 All right, 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. You need to record the show as we are doing right now. And it is posted to our website if you want to watch later at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. 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 we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries, so similar to your state library. So we provide services and programming and training to all types of libraries. So you will find shows on Encompass Live potentially for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, historical societies, really our only criteria is something to do with libraries. Something cool libraries are doing, something you think they could be doing. We do book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We bring on guest speakers to the show sometimes, but we also have Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on to talk about things we're doing here through the Commission. Today, though, is the last Wednesday of the month, which means April is almost over. Where did it go? And the last Wednesday of the month is always Pretty Sweet Tech Day. This is when our technology innovation librarian, Amanda Sweet, comes on and talks about something techy. We have other shows that are tech-related sometimes, but the last Wednesday of the month, you can always guarantee that it'll be something like that. So we have Amanda with us this morning. Good morning, Amanda. Good morning. And she is going to talk about actually computers and libraries. The computers and libraries conference that happened at the end of last month. Yep. And all the cool, awesome, amazing things, no pressure that she encountered at this year's computers and libraries conference. So I will hand it over to you, Amanda, to tell us all about it. Cool. So computers and libraries is I'm pretty sure it's actually always in DC. It's like in Arlington, Virginia. Yeah. And so computers and libraries is the world's leading conference for pretty much like techy things and libraries. Are there other conferences about techy things and libraries? Yeah, definitely. But so in this session, I'm going to go over some of the highlights and trends that I came across. If you ask someone else, they'll probably point to different stuff. So if you see and so if you see another session like this, try it out. They'll probably see some different things. Other things. Yeah. So some of the trends that I saw are and there's about a million of them that I picked out these four just because they kind of overlap a lot and they build upon each other. So the first one is how people are experiencing libraries differently. How that kind of digital in person trend has officially changed libraries and how some different libraries across basically around the world have been changing their approach to how they design the library building, how they design the physical space, how they embed library services across the community to help draw attraction and how they started changing the metrics of how they measure success about how people view the library and interact with the library. And then the next one is in order to create that shift and create that change and build a better experience of the library, you need partnerships. There's only so much that the library can do on its own and how much the like so building out that community network and building out how you approach services and how you approach like those long term relationships and partnership building is that next trend. Then the next one is and this one is kind of biased just because it's what I've been working on and it's it's what I've been paying attention to. So, of course, I popped it in there. It's the workforce development business librarianship. I'll cover what I talked about in some of my session, what other libraries have been doing and kind of like how this is becoming a new role in libraries. They you probably see it at cropping up like, especially in Nevada and Washington and different places like that. But I'll talk about how this is actually creating jobs in the library to help libraries create other jobs in their communities. Trippy. And then I'll talk about some of the just general techie goodness that's been infused throughout all these different trends and how libraries are changing their approach to tech. And of course, tech gadget goodness because come on people. There's always new gadgets to look. Yeah, right. And so the first one is let's dig deeper into how people are experiencing their library. So some of the general trends that I came across are this builds across this builds upon what the last conferences have been talking about how COVID has shaped that hybrid experience that hybrid experience isn't going anywhere. We've all accepted that like it's a thing. And so the thing is like libraries have shifted over to say we have had a drop in people that are actually coming into the physical library space, but in some certain areas more people have actually been coming in. Because after COVID it was like a sort of like a pendulum swing. People got freaked out. They didn't want to go into the library. The number dropped. But then it kind of swung back in the other direction like real hard because people were going stir crazy. Like they just could not stand it anymore. And they're like, I will do anything. So it's designing those services that help people communicate and come together. And it's sort of like, so one example that that's been happening is in the makerspace land. People wanted to get their hands like into that technology and into those like even knitting. Like there are a surprising number of new knitters. I'm not one of them. I tangle up. It's horrible. You don't want to see that. But it's how to offer both a digital and a in-person experience that is. I don't want to say separate for equal, but it is separate pretty cool. It gives like an like an in equivalent experience so that the digital folks can experience the same or similar things as the in-person people. And they're also finding out that the challenge with that is they were trying to do it simultaneously. And that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. You can offer an in-person workshop for how to do design for a laser cutter, but not everyone's going to be able to mesh up their schedule to be able to come into that one hour training session in person. But if you offer that one hour training session virtually, even if they don't have the equipment in front of them, even if they have like a video of the equipment in front of them, they can still build out that design and submit it over to the library for the actual cutting and then come into the library to pick it up. Just to pick it up? Yeah. So it's basically being less stringent about how you think about those library services. And it's also changing your policies to support that because I know that I talked to a lot of libraries and heard from a lot of libraries that said you have to physically come in person and be standing next to the equipment to be able to utilize this equipment. But that doesn't always work for people. They might actually, and like, I'll give the example of Bennett Martin up the street. Bennett Martin, they have a 3D printer that's behind the counter, but during COVID they actually had to cut off physical access to that 3D printer. So now you can only submit files. So I actually wanted to print a bunch of stuff for the tech kits behind me. And the only thing I could do was submit the file. And it's sort of frustrating, but it's also like it works. It was actually like, yeah. For some people that may be, well, they want to say, I designed this thing, I need this thing, but I don't want to come in and sit and wait for it to 3D print or whatever. I'll send you what I want done and I'll come and let me know when it's ready, yeah. And like over time I got used to that. And I realized I've seen a 3D printer 8 million times. I do not care at all if I see it print in front of me anymore. And there was also a shift over to say, maybe we don't actually need to house the physical 3D printer itself because there's so many different places that you can go to outsource 3D printing. There's an entire website that you can go to where you upload your 3D print file and it will automatically scan all the different known services to find the lowest rate or the quickest delivery time, depending on what you need. And actually I've gotten so many questions about that one, let me grab that one. I know many libraries have makerspaces and are doing that, but there are many that don't or they don't have all the every piece of equipment you might want. They might not have the 3D printer yet haven't figured that out or gone into that. Right. But this is called a craft cloud and it's from like all 3DP is like one of the biggest organizations you're gonna find in the world of 3D printing. But if you click on get an instant quote, all you do is upload like a 3D file in here. And I have no guarantee that I have one of these available. Oh here. This is the one I needed for the 3D, for the tech kits. You'll upload it and then you just say the units of measurement. I'm just gonna say millimeters because that's what this was designed in. I want it in US dollars, but if you're from another country, you can do whatever you want. Confirm. I only need, let's say that I need 16 of them because that's how many copies of each kit I have. I see the materials and the prices. I know that I want PLA because it's the cheapest material that's out there. And then Ella will select this material. And I only want standard. I don't care if it's smooth and sanded because it's also a little more expensive for them to sand it. But you can if you have that as a need. Yeah, you can see what it's gonna cost right here ahead of time, yeah. And then it also gives an option to choose your color. I usually just do white because it's super easy to paint it and it's also kind of fun. And also most things just work in white. So it'll give you the best pricing. It'll give you the fastest delivery and you can also scroll through and find different offers and options. And it tells you where it's gonna be made too. Lots of Oregon and Hampshire, Kentucky. And so this thing is awesome. Like I love this website. So if you wanna support local, you can do that. If you wanna get the fastest delivery, then whatever. And so I can grab this website and I'll put it into the chat or you can just Google craft cloud. I mean, it pops up. And I am popping into, so if your library actually just wants to host a training session to help people learn the software and then submit it over into a service like that. And you can also go onto, I found a really cool service on, hang on, I can't type and talk apparently. Okay. So I also found a really cool service through Etsy. So if you do have people in your community who haven't had that experience of seeing a 3D printer live and in person, that Etsy service actually offers a video time lapse and or a video, like they basically take a video of the 3D print process. So you can see your object actually being built up and then they'll ship the thing out to you. And I was like, you are a genius Etsy. Yes, look, there's your thing being done. You can sit there and watch it for hours and hours until it's done. Right? So I'll also link out to that. And I'm sure this isn't the only Etsy seller that does it. Usually when one person starts doing it, like everyone starts doing it. But I'll put in the chat to the Etsy with 3D. If you want to put in the chat, you can change the two to entire audience and that should go out to everybody. Do you have that on yours? It didn't actually give me that. It gives me organizers only, organizers and panelists or the NLC organizer. Or I can send questions to staff but I tried changing it to all and it won't. All right, well, that's okay. I'll just resend it to all entire audience. It's easy as I did the last time. Yeah. I did try though. Yeah. And you can also consider that a sneak preview of the tech section too. So now I won't cover it there. And so the other thing is I'll switch back over into slideshow and we can jump back into the highlights here. So they also talked about new user experience research techniques because a lot of libraries were trying to improve their website because how in the world are you're going to know that the library is now offering 3D print services and 3D print outsourcing services? You can even like help supplement the cost of the 3D print outsource if your community is having trouble with that. And that way instead of updating and maintaining a printer all you're doing is getting the funds together to help support outsourcing 3D print. Options people. And so in order to find the UX research techniques I have another resource for you. It feels almost feels like I'm jumping around but I swear it's all related. Oh no, it makes sense to me. And so UX research. I'm gonna go into my teaching tech but I have a different resource. I want the who is learning and why there. So this has a user experience research section. This covers a lot of the techniques that were also covered in some of the sessions during this conference. It covers some stuff that I found out in the wild. It covers some stuff that I encountered last year. And it also has links over to other resources. And also mentioned while we're doing this and sharing all these links here that when the archive recording of this goes up we'll have the links to all of these as well included in that session page. We'll have the slides and the recording of the show and then the links to whatever all these different things that Amanda shared. So you don't have to remember them now if you don't want to. Sweet. And so in order to help kind of there are the libraries that are using UX research to improve their website but there's also libraries that are using UX research to improve their services and outreach. So for example, they did like a day in the life study to find out what people actually do throughout their day and they found out that it actually is legit, hard for people to be able to come into the library and find time to do that between like childcare and getting the house clean, cooking dinner and all that stuff. So they like a lot of libraries started embedding their services into like I'm sure a lot of you have heard about the laundromat craze that went a while ago. And so if you haven't, there were libraries that actually started putting together. They sent a librarian out to the peak hours that the laundromat was working. And they had like a bunch of kids that were in the laundromat that were just bored out of their skulls because you're watching paint dry. And so they had a librarian basically doing story hour over there, then they would take a collection of best circulating books and they would start circulating them. And they also had options to start a library card like right then and there if you didn't already have a library card. And to support that you'd also might have to change your policies around what it takes to start a library card. And you might also have to like adjust them where your materials are able to be distributed out of but you'll also increase your circulation and you'll also increase the outreach to those hard to reach communities and the hard to reach demographics that we're all trying to reach. And they also are. Yeah. Right, yeah. And so the next one is I talked enough about websites. We don't need to talk more about websites but there's also some really cool building designs that were changed. The session that was actually in the conference was buildings that were across the mostly in Europe but they talked about like how to change the shape of your library building so that it basically resembles different things. I think here I think it's Kansas City that has the library that basically looks like a giant bookshelf. Yeah. So it actually, yeah. Is that Kansas City? Kansas, yep, yep. Yeah. And so it's basically changing the shape of your library building so that it's more appealing. I remember in my hometown in like St. Francis, Cudahay, the library in Cudahay started out as just this like bland brick building that look like if you walked into it, you're walking into like a serial killer show. Like you basically like in order to get to like the children teen section, you had to go down into like this musty basement and it was like, am I going to come back up again? But I always did. And it's like over, I think it was actually right before I went to college that they changed the library building. Like they had been planning for like years and years to finally change that thing. And they built it like over across the street from the Patrick Cudahay plant. So it always smelled like bacon. And because that's a good thing. Except when they're cleaning machines, don't go on Wednesdays. But like it's this big open, clean glass building. And it's like, it's something you actually want to walk into. And it's got like, it had like this amazing parking lot. And by that time I was actually able to drive and all that stuff. The old building, you couldn't park it all. It was dark, it was dank, it was brick, it was dank. And it was like just making that shift was amazing. And you can also, they were also some libraries that talked about don't actually build your own library space. Get a space inside of a mall or get a space inside of a large retail area because it's somewhere that already has high traffic and you're just adding a stop for them. So if you know where people are already congregating just add it to a retail space. Or start distributing your book collection instead of being in one space to being embedded into like a whole bunch of different spaces. One of the examples that I really liked came out of the library system in Las Vegas because they actually worked with a local prison system. They found out that people that were doing the re-entry program out of the prison system, they had like a giant training facility where the former inmates had to go and they had the families that were waiting and they had the kids that were waiting. So they built like a little mini library that was baked into that facility so that those kids would have had something to do. Like the parents could have like a training resources and skill repository. And they knew that they wouldn't, those people wouldn't be able to get into the physical library space so the library came to them. So don't be afraid to like distribute your resources across the community. And there's also changes in how you're reaching people. I know that most of you have probably heard like the Elon Musk Twitter insanity and how people were leaving Twitter and droves and then people were leaving Facebook and droves. And I also know like a whole lot of libraries that were, that is their only platform. They don't have a website, they only maintain a Facebook site. And like there was a whole session about, I didn't realize the sheer number of people who were quitting social media. So it's like, what would it mean for the marketing channels? And what would it mean for library outreach because we're so heavily reliant on these old marketing channels? They're not even that old. How old is Twitter? I don't know. Yeah, not, yeah. I think that's something too though that just like when we would talk to people who'd advise the libraries on where should you market? You need to figure out where your people are still though. Yeah, yeah. Yes, there is all of the, everyone's leaving a droves. Well, I'm still on both of those and I haven't noticed a huge drop in the people and the places that I interact with. And I see social media libraries out there. So I think it's something to be aware of but don't be scared and run away because your people might still be there. If you hadn't checked your interactions, don't just say, oh, well, everyone says, or I've heard that I should get off of this because nobody's there. Well, that might not be the case for your library. Make sure before you dump something, make sure that it is not where your people in your community are. Yeah. And like, and is it worth starting a library Snapchat or a library, whatever a little social media platform teams love, it's like, is it worth starting that? Like, one, is it going to be a fad and are you going to start it? And then it arcs out and then they started a new social media platform. Like, and it's just. I think it's hard right now because things are so in flux. Like you said, people aren't here. The stories that go running away from social media, but there's still people there, but where are they running to? There's sound and when we first started this, there was just a few things. You can show a YouTube, a Twitter, a Facebook. Yeah, that's not even going back. I know as far back as my space, but let's not. Yeah. But it's like now these new ones are coming up to supposedly take the place of. Yeah. They never do unless you invest your time and it's a find out what your people want where they want you to be. Don't assume just because you've heard, oh, TikTok's a thing, we should be there. Ask your community, ask your teams. Are you doing a lot of TikTok or have you found something new? Right, yeah. And if we did post something from the library, would you even care? Is that what you use it for? Right, yeah. Yeah. And do you actually need to spend so much time on your own library channel or do you want to partner with people who already have a live and active channel and cross post your stuff on there? Partnerships that you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Go partnerships. It's a real, somebody else is doing it. Yeah, right. And so can you just, people are already going to the laundromats website to check the hours and check the like availability machines. Can you just post it there? Can you put like a physical flyer out there? Are physical flyers coming back? And so then the other one was you have the shifts in building design and you have the shifts in web design and everything. But there was just kind of, I love the session on user experience for equity. And the specific session I went to was on cognitive disabilities, which I had never thought about design for cognitive disabilities. Like design for people with ADHD, design for people with auditory processing disorders or visual processing disorders. And like I used to work with blind visually impaired. So I already knew about designing for blind visually impaired. And it's like, and I also knew about like designing for hearing impaired, but I didn't really think about cognitively impaired. I didn't think about people with sensory awareness issues. Some people with sensory, I don't know what the proper term for it. So I'm kind of dancing around it and voiding it like the plague to actually say, like a real term, but like the different way that you can bucket out what you should be paying attention to in terms of design. So the name of that session was user experience and cognitive disabilities. So if you go to the computer and libraries website, then you find that session, you can also reach out to the person who did this specific person who did that session. And he's awesome. Like I'm sure he'll answer your questions. He wanted to do this so that he could reach more people and he loves to find out who's actually using this stuff. So, cool. And in here, I also put a list of the sessions where a lot of these trends showed up. So if you do want to dig deeper. The actual session titles to search. Yeah. And you can also like, if you have a deep pressing question, you can also reach out to the people who have better subject knowledge than what I just talked about. And good times are had by all. And then, so how do you actually do the partnerships and build the partnerships necessary to build this stuff out? So one of the things that kind of stuck out to me was because I'm guilty of this too, I've done it. But when you're trying to build something out, don't just zero in on one potential partner and say, if I don't get this partnership, I can't do this program. Usually that's not true. And it's like, I'll give the, actually I won't give that specific, I was going to give the example of what I actually just went through, but I might actually like, who knows what's gonna happen with that partnership? And I don't want to, I'm just gonna shut up. Sorry. And so it's like, and also the other thing is even if a partnership doesn't happen right away, it doesn't mean it'll never happen. Like I've had partnerships that built out like after years, like it might just be timing that doesn't work out. It might be people are waiting for a project to end, people are waiting for the stars to align or whatever. So it's like just because that doesn't, like if it doesn't sync up right then, keep going out to different like events and like networking things or go out to town hall meetings and just you'll probably start running into the same people over and over again. And it'll build up over time. And eventually they might come to you and say, hey, I saw you at that meeting. Right? Yeah. So much of it is timing. Like so much of it is like, I was just super busy doing this project now that wrapped up and let's do this thing. And so the other thing is how to shape out what those partnerships look like. The gold standard for partnerships that I saw, the session title was called Powerful Partnerships and Programs. And that was the, it was the guy who did the prison, he did the library partnership with the prisons and like helping out the families of like the reentry programs. But I'm gonna open up my notes about the other sessions that he did because they were just, I went to the session and I was like, he should just teach a class on partnerships. Like he should just like, that is his thing. But let me open this. So I'm gonna list off some of the examples that he gave but he had a program called Bringing the Library to Transit Riders. He started by changing the, like sidewall advertising on the buses to promote library services. He's expanding out to bus shelter advertising. He is, I don't remember if this was him or a different library but it was similar to basically putting like a little kiosk by the bus station so that people can check out materials vending machine style. And basically like put little, set like decentralized mini libraries in bus depots. I don't quote me on this. I don't remember if it was him or if it was a different library system but it was cool. Who doesn't want a book vending machine? Come on. Those are, yes, I've seen those in other places. That's a very awesome idea. Get them where they are. Like I said, right? And then they had a cell phone lending program. So they partnered with the Nevada Homeless Alliance and Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth and they basically just gave people free cell phones. Like they had preloaded with minutes and data and they had each phone came preloaded with a helpful set of apps and a helpful set of services and resources so that the homeless community could actually connect with the resources they need and it was pre-downloaded onto the phone that they were using already. And they also put in resources to get housing and apply for jobs. And they also basically built like a referral network to be able to connect people with the resources that they need. And it was basically all distributed through the phone that they needed anyway. That was super cool. And they did like a similar thing with Chromebook distribution but they partnered with the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority and basically distributed Chromebooks to other partner organizations whether it's students, job seekers, whoever was looking for it. And then they had like a play away launch pad, the kids cafe, senior lunch and social hour. So all those programs that are connecting kids and teens with the senior community to either train to help each other learn the tech skills that they need or basically like as an offshoot you also learn different life skills and you learn different like perspectives on different topics. So it's like connecting those two generations together to learn, build, grow, do awesome stuff. And they had teen tech centers where they partnered with Best Buy, Cox, Nevada Energy. I wrote down SWITH, don't ask me now what that meant. I don't. And but that was more tech training in a relaxed environment. So you get, you had the access to tech but there wasn't like that intense pressure that I need to learn this for a job. You might, that might be true but it's not so hardcore. And they also had the employee Nevada hubs for adults and youth which is basically embedding an American job center into a physical library. So you have someone trained in workforce development that's actually embedded into the library. There are like even here in Nebraska there are, I don't remember the exact number but I think it's about 16 American job centers that were across Nebraska but there's 200 plus libraries. So yeah, so distributing those resources and building that access point to the library is an incredible partnership for the workforce development hubs and for the job centers. I know some libraries, we've heard sessions and stories about them having social workers in the library. And so if you've done that or heard about that kind of program, this is the same thing just a different topic. Yeah. And there's also, I talked about the retail space but Nevada was one of the ones that started embedding library resources into retail space. But their take on it was to embed QR codes for library resources across the, like as basically marketing throughout retail spaces. And it connected over to digital services like Overdrive Hoopla, connected over to like in-person events in the library. But it was basically like, you're already here, you're in a waiting room waiting for your wife to get out of a trying on clothes where you have to tell her that her dress looks awesome. If it doesn't, don't lie. And they also have like, they put it into, they put resources in jury duty rooms. They put it in department of motor vehicles. They put it in rec centers, senior centers, waiting rooms, anywhere that people are bored. And it's just. Bored and just standing in line waiting for something. Yep, DMV. Yep. And so it's just like, I was blown away by what Las Vegas had been doing. And I was like, we just need to all do that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so that was like, it also, there were other sessions that were basically the general trend of it was to start building partnerships across the problem, like the problems communities are facing. So in the terms of like, I'll just use some of the examples that I just rattled off. People trying to get jobs, that's one of the biggest workforce ones. People trying to build human connection and trying to build like social inclusion. So that connection of the teens and like the older adults is also improving social inclusion and improving like social isolation. Improving social isolation also prevents depression. So preventing depression is also supporting mental health. So it's like building out, it's starting to reshape the way that you are thinking about tackling problems. One of the things I hear from libraries most is we have a lot of people that come into the library just to talk. We may be the only people that they actually talk to that day or that week. And that is their type of connection. And so building out more opportunities for that to happen. Sweet. And it's another, I mean, this kind of thing with the social isolation. Isolation, yeah, has been something I've always had. And the COVID pandemic has just exasperated that. I mean, people who are already are even more people who are never are now isolated and still isolated. That they need, yeah, something to help deal with that, absolutely. And especially the people that have like, like my dad has the, he lost both of his legs. So it's harder for him to get out of the house and get to go do some stuff. So there's an entire community of people that are looking for more virtual events and looking for transportation support to actually get to activities. So if you have these activities that are geared toward seniors and you're trying to actually get this outreach and get this connection and get people to actually go, people want to go, but the problem is transportation. And the problem is actually getting there. So if you set up like a pickup system for people that signed up and registered in the local area, you'd get more attendance. You'd reduce social isolation. You'd reduce depression. You'd reduce like a whole lot of different hot mess of stuff. So it's just bringing people together to like, basically like a community listening session, but most of the community listening sessions are in-person. If you can't get there in-person or you get like a lot of people that just don't have the scheduling to go to that in-person session, you never get their perspective. You never get the perspective and input from the people that you actually are trying to reach. So rethinking how you do that, it goes back to the user experience research. Are the techniques that I'm using in the community listening, community conversation surveys, am I distributing it in a way that I'm actually getting the input from the people that I want to hear from? And if I'm not, how else can I do this? And so instead of one of the places that a lot of the people that you're trying to reach is actually in hospital waiting rooms. Most of the people get transportation to the doctor's office because it's covered under their healthcare plan through Medicaid, but Medicaid doesn't necessarily cover transportation to other locations or it might be more difficult to get access to a, you might have to pay a small fee in order to actually get over to other locations. So if you put your library surveys and your library outreach and marketing about different events and virtual services and different meetup communities that are meeting both virtually and in person and you put it into a hospital waiting room or a doctor office waiting room, you are to reach more people right there. Yep. So cool. And so then the next thing is, I already talked about embedding library services in other different places, but you can check out, you can also help people kind of understand who the players are in the like the major community problems that people are facing. So for example, I talked about the homeless population, but is there a centralized repository for people to be able to look up different resources? Like I gave the example of Las Vegas like added in the resources directly onto that phone, but before they did that, they had to actually have that collection of resources together. So basically just putting together a data warehouse that has all this information on it is like one of the biggest things a library can do to either to start building partnerships on their own and basically use that as a resource for the community to use as a whole. Because if you want to build these partnerships, you have to know who the players are. Yeah. Told you I'd come together. Well, to next to the end, yes. There you go. And so let's jump over to the next one here. And so I said that I would talk specifically about workforce development and business librarianship, kind of how that's changing across different library systems. And I already talked about some of the examples that Vegas is doing, embedding the American Job Center into the actual library. If you've heard about, there was a virtual reality career exploration thing that went on through like the state of Nevada has been working on trying to build a new workforce development ecosystem to kind of get people into the jobs that they actually want and need. And they used virtual reality career exploration as kind of a tool to help people explore, experiment and find out what they like. And they also used, they were one of the first ones to start implementing that American Job Center embedded into the library. I don't know if they were the first ones, but like they were at least up there. But that model has been like, it's awesome and Tammy's awesome. And so that's kind of one of the biggest ways that libraries have been trying to do that. There's also kind of, it's like some of the standard ways that have been going on for a really long time, like partnering with different, like H&R Block or a tax center or like a bank to like to do, they do job applications, they do tax help. I don't know if that's specifically workforce development, but it's a tangent. And they offer like one of the things I looked at through the tech kits here was putting together basically like a webcam pack. So it would have like a laptop, a webcam, a microphone. And it's basically like an interview in a box. So it gives you the technology skills that you need. And it's paired with like a lesson plan and activity for the library staff to be able to train people to use Zoom, train people to use like common web conferencing platforms. And so it makes it easier for the library staff and it also gives access to the technology for the people that need it. And so it's something I've been looking at. And so it's also building out that assessment to find out which technology people actually need to succeed and what kind of skill certifications people need to get the job done. So one of the things that the state of Washington has been doing is to, they basically turn the library into a testing center. So you can learn the skill, like learn Excel skills, learn Microsoft Word, learn web development, learn whatever you need, and then take the test that proves it to actually learn the thing. And they, I don't know if they actually... I don't want that extra staff, because I mean libraries have done like classes on this before, but getting that certification, that's a huge second helping with getting a job. Yeah, so look, I actually tested this on this and I do know what I'm doing. Yeah. And then like, and then you can do another session on training people to build a LinkedIn profile and then upload all your newly acquired certificates to your LinkedIn profile. So it's just like the doing everything that you can become not necessarily a full service center for the entire workforce development pipeline to like career exploration to find out what you actually want to do, connecting over to an education source, like a local university or online training to build the skills that you need. And then doing the job application and the practicing the interview process to actually get where you want to go. Then shifting over to how to build like the soft skills and like build the skills that you need to excel within the career that you're now in. And then repeating the cycle all over again because a robot just took your job or you just pick wrong and you need to try something else. So it's like that, how can the library support those services that help people work through that entire process? And how can the library map out and connect people with referral organizations in a good way? So instead of just saying go talk to these people you can actually call up those people and connect people like directly connect people over in like a warm referral instead of a cold referral where you just say, here's a name, here's a number, good luck. Like build the actual relationship. So you have an actual contact person and then talk to that person. Say I just talked to John Smith who just found out about dialysis and now they want to talk to someone about learning about the education required and how to get funding for that education because he has two kids and a wife and he can't take the time out to be able to go to a physical location all the time and he can't afford a student loan. But what can he do? What do you got for him? And then they'll uncover all the funding that's through the department of labor and the workforce development and economic development groups that people don't know about and help them build out a plan to get where they wanna go. And the library's role in it was to maybe use a virtual reality headset to say this is what life as a dialysis technician looks like or this is a collection of curated videos about what life as a dialysis technician looks like and here's a report of the current local jobs that are available and here's a report of the average salary and everything that you need to know about this career in like a little print out or handout. So, cool. And then the other thing is that's how to workforce development does more than just job seekers. It's more than just people trying to actually get the job. There's other trends in workforce development that basically one of my favorite trends is shifting over to conscious capitalism. You have like a whole bunch of different organizations that were focused on profit margin. They would do whatever it takes to make money even if it harmed the environment or even if it harmed their employees or harmed insert thing that you don't want to suck. And so it's helping people. One, you help to build a narrative that says that raises awareness of the specific organizations that are actually harming the environment whether or not they know that they're doing it or not and to start kind of like featuring out those resources and then start introducing different ways that that could change. If you found that there was a local processing plant that was they were accidentally or on purpose polluting the wastewater or polluting like a local Laker water system. And you found out that they were getting nitrogen into the water system or they were getting nitrogen into the soil. That nitrogen was then getting into the local drinking supply and then they found out that there was a link to nitrogen in the drinking water and cases of cancer. And there's also like negative health benefits to getting nitrogen into the water and like ingesting too much nitrogen or whatever pollutant happens to be. And then you say, well, instead of instead of having a processing system that does it this way, maybe we can try it this way. And maybe you should actually be looking at the materials that you're using in the first place. Does it have to be nitrogen or does it have to be plastic? Does it have to be whatever? And start designing library services that promote plastic alternatives or promote different ways to dispose of plastic or dispose of chemicals and do different library services like a makerspace activity using the data bot that shows the chemical levels or like the level of CO2 or the level of whatever. Just find problem, find hands-on activity, do hands-on activity, offer information resources. That was my session was about. And so I talked a little bit about skill building, like how the library can be a testing center offer different skill certifications, talk to local businesses and economic development groups about what people need and where the gaps are and then find where the library can fill in. And the other thing is businesses that exist today exist because they solve a problem facing the community or they exist because they solve a problem facing the organizations that are already solving problems in the community. So if you start mapping out the different problems facing your community, you're also mapping out the baseline of what people need to generate new business ideas. So if you just have like that many library problems to jumpstart people on places to look for new ideas and just start that thinking process, that's another way that libraries can start promoting these like the start of new businesses then connect people over to places like the small business association, like the SBA or like a lot of these resources that exist to start your own business throughout there. Oh yeah. And I need coffee. All right. While you're taking a drink, I'll just mention I know it has a few more things to talk about here and it just hit 11 o'clock but we'll go as long as it takes for her to get through all of her slides and everything and talk to you about everything that she saw at computers and libraries. If you need to kick off right now because you only allotted 10 to 11 a.m. central time for the show, that's fine. We're recording the whole show and you can watch everything the rest of it later when you have time. And of course, as I mentioned, the slides will be available too for you to read through as well and get all the titles of all those different sessions and everything. So I probably went on one too many tangents. So sorry. But so I just skipped straight ahead to the last trend on the list which is the tech trends. This is one of my favorite trends. So it's kind of a thing. I know this is the one that a lot of people like all the different cool, like you said gadgets. Yeah. Things coming out of it. And it's just interesting to see, I know we're going to get into this here, but that computers and libraries and we talk about it being very techy, but a lot of things you already talk about, there's a lot of theory and other things going on too. So yeah. I don't want people to be scared away from the conference, the sessions they go, I'm not a tech person because as you can see, there's a lot more to it. It is about the people and the theory and figuring things out in the programming. It's not just, oh, I need to be someone who knows programming and tech support person at my library. It's not all that. There's so much more to it. It's just got that kind of end focus. The whole general, very computers and libraries is a very broad topic for the title of the conference. And it is, yeah. Like they even had like a whole management track for how to... Yeah, they have whole tracks. Yeah. Creation and stuff, yeah. Like all the different challenges that managers face and how to like change you, like how do you update your practices? They had like a social impact thing. They had like a... They have a bunch of stuff. So, but let's talk tech. Yeah. So this year it was Brian Pitchman and I did the games and gadgets session. Brian's awesome. He does techie things. Yeah, we've had him on the show before many times. And so we basically... Like I don't know how it landed out but basically he took one side of the room and I took the other and it was like a west side story and I was like, my tech is better. And he was like, oh, my tech is better. And then at the end of it, it was like, it's all good. So on my side of the room, I had the Oculus Quest 2 station. I had a Halo AR station. Halo AR is basically a free app. You can download onto your phone to build augmented reality apps. Then the next station over, I had Google's Teachable Machine where you can experiment with machine learning artificial intelligence using like a free and easy website. You basically go to the website. You can find out how it works. It's a whole big thing. Teachable Machine. And then the next one was I had the... I grabbed the Sphere Robot because they're rolly and they're fun. It's that robot that rolls around. Then I had the Finch 2.0 robot. He had one on the other side too. I had the DJI Tello drone. I had a bunch of stuff. And then he had the Luca, which is that little robot that can actually read books for you and read it in different languages. So if you are working with a community that has like a lot of refugees or a lot of multilingual speakers or people that are trying to learn English as a second language, that's a great tool to kind of help people hear their own language when they wouldn't be able to otherwise because Luca knows all. It's AI-based. You basically just hold the book up and it just starts reading it. Like they have like step-by-step instructions to use it. It's super cute and it's super easy to use. Looks like an owl. Delightful. And then he also had Kai's Clan on his side. I just actually wrote a guide for Kai's Clan that Kai's Clan decided to post on their website to help share out to different libraries. And so I can actually put that guide out because I had a couple people ask about it. Kai. Kai. Librarian preparation guide. Share. Copy. In chat. I have a bunch of other guides that are similar to that one for other different items. I will also put in a makerspace equipment guide. I put this one together one or two years ago, but a lot of the recommendations still I just scanned through it to make sure everything was still like existing and they were still popular. So everything on this list is still on my recommended list, but I haven't updated it with the new new stuff. So makerspace equipment guide. There. And there's also some new drones that are out of RoboLink, which is the company that makes Zoomie, the AI robot. Also started making a drone and that drone has become super popular. DJI Tello is still super popular. And there's also he had a lot more like early education stuff and he had more I'm just going to ask him for his list and if everyone if anyone wants to know about it, I will just send the list over to you because I cannot for the life of me remember everything that he had over there. There's so much. Yeah. Yeah, but he has a whole chart. It'll be fine. We'll be okay. And so some of the other trends that were that we were talking about is the metaverse is a whole big thing. And how can the how can libraries leverage the meta space as a one a new space for marketing and outreach a new meeting space and a new way to deliver resources and services in like a digital realm. You put on a virtual reality headset. Maybe the library has a designated app or they're using the spatial app for a meeting space and they built out an entire like digital library that you can go to. You can build like a digital maker space. You can build the digital art gallery. You can build like a digital like an interactive space that just doesn't go away. That doesn't have like an end date or like an event time. You just go to it and you can build like a library of virtual reality experiences or interactive rooms or whatever you want. So how is the metaverse changing the library and how can the library offer access to the augmented and virtual reality tools like basically the mixed reality tools to help people experiment with them and find out how they might actually want to use them in their own lives or in their own businesses or organizations. And so how can the library provide access and then AI is everywhere. I talked about teachable machine how you can start learning machine learning concepts. I also have a little cluster of resources that show the careers in different ways the different industries that are being impacted by virtual and augmented reality artificial intelligence the internet of things. I've got one for drones robotics like there's a whole collection of that that I can send over to you that shows how this stuff is turning into jobs how it's changing industries and all that stuff. And there was also a session about how libraries need to take privacy and security to the next level because artificial intelligence is also making hackers better. And Internet of Things is making hackers better. It's making it's opening up more opportunities for bad like bad actors to get after people so it's changing and upgrading one our privacy and security training for digital literacy libraries teaching privacy security how to stay safe online and upgrading the way that we do that including AI literacy and how that's changing and then upgrading our own services so that our privacy security is helping keep our patrons safe. And the last one I'll talk about is the data science librarians. They talked about so on a previous slide I don't think I mentioned it but data as a service. You have some of you may have heard of data axle data axle is a data broker. They collect all this data into one spot and sell it to other organizations for use in different ways. Data axle has a service that specifically for libraries and schools so that you can basically build like a curated data collection for job seekers for businesses for different groups so that they can access the information that they need to get to do their job to do their work and it's information that's like it could be expensive if they tried to buy it on their own but they have different ways the library can provide access to that and so that people can do more than they would have otherwise. So check out data axle for librarians. And there's also ways that there was a whole session about how librarians themselves can learn data science and how they can start doing that for themselves in their own library. I'm taking the IBM's data science certification I learned like a whole ton from it and I'm using it in different cool and awesome ways because I'm a nerd. Hey that's cool. Some people are into this the stats the data and all that absolutely. So that is there's way more trends and highlights but there's only so much time in a day. So I will all I will just pop open for the tech trends instead of listening out specific sessions. I actually went by the day and pointed you toward the track that you can look toward because there's so many different ones I couldn't make it to all of them but they could all be relevant to you. Yes. Oh yeah. There's going to be more to this than yeah. So much more computers and libraries than what Amanda was able to attend. I mean with my four or five different tracks I forget exactly how many there were this year. Yeah. Yeah. And the tracks weren't all the same for every single day. Like there wasn't like a mixed reality track for every single day. They actually switched it up. So each day had a different track style. So like I really like that. That was cool. Yeah. So if you do have questions about any of these tracks any of the resources that I shared that's my contact info but if you have any questions about any specific sessions I would recommend reaching out to the actual speaker that you can find on the computer and libraries website. Yes. Yes. And that's what's great about the computers website. They have the full the full program up there for the whole agenda for all the days the pre-conferences and all the sessions so you can see everything that was done all the sessions and who presented them so you can reach out to them for more information. Sweet. All right. So that's highlights and trends from computers and libraries. I've attended computers and libraries conference before for years and years. It's I highly recommend it if you can. There is a companion conference called the Internet Librarian that was previously held in Monterey, California California. And I believe they're going online with that one more often now. Is this used in person or is it still on it's just online Internet Librarian this year is on it's all online. Yeah. It's called the Internet Librarian Connect. I think I think yeah. Yeah. So if you are interested in these kind of tech things I kind of always thought of them as companion conferences when they used to be both in person East Coast, West Coast, Washington DC, California. But now it can be DC or online. So I highly recommend looking into attending Internet Librarian online. I know here's the library commission we usually end up getting discounts on available to our Nebraska libraries on registration fees. So I'm looking for that. I don't know if that's it's in the fall anyway. So it's something to think about for the fall. I think it's in October this year. Yeah. Yeah. And we do have usually offer a discount and we do also do have continuing education grants that you can apply for here in Nebraska to attend sessions like this to attend conferences online or in person if they're outside of the state. So I'm looking at our CE grants as well at the library commission. Oh my internet is real slow right now. There October 17 to November 23 virtually October. Yep. So fully online which is awesome. All right. Does anybody have any questions they want to ask? I know we typed in anything while you're speaking. That's fine. There's a lot of information and a lot of good resources to look at. Like I said all those links that we sent. Just got some comments. Great job. Lots of good information. Thanks so much. Wanting to go going to go check out the website and see what other sessions that are out there. I know I threw a lot at you. Yeah. There's a lot of things going on and what's also great about the in person one too it's I've talked about so it's got a lot of info but it's a small number of people. It's not like attending an ALA where there's like 20,000 librarians in one city. Right. So it's a little more comfy. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. That's overwhelming. Yeah. And then you have a library one which would be online too so you can get the same kind of info. Yeah. And I know they're switching up the content for Internet Librarian so don't expect it to be just like. It won't be just a repeat of. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be like different. We're switching up. Different top different sessions. Great. Yeah. All right. I am going to pull presenter control back to my screen to my screen here. Cool. So that we can do our little wrap up. So thank you everybody for being with us this morning. Thank you Amanda for sharing all everything you saw. Well the cool things you saw at computers and libraries. So this is a session page for today's show. As you can see I've got a link to the computer library's website but all those are the links that Amanda shared. You can see I've got them all up here. They'll all be included when I do put up the. Archive of this of today's show. So I'm going to pop back to our Encompass Live main page for the show. If you use your search engine of choice and type in Encompass Live the name of our show it's the only thing called that on the internet. Nobody else is allowed to use that name at the moment. And you'll get a link to our main page where you can see all of our upcoming shows. And our archives are linked down here. I said I'll show you this. So if you click there you'll get our show archives. Today's show will be at the top of the page here. Should be up by the end of the day tomorrow with the latest as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know when it's ready. We also push it out into our various social media which we were talking about earlier. Whether people use them or not. We use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. If you look you notice on our page we do have a Facebook page for Encompass Live. So if you do like to use Facebook we are still out. We are out there doing things. Give us a like and you'll see here's a reminder to log in to today's show. We do meet our presenters posts. And when our recording is ready we post it on here as well. We also use the hashtag and comp live a little abbreviation when we post things on here and on Twitter and on anywhere else that our social media people are doing. So look for that there. The show will be available here. The recording of the show will be on the archive page. Just a link to the slides that Amanda is going to send to me. And a link to all the other things that are out there. And while we're here I'll also show you can search our show archives if you're interested in any other topics or wondering if we've done a show on something. You can search here. You can search our full show archives just the most recent 12 months if you want something just current of course. But that is because this is our full show archives and I'm not going to scroll all the way down because it's a huge list as you can see. But this is all of our show archives going back to when Encompass Live premiered first premiered which was in January 2009. So we're in like I think 15 years now and they're all here. So it is a huge list. So just and we always keep these out there available. This is one thing you know libraries do and librarians do is keep things for historical purposes. So always have them up there as long as we have somewhere to host them right now they're all on our YouTube channel. But just pay attention to the original broadcast date whenever you watch a show. They've always got the date there so you know when it first happened because things may have changed drastically since the show first was a show was first broadcast live. Resources and services may change. Some things might no longer exist anymore. Programs may have changed. Staff who presented something might only no longer work at that particular library. So just pay attention when you are watching any of our show archives. And yep I see a manager got me the link to her slides. I'm going to grab that here. So I have it. There we go. So we'll have that for you on later too. So that wraps up for today's show. I hope you join us next week which is interesting. We mentioned Kansas City Public Library because next week's show is about public libraries and Wikipedia. It is actually a presenter from Kansas City Public Library who we mentioned has that cool the books on the side of their building. They did the a Wikipedia in residence program at their library. This is something where someone who's involved with Wikipedia and updating that is actually works with the library. So Kim Gile who's from Kansas City Public Library will be with us next week to talk about their program and what to how it's been going and what they've got for the future. So if you're interested in seeing how that went and possibly getting involved in one of that for your library do sign up for that and for any of our other upcoming shows we've got all of our May and June sessions posted up here. I think I've got everything up there. So yeah, sign up for one of our future shows. So thank you everybody for being here. Good to see you Amanda. I'll give you a cheers with my coffee. And hopefully we'll see you all out of future episode of Encompass Live. Bye bye.