing Robin Sammy talk about consortias. You know, that's what's so important. You can work together to share ideas, placards, you know, to share ideas about what you want to highlight in your collection, you can work together to share that information. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to come over to our, this is our Aspen discovery site that I use to show people how things work. I want to show you how a user sees information in their account. So when a patron logs in, the leader enter their username or their card number, depending on how your library has it set up, and then enter their password or pin. There is options for them to reset their password if they forget it, as long as they have an email set. And then there's options for you to turn on self registration. So if you allow users to self register if they've never had a card before, they can come in here and have a form to fill out. Once they enter that information in, that will take them into their account information. And this view will give them a little summary so they can see the titles that they have checked out, anything that they have on hold, if they have items that are overdue or anything that's ready to pick up. Aspen discovery will also give them recommendations. So once the user starts logging in, they can give a five star rating on titles. So one star would mean they didn't really care for it. And once Aspen discovery starts seeing those star ratings, it will start giving them recommendations. So you'll notice down below, we have some Harry Potter's because we give a rating. So now it's giving us some suggestions for other titles to read. Now, over on the left hand side here, they can drill down and look through various things. So if they want to see the checked out titles that they have. Aspen will show them not only what's in their physical collection, but if you do have an e-content provider like Overdrive, you can come in and see what you have checked out on Overdrive too. And this is real time. So now it'll show you what you have checked out in Overdrive and what you have checked out physically. So this is a really great way for them to see like one look of everything. You know, at my library, we have Overdrive and, you know, I either have to go to Libby or the Overdrive site to see that information. But here you get that one look so I can see what I have checked out from the library with my physical materials and also electronically. And this is real time. So if I did go to Overdrive or I went to Libby and I checked it out within Aspen, I would see that information in both places. So if somebody does love using it on their mobile device, they can easily check that out. Now other things they'll be able to see, they'll be able to see their items on hold so I can see both those physical items, what's ready for pickup. And then I can also see pending holds. And from pending holds, they can cancel, they can freeze it, maybe they're going away for the holiday. They can change a pickup location if you allow that. And then we also have this really cool feature called while you wait. So if I'm let's say number five or six on the list, I can come in here and check these titles out that are available right away. So just some neat ways for you to kind of see what's in the collection. Options that your library can decide to turn on reading history. So if your user has opted in to retaining their reading history, they can see things that they have checked out in the past. They can download this list. If they want they can export it. They can even, you know, write a review if they want to come back and say I like this, or give it a rating. That's been again is going to also give them suggestions. So if I really enjoyed this book, I can come back and click this you might also like. And then it will give me more suggestions of other titles in the collection that I may want to read. As far as fines and messages go, you have a couple options here, depending on your fine and fees structure, or if you charge for a replacement cost, you can tie that information in. And then we also have options for e-commerce. So if your library does anything where you allow them to pay online, you can integrate that information in. Briefly about those recommendations. Again, this is where you're going to see some of that information. So these are the recommendations that have come through based on things that I've liked. You'll notice at any time the user can choose to not recommend something if it's something that maybe they breeze through and they didn't like giving them really some great options for reading advisory. And then down below here they have their account setting. So one of my favorite things is the digital library card. You could pull it up on your phone if you forget it and take it into staff to scan for them. Now, talking about mobile mobility, Aspen Discovery is responsive, meaning that if a patron pulls it up on their mobile device, they'll be able to view that information really easily. And they can also go to the Google App Store or the iOS Apple Store and download the Aspen Discovery app that they can use right on their phone. They can go in there, download it and log into their account. And then of course other things that they can see are their messaging settings, which would allow them to choose how they want to be notified about items that they've checked out or holds that are available for pickup. They can set their preferences for where they want to pick things up for what their home library is. And then of course, view things like their search history. And the one thing I really like about this is you can save searches. So if you have a favorite author, you can jump right in and view that information right away. And it's just a really easy way to go back and see if this author has any new titles out or if there's something that you haven't read yet. Finally, the last thing I'll talk about is lists for patron accounts. And this is probably one of my favorites. So if you like to keep track of, you know, titles, maybe you're working on a project or you can see some of my hobbies for getting ready to go camping. You know, you can save a list in here. You can add things to your list. You can add multiple titles at once. So if you wanted to throw a couple titles in there or even the ISBN, you can generate a list. You can email it to yourself or another individual and you can even print it off. So if you want to print it and take it in, you can absolutely do that. Now, as far as the college or academics go, you can even generate citations for a list in various formats. So it's really great for users to be able to come in and do that. And of course, they can organize their list however they want. You know, they can push lists, titles up to the top if they want to make sure they hit that one next on their reading list. So there's lots of great things that the patrons can do within Aspen Discovery and we're super excited to see what the Pioneer Library is going to do when they set up theirs. And I know we have a little bit of time left. I'm happy to show the COHA staff interface too if you think that would be good to show off. I'm going to jump in and say, if anybody has any questions too, in the audience, go ahead and use the questions section in your GoToWebinar interface. Type in there and I can pass your question on. Yeah, there it is. So this or about anything on the interface that Jessica showed, something else you wanted to see, have her down, you know, highlight or any questions for Robin, Sammy, about joining Pioneer. Yeah, go ahead and type in the questions. We don't have anyone at the moment anymore, but just want to remind everybody. Okay. So this is just a quick look at the staff interface. So this is where library staff will be logging in to perform their daily tasks, whether you work at the circulation desk or cataloging. This is where you'll come in and perform those day to day tasks. So from this screen, you'll see a listing of all of the modules that are available. If you're thinking about permissions, you know, for staff, you may have some of these modules turned on and some of them turned off depending on what you have access to. So this is the place where you will start every morning when you log in or afternoon and users can easily start the checkout process right from this main screen. So either, you know, scanning a barcode or typing in an individual's name will take you in where you can begin that checkout process. You'll be able to see your patron account information and then any pertinent information about that user, you know, if they have holds that are waiting for pickup or even messages about, you know, them leaving a note. They left their Nalgene bottle sitting at the front desk, you know, whatever it is. And then down below, of course, you'll be able to see the checkouts for that individual, any holds that they have in the system where if staff need to make a change, or extend it or even cancel it, you know, because an individual called on the phone, they can absolutely do that. You can view notices for your patrons at any time. So the emails that went out or something that you may have printed off. And of course you can change the individual's password if they have forgot it, and they need some help. So there's really good things here for the end user to use. Now, if you're searching for patron in general, you can of course come over here and narrow down your results if you're looking for a particular, you know, category. You can come in and search right from that patron account. Now, as far as some of your technical services, things may go with the cataloging module, you have a built in Z3950 server. So you can go out and search other targets. You can search for your local catalog so you can see what other libraries in the Pioneer Consortium has, as well as going out within there. And there's a couple of different ways to catalog in the system. There is a basic editor, which tells you all of the tags and fields that are available and even giving you a quick little question mark that will take you out to the Library of Congress. So if you forget what a particular field is or what indicators you need, that is all built right into the system. There's also an advanced editor. For those of you that catalog all day, this is really nice because you have some built in keyboard shortcuts. You can set up alerts, you know, if you try to repeat a field that's not repeatable, it's going to alert you and tell you what it is. And then of course you can build in macros. So instead of typing all of those fields out, you can run those macros and add them right in and that's shared with the consortium. So that's a nice way to kind of make it easy for others to share that information. Probably one of my favorite things is reports. You know, we all love a good report to see what our collection is, you know, how it's growing, what are people checking out. And I always love to look at collection development reports to like see turnover and things like that. And the reports module is so powerful. You can really customize it for your library. I'll just jump in here and show a couple of these off. So, you know, if we're looking for circulation counts for a particular collection, or maybe even a particular circulation range for a do we count like if you're looking for a specific one, you can really go down to that level. It's just a really great way for users to kind of look at that information. You can run reports manually or you can have them automatically run like let's say you want to run your overdue report every Friday at 3pm, you can have it automatically run and just have those results emailed to you. So it's a really nice way for you to kind of, you know, come in and view that information in the system, you know, and pick the type of report that you want to look at. So this is just an example of titles that have never circulated before a certain date. You'll notice here that the Biblio number, which is a unique number to that record, is hyperlinked. So I can go in there and actually look at the record itself, view the information. I can kind of look at the last scene date so I can check out, you know, how many copies do we have, what's circulating. So within the report you can download it in various options, you know, a CSV, a text or an open document spreadsheet. You can even create a chart so you can create a pie bar or a line chart right within the report. So there's some really awesome options here with reports. And I love to talk about community I could probably use the whole hour to talk just about the open source community itself, but this is a really great way. There's something called a monodatabase where you can actually search reports from other COHA libraries. So if I was looking for let's say holds, I could search and it would show me other reports that libraries have so I don't have to recreate the wheel and you can just import it in. I get super excited about that stuff. That's one of the cool things that anything open source is that you're not just alone. And it's also not just the company running it like by water, other librarians your colleagues out there are willing to share what they've come up with. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel. That is exactly right. So that that is probably the best thing about being part of that open source community. I'm sure Sammy and Robin have jumped in like we have a slack channel where you can talk to other librarians and ask them like how are you doing this at your consortium like what have you added to this section or you know what printer are you using are you know we're looking to buy a new one I see that one pop up all the time so it's just a really great way to be able to you know work with other librarians as it's what the open source community is about. Jesse while you were talking I was thinking of one of my favorite perks of having this shared open source consortium system with cataloging is not only do we have this e 3950 search option, but the copy cataloging that we can do within our open source consortium libraries. Yes, so it saves a lot of money on mark records, because with currently 16 other libraries chances are, if you scan in the ISBN or type in a title, at least one other library is going to have that in there already and then you can just go in and add a new item, put all your information in it, and boom. So much time I love that I'll show a quick example since you brought that up. So like this this z 3950 search allows you to search the local catalog so if I come over here, and I do my search. It'll look in my catalog to see if I have, you know, a copy of it. I can see you know is it the audio book or maybe I'm looking for just a print book. I can view the mark, I can come in and then I can even edit it or add my own copy. So it's, I love that piece of it to Robin. That's probably my favorite. So I'm happy to answer any other questions if people have them or see here. Anybody have a question look like anybody does. Chris if you want to switch the screen back to me. I can pull our slides up again. Come up again. There we go. Okay, so Jesse went over a lot of the benefits of by water. One thing that we are super excited about as a consortium is the training. We are sending a person out live a real person is coming to Nebraska to do training for our member libraries we're doing an east location a central location and a west location. So, three days of in person training to get us started, but then after that we have ongoing free training, and they do a lot of webinars and just stuff you can go on their website and you can go on their website right now and look at all the stuff they do where they might highlight one certain aspects of, you know, if you want to learn more about holds you can go in and watch a video about holds. And those are available for free all the time. So you not only can you get your basic training, you can get your ongoing training. And obviously when you join the consortium, you're going to get that basic training it might not be in person I'm not sure they're going to fly someone out to train every individual library in person, but you will have all of us. And obviously the magic of the webcam. 24 seven emergency support. So, if we have an all systems fail at 2am. I don't know how we would find that out but if we do, we can call someone, they will answer the phone and they will fix it. And as you can see, they have a very responsive team of helpers. Jesse is a rock star. And everybody else that we have worked with has been equally as awesome. And then, again, a state of the art OPEC that Aspen discovery is like our, our gold star of like what pushed us all over the edge is like yes, we must have this. So, if you have any questions start Sammy I just sort of have taken over here. If you have any questions before we go real quick drop those in the chat. If you are interested in joining us or have questions you're watching this on a replay later and have questions. And as an email, Sammy created these slides because she is awesome. There is her email s stewart at valley and e.org, and my email, which is a horrible one but it's HTML at dp com.net. We would be happy to answer any questions that you have. And if it's something that we don't know the answer to we would be happy to pass those along to the wonderful folks at by water so that we can get the right answers to your questions. Yeah, if anybody has any questions desperate questions you want answered right now while we're here you can type in the question section of your go to webinar interface. Something that I think I'm important about this because we're talking about you starting live with this new system everything is, but something important is that both the pioneer consortium as Sam and Rob most said they've been in it forever isn't established group. They've got a history this isn't something brand new, coming, you know, trying to figure out what they're doing and coming out of, you know, suddenly, you know, doing this, they've been around for a long time pioneer consortium for my time. We've always supported them here at the library commission with grants periodically to keep the pint version going. We've provided grants to libraries to join the consortium over the years. At the moment our grant are not for all wrapped up for this year, but in future, we do offer libraries to join as well. So it's an established thing. It's something they've been around for a long time they know what they're doing is, you know, you're not coming into some people just kind of figured out for the first time. And by water as well they've been doing this for, I don't know how long as well. Even longer than by water, but they're great because they work with other live, you know, they talk about the other consortium but other libraries here in Nebraska to help in them out. So, there's both very established groups that are coming to organizations come together to pride this. I think it's definitely a great investment for libraries. And as you said the very beginning, this is something very important and helpful to our smallest libraries the small you don't have your own IT people you don't know the tech of to get one of these going it can be very, you know, overwhelming or difficult to just think about it. And this is a way where you can just join a group that's already established and have yourself that online presence and that great connection that on your own would have potentially been absolutely impossible. Chris, I want to add to that to not only is this a great opportunity for small libraries that are already on another system, but it's a really good opportunity for libraries out there that aren't yet automated with an ILS to be able to afford to have one. So, it's not just hey, I'm on this system and I want to migrate over it's like hey, I'm using library thing, but I would like to have an actual, you know, ILS interface. You can automate and come over and join us to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Automated on to pioneer about a decade ago and it was amazing. Yes, you can start fresh of them or you can do your own migration from whatever you're currently using into pioneer and buy water would have to do that. I'm definitely hoping to see more of the expansion to other areas that you talked about the beginning as well Sammy I know for years that's been a dream and talked about and as a very beginning when pioneers first created it was it wasn't it was supposed to be a consortium for all sorts of things. But it kind of just focused on the catalog, or whatever reason over the years, but there's so many other things you can do. Yeah. And I have a long list of dreams of all these things that that we want to be able to do with pioneer and through pioneer. But if you look at the success of like the Nebraska overdrive consortium. We could easily replicate that with our member libraries with other things that other members are interested in. Yeah, because there's certain things. Yeah, there's certain groups things we do here through the library commission, as you mentioned, but we can't do everything. There's only a certain amount we can afford to help to support their libraries pay into those as well but we also provide some funding to keep them going. And sometimes you do it on yourself and figure out something. We would support you as much as you do. Well, I'm not seeing. Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say we have a really good group. Everybody in the consortium makes decisions like it's a group vote you have one person from every library, who is kind of that stakeholder for each library but we have a really great executive committee right now. Sammy and myself. I'm Cecily Douglas from South Sioux City and Ali Rysik from Western Nebraska Community College. And we're all really excited about this transition and this new start with by water and are really excited to make this work and see the consortium grow. So there is excitement and like Sammy said we have a really long list of things we want to do and grow and we hope that other people will join us on this cool journey we're on. I think it's like a rebirth. It is like a rebirth. I also kind of described it as like, so we're the pioneer consortium. And so you know like the original pioneers like came out and then like all of the grasshoppers came and there were like fires and like the hard winter and those people were like oh yeah we're going back east we can't handle this. And we are like the pioneer pioneers that stuck it out. And now we found like new horizons and it's just going to get better and better from here will stay and we'll make it work. That's right. I guess it looks like I have any desperate questions right now that's fine. You all have their contact information. You know where to find them there's a link to the pioneer page and the by water page on the session information to So I think we can work on wrapping up today. Any last words Sammy and Robin Jesse. We're really excited for this move over to buy water it's been a long time coming and we're really excited to grow and we'd love to see as many of our, especially our tiny libraries but anybody who's interested join us on this awesome journey. Yeah, 25, yeah. 85 any type. Yeah. Okay, thank you. I am going to pull presenter screen sharing to my screen now. I said this is the session page for today's show link to the pioneer one page, which I brought over here. And by water page, add it to Jesse sent some other links to the cohab by water solutions.com page aspirin by water solutions.com YouTube channel. I've linked all those. Sammy or Robin. If you send me the sharing link for the slides will include that and recording as well, or the archive page. And we get to that so that all be available. Our end compass live page there we go. If you go to our end compass live page these are upcoming shows our archive link is right here. And that will bring you to our show archives by By the end of the day tomorrow at the latest I should have the recording all to be processed and ready to go and uploaded to our YouTube channel that's we host all of our recordings. And I'll post them here I will email everyone who attended today show and register today show to let you know when it's available. And we also push other information our various social media, Facebook, Twitter, etc. We'll have a link to the recording link to the slides all different one pages. While we're here I'll show you this is can search our show archive the search box here you can look up to them than any topics on the show that you may be interested in. You can search the full archives are just the most recent 12 months if you want something just very current. That is because this is our full show archives and I'm not going to scroll all the way because it's a very, very long page. Like the very beginning and compass live premiered in January 2009. And all of our show. Yeah, all of our show recordings here, as long as there's somewhere to host them like YouTube at the moment, we will have them up. So just be aware of the original broadcast date of a show. Some of the information may stand the test of time and still a good valid useful things, but some information become old outdated. Services and products have changed drastically. Links might not work anymore some things might no longer exist at all. So just pay attention to that when you're watching. But you know this is what we do as librarians sometimes we host things for historical purposes and provide access to them and we will do that as long as we can. We didn't mention Facebook we do have a Facebook page for and compass live if you look at this Facebook. Give us a like over there we show reminders about things here's a reminder to log into the show information about our presenters previous recordings are available. So, we do post there we also on to Twitter and Instagram I believe use the hashtag, our end comp live hashtag abbreviation so if you're looking for us there. So now we wrap it up for everything today show. I hope you join us in their future shows, and we're filling in the dates for no December and January already have something confirmed it's going to get them on the calendar here so you'll see more topics. They can get killed in. But next week are we talking about children's books. Sally Snyder and Dana Fontaine every year do a best new children's book session for us and they are going to be coming on the show next week. We talked about the best new children's books of 2021 super librarians continue on with you services. If you're looking for some new titles for your children's book collection, sign up for that show next week. And if, as people may know there's always a companion one that Sally does on the team titles. She'll be doing that on January 5. So if you are a youth services librarian doing children and or team, those two shows are coming up. So thank you everybody for being here with us this morning. Thank you very much. Making sure everything over here to answer. Okay, cool. Thank you very much Robin and Sammy, Jesse and hopefully we'll see you all on a future episode of and five. Thank you. Thanks guys. See you soon.