 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live, the weekly online show live from the Nebraska Library Commission in Lincoln, Nebraska. My name is Michael Sowers. I'm the Technology Innovation Librarian here at the Commission. This is our monthly tech talk show. Usually, Krista Burns, our regular host is here with me, but at the moment she is flying back from some training in Minnesota, and I'm assuming she's on a plane at the moment. So I haven't heard otherwise. I haven't heard that she's stuck in an airport, so hopefully all the craziness that was going on with flights is not affecting her all that much. Today's episode is to talk about the recent Internet Librarian conference that was held in Monterey, California just a week or so ago. In the past, we've done a show kind of live from the conference, but technology didn't quite work out this time, so we're kind of doing a post-conference wrap-up the next week. Because of the weather on the east coast and the holiday and various other things, not everybody I asked was able to make it on the show that was at the conference, but we do have a small but excellent panel of people who both presented and attended the conference last week, and so I'm going to have some questions for them. We'll get some discussion going and talk about how the conference was. So on the phone or on the line, and I'll have each of them introduce themselves in a moment, but we do have Brian and Dave from the Mokina Public Library. Am I saying that right? That's correct. Oh, good. Okay, I keep trying to pronounce it the other way. We have Nicole from Bywater Solutions. Nicole, you're on the line. Yes, I am. Okay, good. Oh, don't make me nervous like that. And Cicely Walker from Vancouver Public Library. Cicely, you're on the line. It's Cecily, but hi. Cecily, I'm sorry. That's okay. And which Vancouver is that? Let's get this straight. The other Vancouver? I don't want to offend anybody and say the real Vancouver. That would be Canada, the Canada. The Canada Vancouver. The Vancouver further north than you're thinking. All right. So welcome, everybody, and welcome to those of you attending and listening live. Just as a reminder, if you have any questions during this, there is a questions area in the GoToWebinar interface. Feel free to type in a question there and I will pass those along to our panelists. Also, we do take audio questions. If you'd like your microphone turned on, just click the raise your hand button in the GoToWebinar interface, and I will happily take your question that way also. So all the folks that we have on the line today did actually present at conference. So I think we have more than enough time to do this. What I like to do is just give each of them kind of a five minutes or so to talk about what they presented on. Another chance to get the word out about what they want to talk about. So guys, we're going to go ladies first, and I'm going to start just kind of at the bottom of my list and work up here. Nicole, why don't you go ahead and kind of introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do, and then what did you talk about at conference? All right. Well, hello everybody. I'm one of those people on the East Coast, so I'm sort of displaced right now. It's talking from a family's home instead of my own house, which has no power. That's why I had the mic muted. Sorry, Michael. The main is scary. There's background noise here. So anyway, my job is vice president of education at Bywater Solutions, which is a fancy way of saying I do all the training. I do other stuff too, but the primary role is training on the COHA open source ILS. And because of that, I of course have to learn a whole lot about open source software. And so the first talk I gave at the conference was on open source issues and trends. And that was a presentation with Marshall Breeding where we sort of went back and forth. And Marshall has, if you've gone to his site before librarytechnology.org, it has so many numbers, statistics, resources. He has all this info. So he covered the numbers and what we're seeing as far as trends on that respect. And I covered a lot of what I see by going into all these libraries and talking to these librarians. So what I mainly talk about as far as issues, the number one issue and all the issues after that came back to it, was the fact that there's just not enough education about what open source software is. And so a lot of people have misconceptions, fears, concerns, and that just keeps piling on top of it. And if people were educated better than all the issues that I see from the personal side of things would go away because people would understand better. And I'm sure you all see that yourselves. When you don't understand something, it's kind of scary and you don't really want to take part in it. So I listed a few issues, every single one of them coming back to education. We were having so much fun going back and forth and talking with the audience and stuff that I didn't get to go through all the trends. But the slides are there. There's a link from the page I think that Michael has up there. And if not, they're on my website, which is also linked from this page here right there in the center there. There's Web2Learning.net. But the trends that I wanted to point out was that we in libraries sort of have a single view of just our little world and we don't look out into what other industries are doing, which is some of the cool stuff I got to see at Internet Librarian that I will talk about later. But yeah, in the rest of the world, people are really pushing open source software for a lot of reasons. It used to be cost, but now the main reason really is reliability and that's pretty awesome. So governments, entire governments are pushing for open source software or switching the Italian government, the French government, the German government. And the U.S. government has an open source for America or something like that. I forget the exact URL, but a whole push for more open source software. And then my other talk was a panel Tuesday evening session talking about librarians in roles that are non-traditional and kind of where I am. So I'm working for a company, not a library, but I do work with libraries. And we talked about our path and how we got there and it was really fun. It was really nice to get to talk to all the people in the audience and meet all the people on the panel. And I won't go through my whole trail through to get to where I am today. But the main goal, the main thing we talked about was you've got to be interested in trying things. You've got to be courageous and you've got to just push through and try and get where you want to go and not assume that all roles and libraries include sitting at the reference desk or the circulation desk or the cataloging desk. There are lots of other things we can do too. Great. Thanks. I appreciate it. Cecily, how about you? And in fact, I believe you are also on that panel in the evening, correct? Oh, no. Do we lose Cecily again? Okay. Well, while we work on Cecily's audio, Brian and Dave, how about we go to you and you kind of introduce yourselves? I know you've been on the show before. And let us know what you guys were talking about at conference. All right. I'm Brian. I'm the director of IT at the Mochino Library. And I'm Dave on the director of building operations at the Mochino Library. And I was on two different panels. One workshop and two different panels. One of the workshops and panels talked about engaging team library users and using different methods to get them to engage in a library. We focused a lot on tech. So we talked about the SIFTO cubes and Dave will talk about that later. But we talked about how we brought in a lot of toys and gadgets for the teams to get involved. One of the key pieces though is the Sphero Ball that we used to get the teams to come talk to us. So we would drive around this little ball in a high school and the teams will then approach us versus us approaching the teams. It kind of helps communicate differently. A few of the key takeaways I think from our, from those two sessions of the workshop and the panel is that you have to engage your teams in order to get them to come to the library. And you have to come out with really cool different ways. It doesn't have to be focused on reading. It should be about other things like LEGOs. Susan Considant from the New York Fayetteville Library did a really cool LEGO program where they are the first LEGO education certified coaches on staff. And they're actually, they have a team that they use with their patrons and they're going to competitions now and building LEGOs. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And anyone can do it. And we also did a game night. So if you guys were there, we got to play laser tag, which was really cool. You got to see everyone, you know, running around shooting each other. But one of the great things about the laser tag program is, you know, we take it to various libraries and you can actually tie it into books. For example, you know, Hunger Games is really popular right now. So we ran one right before we left for the conference where they basically did a Hunger Games laser tag. So last person standing was the victor. We had CIFTO cubes, which are little interactive cubes that interact with each other that do anything from math problems to spelling to word sorting to mazes. Just really fun interactive kind of a game. Brian mentioned a little bit about the LEGOs, which is great, especially for kids. They get to kind of start learning a little bit about basic programming with drag and drop that the LEGOs have. We can allow our homeschool population to check them out as well. Spiral balls are great. You can use them for some, you can use them to send people to stacks to show them where, you know, books are. You can take them to schools to engage the kids. And then we had the, we had Connect SDK for a drawing program where it was all, you know, you just kind of drew in the air and your picture out there down in the poster. And then we also were both on a panel for the next big thing. And that was a pretty cool panel. Michael Sowers was moderating it. And we talked about our interactive book ends, our tablets that you can have on the spines and check out books from, do book reviews. We've actually, after talking about it, we met somebody else, Aaron Stanton from Booklamp, who is building a library game, which is pretty cool. So we want to incorporate that in our tablets as well. So what, a brief little library game was is basically every book has a, like a markup to it. For instance, if it's a book about vampires, if it's a book about vampires, then it's 25% about vampires. So there's 25 points you can get for reading that book or your character. So as you read more books about vampires or crime, crunching investigations, you get points and you level up. And it's kind of a neat way to read and diversify yourself. So we want to incorporate that. And then Ben Dizzle talked about his Facebook marketing, which was pretty cool. So we were actually really encouraged to kind of do some more Facebook advertisements from it. And Sarah often talked about cutting things, cutting stuff that's not working. And that was, you know, people need to do that. And a lot of libraries were kind of nervous about it. So I'm glad that somebody mentioned it. Yeah, that's it for us. Yeah, we had a great time. And then we'll also be doing the gaming night though. In DC. In DC. So if you didn't get a chance to play laser tag, you can in DC. And the game for books is also live on Kickstarter. So if you want to help fund the project. Yeah, DC, it's a lot easier for me to get there earlier on a Sunday. So I will be making every attempt to actually, I've got to admit, given my age, given the fact that I grew up in the 80s, I have never actually played laser tag. So I'd like to. What? Yeah, I know. It's just, I've never had the opportunity. But anyways, and I'll mention, you guys mentioned the game of books from Booklamp. He was our guest on, I believe, last month's Tech Talk. And he talked about that. And I can say, you know, Chris and I here at the commissioner are kind of excited in wanting to play that. So we're hoping that that will get funded and actually happen. So thank you guys. Cecily, let's try this again. I have unmuted you. Can you hear us? And can we hear you? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Perfect. All right. So why don't you introduce yourself for us? Let us know what you do. And then what is it you talked about at conference? I'm Cecily Walker. I'm the web services and user experience librarian at Vancouver Public Library. The user experience part of that is not actually an official part of my title, but that's where I came from. And I'm really proud of that background. So I try to work it in there whenever I can. Internet Librarian, I was on the panel with Nicole talking about transforming roles. And it was really a great experience for me to be on that panel for a number of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons is that when I went to library school and when I graduated from library school, I knew that I didn't want to work in a library and yet here I am. For the first four years out of library school, I worked in corporations of various sizes. And even though I was working either as a user experience person or a usability person, I always made the point of letting the people that I know that I worked with that I was a librarian. Because I was very, very proud of that. And I also wanted to challenge people's perceptions of what a librarian was capable of and what the kinds of things that librarians knew. Most people that I worked with in various software companies have always had the perception, like a lot of people, that libraries are just about books. And you're really only good at a library when you've got little kids and you want to get an endless supply of children's books. So whenever it came up or whenever I had the opportunity to mention that I was a librarian or even on my business card, I had MLIS after my name, it was really part of my agenda to just sort of challenge people's perceptions of what a librarian really was. So even though I did that in my professional life, when I was talking to other librarians though, and this is about eight years ago or so, anywhere between six to eight years ago, when I was talking to other librarians that there wasn't so much of a push for user experience as there is now, I often felt like that I wasn't a real librarian because I was doing very nontraditional work. Even when I came into libraries almost five years ago now, I didn't have the experience of balancing a budget or ordering materials. I did information services work at the information desk, but the things like with cataloging or technical services or doing children's librarian or doing story times, those kinds of things, I didn't have those kinds of experiences. And even in my own organization, which is a very progressive place and a very welcoming place, I still sort of felt like I wasn't a real quote, unquote, insecure librarian. So it was really a good experience for me to be on that panel to meet other librarians or librarian information professionals who had come from a very nontraditional background or who had come from a more traditional background and ended up doing more nontraditional things. I think having us all there in that one room in that one space was good for the conference as a whole because we still have people coming out of library school who think that because they are in library school, the only kinds of things that they're qualified for, the training that they receive is really only useful in the library building. Someone mentioned to me a few weeks ago that librarians are the only professionals where our job title is named after a building. You don't call doctors hospitalarians. So I think sometimes because we are so our title and what we do is so attached to a building, we sometimes have a really hard time of being able to get out of that building and seeing the skills and talents that we have are applicable in a lot of other settings. So I talked a little bit about that. I talked a little bit about how a librarian saved my life. And I talked about being, which kind of went over like a lead balloon on Twitter. I talked about one of the things that I recommended for people to do was to be proud that they're a sparkle pony and be proud that they are a unique individual and that they bring unique skills to the table. Be proud of that. But also understand that even though you are a unique individual and maybe that there is no one else quite like you in your organization, understand that fundamentally you're there to support the business, you're there to support the organization, and you're there to support your colleagues who maybe don't have the same skills. So you want to bring them along with you even though you may be the unique person there who doesn't have the same skills as everyone else. Yeah, I like what you said about the hospitalarians. I hadn't heard it put that way before. I've always made the comment about our organizations are named after the building, the American Library Association, not the American Librarians Association. So I think you've just taken that one step further for me. So, all right. So yeah, I attended that panel and it was funny. It was kind of after the speaker's reception and the evening session tends to be a funnier session, kind of a little really loose. And there were people talking kind of, well, I don't know. It sounds pretty serious. It's not going to be funny. I don't know. And I'm actually really glad I attended. I thought it was a wonderful conversation. We got into roles. We got into mentoring of newer librarians. I almost said younger and that's not necessarily true. And what it means to be a librarian in a librarian school and it's one of those discussions that will probably never end, but I think is definitely one that needs to be ongoing and needs to be had. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and turn everybody's mics back on here. And so here's my next question and I'll let whoever wants to respond to this one first go ahead. You've talked about the sessions you presented at. What I want to hear about is what sessions did you attend that weren't yours that you thought were well worth your time or there was something out of there that you think everybody should have been there to hear? This is Nicole. And I mentioned when I was talking about my talk on open source and trends outside of libraries that there were talks I had attended that were also about trends outside of libraries that I really like. And the one I attended was about the retail industry and overlap between what they're doing and what we can do and some really cool technologies they're using in the retail industry. It was really, really interesting. I don't know how much I'd like to take advantage of some of the things they're doing like virtual dressing rooms, but they were talking a lot about how they're using technologies in libraries, I'm sorry, in retail and some of the ways we can bring that into the library setting and they were giving examples of augmented reality was kind of a cool thing they were showing. In retail they were doing things where you could hold up a tag basically in front of a mirror and it would show you the outfit in multiple different colors or it would even show you the outfit on you. And that's where I'm saying kind of cool and there were ways that people were using augmented reality in the libraries as well to show more information and things like that and I don't know, it was really cool and I wrote it up, I did put it on my site and I put a lot of links that I got from them, things I had never heard of going on in stores and stuff. I guess I'm not going to the right stores, but things like that. I thought that was a really, really interesting talk. Yeah, I kind of held up a book in front of my face there, I don't know if you saw that, I was thinking, what would I look like holding this book? Yeah, there you go. But more accurately, I think it was things like they could hold a book up to the mirror and it would maybe pop up similar titles without you having to search a catalog or something like that. Maybe you could do that sort of thing. There were some libraries that were, I know that the most popular tweet from the conference was that QR codes are dead, but there was this library that doesn't have, they don't have a physical building and so what they've done is they've actually put QR codes up around town that you can scan to get ebooks. So you scan them and the ebook gets downloaded to your device and that was kind of cool. Yeah, does this book make my butt look big? There you go. I mean, we can get on to whether our QR codes are dead or not and I kind of shake my hand at that. I think they can be used appropriately, but I know there are a bunch of people who don't agree with that, but let's not go there. Cecily, how about you? What did you attend that you thought was interesting? Probably the most useful session for me was Amanda Etches' session on sensible library website development and even though it felt for me a bit like an echo chamber, sometimes it's nice to have those things reinforced. She used the metaphor of the library website being a junk drawer, which when I said it had I been alone and not around in a room full of people, I probably would have jumped up and down. I said, yes, because that's how I'm feeling about our library website. Ironically enough, she put up the Vancouver Public Library's website as an example of a library that's doing it right. It just shows you that perspective is everything when you're talking about library website development. One of the things that she has been really pushing for is the concept of making sure that your content meets your business goals, but at the same time really making sure that the content that you're promoting on your website is really just there to help people get a job done and help people be successful. Using fewer words, making sure that the content that you're writing is clear and concise, engaging as well, and doing things that for me that really seemed heretical, like using bold text periodically throughout a paragraph to highlight pertinent ideas, which when I saw it, I really resisted, but now that I think about it, I think it's a really great idea that's something that I'd like to try to implement. Like I said, even though it was reinforcing a lot of ideas that I knew before, it was still really useful to be in that room and see the light bulbs go on over other people's heads and seeing where people becoming more interested in the concept of user experience, not only as it applies to just your website, but the whole library user experience from the time that somebody enters the library, whether that's through the physical building or your website, to the time that they are, you know, checking out books. So that's been really, really exciting for me, and that was the session that I liked the most. Yeah, one thing I heard while I was there, which I've already had a chance to use elsewhere, and I've been kind of thinking about maybe the one thing that was the most thought-provoking that I heard. So I'm still processing it. It was Ben Bizzle who said, when talking about their website and their advertising, that they're trying not to follow trends but to build platforms. Yes, exactly. And I've already repeated that to at least several other people and something that I think will come back to this, I think. So I'll give everybody kind of time to think about it, but what was kind of the most thought-provoking thing for you out of the conference, and that was mine. But we'll come back to that. So Brian and Dave, how about you guys? What did you attend that stuck? I kind of, two of them that I really liked. The first one was the web, the developing web presence as well, and that was really, like, yeah, I understand how a little website and everything, but I didn't see it as a, I saw it in different respect, which was helpful. For instance, somebody made a comment too during, you know, let the patrons define the space, art collection, furniture center, your website. So the presenter was also like, you know, you got to go out into the community and ask patrons when they go to the website, what are they looking for? Versus building a website and chalking it full of everything, just find out what just they need. And I thought that was, you know, that would save a lot of space, less clutter everywhere. So yeah, I really like that session a lot, really a ton of notes. And then another, David Linking mentioned Spark, which is a free enterprise open source chatting tool. And then if you can embed it with your website, I have to try it out still, but it looks pretty cool. So you can have people on your website chatting with your staff members when they're in the building, all through your website. Let's see if I have a link for you. Spark IM client, maybe? I see it down. Oh, here we go. Oh, for internal? Yes. It does internal and external, though. Oh, okay. You can chat amongst your internal network and then also from your website. Cool. So I got to do more homework on it. When I find the link, I'll shoot it over to you. Okay, yeah, great. Go ahead. And then the other session, it was making, laughing at your library and trying to be more comical and stuff. And when I walked the line of, you know, don't cross the line, but walk the line and, you know, try to get people to interact and laugh and things that, you know, you have a sense of humor. So one of the pictures that I remember that they were talking about it was I like big books and I cannot lie on a bulletin board. I thought I was like, you know, that's clever and, you know, it's not bad or anything and, yeah, that's the website. So, yeah. So I kind of want to try to do some, I'm not very good at making jokes. I usually cross the line when I make a joke. So I got to do some homework on that. But I thought it was a really interesting way and then the other library does those, you know, those e-card things, but they're making it to jokes with like the old 60s, 70s characters and they have a funny little quote. And I remember other ones that I've seen in the past too, like on a billboard on a highway. There were double door guys on page 467. Whatever the page number is. And so I thought that was, you know, that's clever and cute and so I kind of want to go check out the library. So those are like the two big things, trying to engage your community more versus going to your community. Dave, did you have anything? Oh, he actually. All right. Okay, so I'm going to mention too that I attended and I don't particularly remember the titles of the session. One is the website that I just brought up here, which is from the Escondido Public Library. They're doing a series of videos called Library U and the idea is that they're actually having they're working with patrons to create videos that are oral history or how to do something. So here's one, you know, research, your historic Escondido home and grief management through artistic expression, a D-Day survivor, a Holocaust survivor, and I thought these were really, really interesting ways to kind of get your public involved with the library, the library involved with the public, whether they be businesses or just local residents and then, you know, from the video production standpoint and things like that, that I thought was really, really interesting and Amy from Omaha Public is commenting that she loved this session too and Amy, if you want it on the conversation just say so and I will happily turn on your microphone. The other one that I will mention is I have a question about that. Oh yeah, go ahead. So did the staff take the videos or did the patrons take videos of our patrons? No, as I understand it so far, the staff has been doing the actual filming and in some cases, they've literally gone out to a farmers field to do the video, that sort of thing so they've got some pretty good equipment and some pretty good editing skills there but I guess they've even got patrons saying I want to do one so I think that would be wonderful. You know, maybe they'll eventually be able to kind of turn it over to the public at large, not completely sure on that but so yeah, this is what I'm going to keep an eye on. The other one I'll bring up here real quick and the funny story on this one is if you look at the address here, this is unl.edu. This is actually going on about three blocks from where I'm sitting right now at the Love Library at UNL. Pixel is their reference chat bot basically, artificial intelligence and when I went in to sit in on this session, I didn't even realize who was presenting. I just looked at the title and thought artificial intelligence in the library. That sounds cool and then I realized it was folks that worked three blocks from me. They'll actually be on our tech talk for November if you're interested more in this particular topic. I think what's going on there is pretty darn cool. I had a little conversation with Pixel actually during that talk. I was trying to learn about open source software obviously while she was presenting and Pixel and I had a little bit of an altercation because she just kept getting stuck on the word software and she wasn't paying attention to the word to open source. So we went back and forth and they gave her some personality which was kind of cool. Then they talked about that in the talk and so at one point I typed hm, hm, hm, hm and she replied, well, statistically people usually type hm with two m's. I was like, okay. I actually replied, that was more helpful than your search for software. So, they were saying they were programming her and she's learning and all that stuff. It's a really cool project. I'm not bashing it at all, but it's kind of cool. Go in and try talking to her because they're actually reading the logs so that they can learn how to make her better. So that was kind of my goal there. There's one other I bet I'll mention I'm sure they will talk about this when they're on the show, but if you start being rude to her at a certain point she will refuse to talk with you anymore until you apologize and most people generally end up apologizing which is I find very interesting from a psychological standpoint. Okay, so did anybody on the line attend any of the e-book sessions? I did. Okay. Could you tell and ultimately I have a little story I'll share about this, but what was being talked about e-books this time around? Well, I only went to one of them and this is the first day at my first day at Interlibrary and this is Monday and Monday was kind of a weird day because I felt like I spent most of Monday picking the wrong sessions. The session that I was in in the e-book session, the person who was speaking was a law librarian and serving a completely different clientele than I'm used to as a public librarian and our biggest issue or one of our biggest issues as public librarians is that we just can't make the content available when people really want it to the degree that people want. We only have one or two copies of the title and the law librarian who was talking was talking about the different challenges of whether or not to present content to people, giving people the option of having either an e-book or the physical book or both and while that was really interesting, it wasn't applicable to anything that I have to deal with on a daily basis. I wasn't sure if the rest of the e-book stream was going to be like that but it kind of just made me put me off a little bit because it wasn't something that I could use in my real life. Sure. Fair enough. That happens to all of us. Jennifer Korber from the Boston Public Library and I were running a track all day Monday so I was able to attend anything but my track so I always like to hear the story that brings me to the asking about the e-books track was that during one of our sessions in our track which worked out kind of as an unconferency sort of model where we had nine tables, we had people suggest nine topics and then go to your table and talk about that topic for the majority of the session and then we'll have all the tables report back. Well, one of the nine tables picked the topic e-books and then we said okay and we got all nine topics set up and we put a chart up on the wall and we said okay now everybody go to the table for the topic that you're interested in talking about and nobody sat at the e-books table. Wow. It was empty. And we just we kind of just stood back and we're trying to figure out what just happened and so we asked people at the end we said you know how many people in the room think that e-books is an important topic right now in libraries and pretty much the whole room raised their hand and then we said well why did nobody sit at the table and the general response we got maybe I'll ask each of you if you have any comments of this is we're just so darn tired of talking about it. What? Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. So what do we you know here let's solve the e-book problem right here now on this topic. I don't know what to say beyond that is anybody I'm not even sure what the question is at this point we're all tired of talking about it but it's really important. What with e-books it's like beating a dead horse so everyone knows the problem with the e-book market and now everyone's doing their own specific e-book solution and I personally think that we all need to band together and come up with a single solution versus 20 different people working on 20 different of their own projects that there's one live there's two or three livers that have made their own e-book publishing platform and there's a couple other livers that are doing their own e-book blending platform and it's through redundancy and you're going to have errors and we all need to just you know stop complaining and come up with the solution that we can just use but that's my whole take on it at least. So you're willing to spearhead that? Yeah. No. Yeah. In my world I don't I mean I hear about the e-books situation I certainly purchased my own e-books personally but we don't really deal with the whole e-book thing at the library or licensing. All I hear are the grumbles from everybody else so I didn't really feel I had anything I was in that room by the way I didn't really feel I had anything to contribute to such a discussion since I really don't know from the on the ground forefront how it's working everything I've learned I've learned at conferences and through mailing lists and all that stuff and I kind of agree I think that maybe we all got to come together and see if we can find a way to handle it on our own and isn't there I'm totally drawing a blank on the name isn't there a group out there that's trying to do that for us? There is. Yep, Michael Porter's group. Yeah, I kept thinking you know what library root or something I'm like that's not right so yeah I mean I think maybe what we need to do is I don't think any of us needs to spearheaded but maybe we need to jump on board and see how we can help there. Yes, I agree with that. Cecily how about you? I mean it's I love the idea of us all banding together and trying to come up with one solution but you know being that I'm in Canada and Canada is you know it's Canada it's difficult to try to find something that would work both in the United States and Canada because I mean what seems to happen here is that if we find a solution that works really really well in the United States and we try to import that solution to Canada the very first road block we hit is that we hear from patrons well there's not enough Canadian content in here and so then we end up going back to publishers and saying well you have to put more Canadian content in and you know because a lot of well I'm going to say something that's probably going to get me in trouble so hopefully my director won't hear this but because a lot of publishers will think of e-books in terms of like a physical thing and or bookshelf they'll think well if we add more Canadian content that means we've got to take some other content away not to mention that you know forgetting that we're dealing with like pixels and ones and zeros that really don't take up a whole lot of space so it's a really nice idea but for somebody who lives outside the United States I don't know how realistic it is I know that I am not really tired of hearing about e-books I'm really tired of the inflexibility and the resistance and the pushback that we're getting because we know that here in Vancouver where our e-book adoption very similar to in North America it's people who have money who have means who have choices it's not people who are hard to grapple who are trying to use e-books so we're pushing this content out of people who have choices and have means and their experiences are shaped by commercial things commercial properties like Amazon like iTunes like Kobo here in Canada where you can buy things at the click of a button and we are not making it that easy and people just our patrons don't understand well why can't you make it that easy and we can try to talk about DRM until the cows come home but they don't get it and they don't care and until we can get over that hurdle it's always going to be something that isn't compelling enough for patrons to want to use it you know they don't understand why we can only have one copy of an e-book when they can just go to Amazon and buy it and never have to wait on it so until we can solve that problem of delivery on demand delivery without a waiting list I don't know that we're going to see really huge adoption rates the kinds of adoption rates that make the headaches worthwhile mm-hmm yeah we you know I'm in a state library we generally don't deal directly with patrons but the majority of libraries in the state of Nebraska get overdrive through us so every once in a while we do talk directly to a patron and I had one just a couple of weeks ago she had an Android tablet she was using overdrive but and she was using the overdrive app but she was literally like well I can open PDFs from other places why can't I open the PDFs from overdrive right I can open I can get Kindle books from Kindle on my tablet why can't I get the Kindle book through overdrive and you know if if if your software is offering this to me why can't I open it and and I'm trying to have a DRM conversation with a patron who just wants it to work was it reminds it reminds me of an experience I had when I was when I first started off in user experience one of the first observations I had was going to a bank and watching people in the front lines of a bank trying to use the new software that the bank had developed and it was a process that used to take only about 10 minutes to open up a new account with the new software was taking upwards of 45 minutes and I sat there watching this poor woman and a really frustrated customer and the customer actually said to her do you know what you're doing which is a chilling moment and I find that our library staff are having the exact same moment every time we have a patron come to us to say you know you know how can I do this how can I download this why can't I put this on my tablet and we have to go well you know we're having that exact same moment and as long as we have people coming to us and with the experience of you don't know what you're doing it's not ever going to be the number one choice or it's not ever going to be a positive experience and people are going to be looking at us in a negative light so you know that's my big worry that people are just looking at my brain staff that like we're incompetent not that we're not trying but that we don't know what we're doing because we're so hemmed in by these restrictions. So let me ask one other e-mail question because I love this I won't name names because this person is not here to speak up for herself but there's at least one library I know of here in the states that has basically said overdrive we're done I am not spending any more money on e-books because of all these issues that we're talking about despite the fact that her patrons do want them is that something we should be doing should libraries be drawing a line in the sand or do we need to like work with the system or does anybody have any kind of reactions to that position? I think that if I mean if you could get a critical mass of course that kind of thing would actually would actually serve a purpose it's just like you know if you get enough people boycotting you know the product I would assume that in order for them to stay in business they would have to make some changes and work more with us however like you said I mean that sort of it does it affects the patrons who want the product and how do you get that critical mass and how do you get that critical mass all at once I mean you've got contracts and people who are stuck in contracts and I don't know I don't think I don't think it's going to work I would love to see it work I love the idea but yeah I agree alright so let's circle back around to the thought provoking idea or what is it has got you really kind of going out of this conference mine was the you know as I said not following trends but building platforms is there kind of one or two things that each of you kind of came away from the conference and said you know what I really need to think about that more and I'm not even necessarily want you to say here's what you've now come up with but just what is on your mind because of your experience at the conference and I'll let whoever speaks up go ahead go first alright well one of the biggest things that I've heard said a couple of times and I repeated it now and it's kind of a you're kind of with an eye opener so you know when when people say like of those kids in the library loud and those teens are loud that's very derogative because technically to replace the word teen or kid with any ethnic group you're going to have a lawsuit and I was like oh you know what yeah and I know there's tons of I shouldn't say tons but I hear it every now and then in different libraries I'll be in the library so we'll be like all those teens are being noisy over there again and it's like you know and you kind of just ignore it because you know teens are noisy but when you replace that word teen with another ethnic group you're now you know you're being very disrespectful and so it's kind of like an eye opener for me because I probably might have said it once or twice as well but now I'm like always trying to be cognizant and seeing if I hear it and whatnot and I thought it was kind of a very unique perspective Patrick Swing is the one that mentioned it I think for me, mine actually came from Twitter during that evening session a lot of people were tweeting questions and comments and repeating things we were saying and one of the things Cecily had said was that we could all be special and someone commented on Twitter and said well then how do you if everybody's special who's going to do the day-to-day work and I I was kind of, I mean first a little bit put off because I'm special so was I and I do tons of day-to-day work I mean I sit there and I answer support tickets all the time I answer the phone I write up press releases I mean these are not special fun things it's my job and so I think it was kind of like people were taking special to being entitled and I'm sure there are people that are special and entitled but that was certainly not what we were trying to say I know it was not what Cecily was trying to say and I kept fighting back with that on Twitter that one sort of stuck with me and I I think it stuck with me too just from personal experience people often look at those of us who who do try to be special and be different as if we are entitled and don't realize that hey we are doing a ton of other things that are not what you would categorize as you know I don't know super special or anything so I don't know I was a little offended put off by it and but I mean I can understand where the person was coming from so trying to think of a way to yeah go back on that and say you know well yeah special does not mean that you don't have to do the boring stuff with everybody else too yeah I think that one was pretty interesting I was in the audience and I was watching that happen I didn't get involved but I watched it happen yes I started something yeah no that's great really if you get that going that's kudos to you I think what happened and maybe this is to kind of maybe defend the person who started the stark going back back against what she said I think basically somebody tweeted what Cecily said and then somebody who wasn't in the room made that comment about then who's going to do the regular stuff so maybe kind of missed some of the context no no she was there oh she was there we actually had a conversation about it in the bar where karaoke was happening later that night we had an opportunity to work through that and after we had that conversation she really understood better where I was coming from and her initial response was shaped by someone that she worked with who had that sense of entitlement and I just had to let her know that even though special snowflake has that sort of connotation that's not how I meant it I don't mean that you know you're a prima donna I mean that you do have special skills you need to evangelize yourself be proud of those things but at the same time understand you've got to do the grunt work as well okay cool and so Cecily how about you what sort of big idea thought provoking thing came out of the conference for you a really thought provoking idea that came out of the next big thing conference was something that came through twitter and I wish I could have met the guy who mentioned this he came up with the idea that he thought the next big thing for libraries was to be his name is Carson Block and if anybody knows him tell him this is a great idea that libraries should be embracing our roles as a hyper local treasure that we are providing local content that nobody else can provide and the reason why that kind of blew my well what little hair I have blew my hair back was because I have friends who are a friend who decided she took an idea that she wanted to have a mobile app that only had the menu and the hours of the restaurant in her area and that's all the app does and the app has been a runaway success she's not even thinking about going international or national she wants to only focus on her community and I started looking at other sort of you know apps that are only really focused on your local area and starting thinking about the resources that we have like at Vancouver Public Library all the digital resources that we have that if we partnered with somebody we could just do some really amazing development that really only focused on the things that make Vancouver unique and I don't know if any other libraries are doing that kind of work because we seem to be so focused globally and outward but instead of looking at our own community so the concept of us just focusing on being the hyper local experts was really exciting to me yeah and that immediately I brought back up here that library you for me yeah I mean that's the sort of thing they're trying to do in this case be a video but you know and Amy Mather from Omaha Public in our chat is basically screaming yes yes curating your community love that idea with lots of exclamation points and that's what she's trying to do on Pinterest with her library so you know trying to become that local resource I think there's tons of ways you can do that so alright well we're getting close to our hour and I'm now almost glad I didn't have like eight people on the line because this has been an amazing conversation with just the four of us so I guess just the last thing I'll ask is well first of all I'll remind everybody who's attending live that you can ask us a question in the Q&A area or raise your hand and I will happily turn on your microphone for you and also all the links that we've been talking about we will do our best on this end to collect all those and make them available with the recording when that goes up either later today or tomorrow end of the week at the outside so I think I just kind of go around one more time and actually I'm going to change my question a little bit I want to ask each of you to answer the following question why should somebody go to this conference and I'll give you kind of all the moment to think about that and then so if you've never been you've got to pick a conference maybe you usually go to ALA but maybe you're thinking you know why should they go to this one instead or at all and whoever wants to take that one first well I'll let you go ahead all right the interlibrary and by far it's one of my favorite conferences it seems to be a lot more engaging and people are a lot more people aren't very quickish at the interlibrary and they're all willing to hear an idea that you mentioned somewhere else and they'll come and find you and ask you about it and I thought that's always kind of neat so like for example if they interact with a book an idea I had Aaron hunted me down and I was like hey this is what I'm trying to do this is a really cool idea I want to see if you want to help out and I was like that is that doesn't really happen at least to me at other conferences so the interlibrary and it's a lot of that like collaboration okay I always you know even though I work in technology I like the internet library and conferences because I still learn new things there's still always something that I didn't know about that I come away with and I don't sometimes conferences like ALA or SLA are just too big and there's too much going on and too hard to answer and figure out what's best and too much of a chance that you'll end up in a talk but it just doesn't teach you anything so I like internet library because like I said even though I keep up with the field I can't keep up with everything so I like being around the people who are in a similar field and are sharing all that info with me I like internet library because it kind of reminds me of South by Southwest in a way and that you are in the room with the people who are making epic stuff and who are doing really really interesting things at their libraries but there are no hierarchies and there are no barriers and you can actually go up to somebody and say you know what that was rad tell me more about it and this is what we're doing and is there any opportunity for collaboration or if there is no opportunity for collaboration can I kind of take that idea and run with it where I am and it gives you an opportunity in a smaller conference to sort of break out of your comfort area comfort area like even though I live in the sort of UX bubble I was able to go to the e-book sessions I was able to just sort of poke my nose in the door at the school the school's track at internet library and I really really appreciate that because everything is in a much smaller physical space so you're not having to like truck four blocks to go and check out what other people are doing yeah worst case you have to go across the street that's for the hardship I know and then you can even do it in a covered walkway most of the way I guessing I should answer my own question I'm not sure when else I can I can add I mean all three of you pretty much said anything I can think of but just playing off of one thing Cecily said is I don't think I've ever actually heard the word no from somebody at that conference when I said hey can I use that idea hey can you give me more detail hey can I contact you hey can we have you on the show you know it's just everybody's like yeah go ahead please that's what we're here for we're here to share those ideas and we're here to inspire other people and you know let let let all the this special not all the snowflakes bloom no I'm not mixing my metaphor but so at this point we're just about at our hour here so do any of you have just anything else you want to throw out their pitch just something you wanted to say about the conference or what you're currently working on that I haven't already given you a chance to do so silence okay that works well you know I want to give everybody the chance so I want to thank all three of you this this was amazing I you know I whatever we put together these shows we were like well we have a plan let's see how well it goes and we usually pull it off very well and sometimes it's just absolutely amazing and I think this hour has gone way faster than I was expecting it to so so thanks to all of you for doing this and taking some time out of your day to help us out with this thank you for those of all of you who attended and those of you who have listened to the recording they just want to tell you coming up next week on Encompass Live is Nancy Jewen Friends or the case of the neglected books the history and importance of youth series books that's how one sounds interesting I think I will probably attend that and then on that will be on November 7th on November 14th it's not a tech talk but I'll be involved again we're going to actually talk about creating video book talks from script to screen we are going to actually create one on video and edit it and publish it all live on the show so you can see how easy it is assuming nothing goes horribly wrong with the technology so well in fact I've got a meeting this afternoon to figure out how we're going to do that so thanks once again to our panelists and thank you once again to everybody who attended this is Michael Sowers of the Nebraska Library Commission saying thanks for attending Encompass Live this week and we'll catch you again next week thanks a lot bye bye thanks everybody