 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. We do record the show as we are doing today and it will be posted to our archives later for you to watch at your convenience. 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 in Nebraska, so we provide services and training and resources and grants to all types of libraries in the state. So we will do shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries, public academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, on and on. Really our only criteria is that something to do with libraries. We do book reviews, interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We have, as I said earlier, we do record the show. If you do have any questions here during the live show, please type, you can type into the questions section of the GoToWebinar interface. I'm monitoring that here and I'll grab all your questions for our presenter today. I will do my usual reminder. We are recording and our archive will be posted to the Nebraska Library Commission's YouTube channel for our archives. So anything you say will be saved and posted to the internet for posterity. Never any trouble with that, but I just like make sure everyone knows what's going on. We do have, sometimes we do shows here with Nebraska Library Commission staff talking about things and services and whatnot we're doing through the commission, but we bring in guest speakers sometimes. And with us today is Robin Hastings, who is from Neckles, as you can see here in the Northeast Kansas Library System. Good morning, Robin. Good morning, Christa, and everyone else. Yeah, she's a friend and colleague of mine. And she's been on the show, but a few times over the years. She was just a month or so ago here with us. But she's back again to talk about training new library directors, Apple and Kansas, very appropriate name, obviously on purpose. And so if you are a new director or maybe not even new, just a director. So some of these things could be useful for you. So I'll just hand over you, Robin, to tell us all about Apple and Kansas. All right, well, thank you, Christa. I just have a little story about Apple. It started many years ago actually as a completely different program and has evolved into what will be next year, which is yet another completely different program. Just in case you guys. Oops, next. There we go. Sorry. I can work technology really just in case you guys have questions. My name is Robin. As Christa said, my email address is our Hastings at Neckles.org. And I'm happy to answer questions or comments, take anything you guys have so. All right. So Apple, Apple stands for applied public library education. The only way we can actually get the acronym to work is by making those first two letters, the AP capitalized. That's that's what happened. It is basically the idea is that new directors in in Kansas as as everywhere else. Quite often, I mean, sometimes new directors are do the libraries, this is their first library job. Sometimes they have a little bit of library experience. Sometimes they have an MLS, but whatever the level of of experience and education they have. Sometimes it differently in Kansas sometimes. And so it's, it's a good idea. We thought to have a educational program that explained kind of how budgeting works in Kansas and, and all the different specific things so at least in our system and I will take a moment now to mention Kansas has a state library which is like the Nebraska Library Commission. But we also have seven regional library systems. My system is the one closest to Nebraska. Northeast Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri are our northern and eastern borders and then we go down to Richmond, Kansas and over to Tepika for southern and western borders and so what has worked is we have, we have decided that, despite whatever education whatever experience you have, we invite all new library directors to go to Apple. Different systems manage it differently. We have different requirements and, and, you know, the kind of categories we're looking for. People don't require the MLS folks to do it. We do in, in Neckles, but regardless, beyond the education, this is also a chance for new directors to meet peers. And so they have a chance to network with people who are in their same situation all across Kansas, and they have somebody that they've met, and maybe they've, they've had a nice conversation with a couple of times, and they feel comfortable bringing up the phone and calling and saying, listen, this is what's happening in my library. What's going on in yours? Have you ever dealt with this, you know, that kind of thing? And, and we have found, I'll talk a little bit in a bit about our surveying project that we had, but we have found that that has been a really useful part of the whole Apple thing. So, we did not start off, however, with Apple. Those are supposed to be books, but I stretched it out too long. Sorry. We did begin new director training years ago, 1989, I believe, was the first year of a program called Kplace. And that was done as a combination cooperation between Emporia State, the SLIM program, and the State Library. And so librarians took a week, went to SLIM, stayed in the dorms at Emporia State, and spent a week learning about their new job. And they did this three years running. This was a three-year program. When you were done with all three weeks, each year you graduated. So that was intensive. It required a big, a big commitment. It used to take place in May. And by the time they graduated, after their three years, they've received 90 hours of high quality training in community analysis, community information access, technology, budgeting, personnel management. Sorry, I'm recovering from a cold, so every now and then I'm getting a little snotty. I apologize. Trusty development, short and long-range planning, organizational projects. So they had to do this every year for three years? Every year for three years. They had the first year, and then the sophomore year, and then the junior year, and then they graduated. So yeah, this was a big project, but it's hard, first off, to get folks to be able to commit to a week, much less a week for three years running. And it required a lot of commitment. It also required that librarians stay in place for three years, which we are finding is an issue, as people move around. So in 2013, I came to Neckles in 2012, November of 2012, and in April of 2013, Apple started. So I was maybe not in the very first discussions of the Apple program, but I came in, and when I sat down, I was told I was doing the technology module. So that was, I was like, oh yeah, okay, that's cool. So Apple began in 2013 as a program to kind of take up where K-Place left off, but be less commitment of a commitment that it was... The way we work it now is it is a single day, sort of from noon one day to noon the next day, retreat at the Rock Springs 4-H Ranch in Junction City, just south of Junction City, Kansas. And we spend that day getting to know one another. We have a speaker come in who talks about how to be a great director. They kind of get things started, get things kicked off. We have meals with one another. We have, in the evenings, where we stay is a... It's not the camping part of the 4-H thing. It's the leadership lodge. So we have, you know, beds and showers and linens and all the comforts of home. But we also have couches and tables in the middle. And so we can sit and talk and share information and just really get to know one another in person. And so that's our kickoff for the program. And then after that, there are monthly webinars. And I'm going to talk about those in just a second. And then we try to get together at the KLA, the Kansas Library Association conference, which happens in late November or late October, early November. This year it's very early November, first three days of the month. And then we used to have a... Instead of that, what KLA was during pandemic times, we would have a online meeting. If people wanted to get together, they could go to Salina, Kansas, and we would meet at the library there, but most of it was online because lots of issues with the pandemic. So we get students from all across Kansas. Six of the seven regional systems will send people. We have... Each of them have five spots. Our limitation is really those beds at the leadership lodge at the Rock Springs because we have to be able to fit all of the staff and all of the students. And there's a limited number of beds. So what we do is each system gets five spots. However, some of our western most systems don't always have five people. So there's a little bit of horse trading. One-year nickels sent nine people. So, yeah. The year that I took this picture on the left here, we only had three for our class that year. This is a smaller class. The picture on the right is kind of the whole group. Well, half of the whole group, I guess, probably. With Sandy Nelson, she started our keynote speaker for years. She came and she talked about how to be a great director. And then we use Judy Calhoun from Southeast Kansas or Southeast Oklahoma regional system. And this year we're going to use Gina Millsap, formerly of the Topeka Shawnee Public Library. But this year we're doing a lot of changes. So... Nice. Yeah. Good names, people I know. We're real excited about having quality folks come up and talk about how to be a director. These are all folks who have been directors. They've done the job. And they're ready and willing to come in and help our folks learn how to be great directors right from the get-go. So that's nice. Normally what we do is... I'm kind of in charge of welcoming new directors to Neckles. So as soon as a director is hired, I will go out within usually a month and meet with them, introduce them to Neckles, kind of give them an idea of what we can do, and chat with them about Apple. We used to, up until a year or so ago, whenever you were hired, that next April you were eligible for Apple. And we're backing off on that a little bit now. If you're hired later in the year, we'll give you an extra year if you want. We don't make you start on Apple while you're still very new at the job. Because it is a monthly commitment with some homework. And it's generally homework that is... it's not busy work. We try very hard not to make it busy work. But it's stuff that you have to do anyway, like creating a budget or putting together a yearly report for your board or, in the case of my technology planning, putting together a technology plan for your library or dealing with your website, different things like that. So most of the folks who come, like I said, are new to the library world. A lot of them, this is their very first library job. And they've been hired as a director. And they don't have the background. And so this, you can kind of see in the back of this picture on the right, there's several of our consultants, Gail, Santi, and Richard. Everybody comes and shares and helps provide the support that these new directors need. So click on the right spot. So the program itself, like I said, we start off at Rock Springs with the big kickoff and how to be a great director. And then every month we have a different topic. It's a webinar. It's a one hour webinar. Most of them have homework assigned associated with them, but not all. And we start off with library planning. So strategic planning, just kind of generally thinking about what your library is going to be doing in the future. Then we go with library technology, which is the one that I do. And I just try to kind of a basic, this is what you need to know to manage technology in your library kind of thing. Community awareness is the next one. And that's demographics and understanding what your community is made up of and what they need. We then finish up or follow that up with customer service, which is something that I think a lot of directors want to know a little bit more about how to make sure their staff are providing service for their patrons. And then we do a session with Tiffany Henshel, who is a HR professional with Johnson County. She used to work for the Johnson County Public Library, so she's very familiar with libraries. And this year we actually as a gift to Kansas, Apple opened that up. So instead of the 14, I think people we have in the Apple class this year, we had 70 folks at that at that webinar. So there's a definite need for information about HR law and in that kind of stuff. And it was very Kansas specific, but it was useful. And for a lot of, a lot of folks don't have an HR department to rely on, you know, these tiny libraries, they may have themselves and an assistant, and that's it. So there's, that was a really useful, a really useful thing. Then we'll have collection management, where we talk about how to buy books, where to buy books, how to get rid of books. There's always, you know, weeding is an important part of the class. Yes. So we talk about that. And then we go through library laws. And that's kind of the statutory basis of libraries. We go through what exactly, you know, how your bylaws work and what the statutes are that apply to you. And this is where it gets really key of the specific for us. And that with the next session, which is budgeting. And that's usually a two hour session. That's just, it's a big topic. And when it comes is about the time that libraries are supposed to be pulling together their budgets, kind of the beginning of the year getting things ready so we do that in January these days. And then we finish up with youth services. So things to do for the kids and teens in your library. And then the final month is a self paced session on ethics library and ethics. We use Pat Wagner's series of she did five or six sessions, 10 minutes on ethical topics. We ask them to watch those sessions and then comment on the discussion board and we have kind of a discussion in the class about on the discussion boards about the ethical topics and things that they might not have known about. A lot of them are very, I tell you the big, the big thing that gets most people is not chatting about the books over the counter. They're not saying, Oh, this is a great book on divorce. I read it myself. You know, people don't necessarily have that information. I don't want that broadcasted everyone around. No, no, no. So if the picture starts the conversation grand, but it's just something we people just haven't really thought about it. And so it is something that almost always makes an appearance on those on those discussion boards. We use Moodle instance. Moodle is an open source version of like canvas or a blackboard, which is here at the library commission here as well we use Moodle for our basic skills courses which are for directors to learn. Same thing as what you're talking about how to do their job, how to do the job out of how to do those basic skills. So we make use of the Moodle by having the homework is assigned and turned in through Moodle. We have forums, a couple. I know at least a couple of our sessions. The only homework is to post in the forum to have a conversation. And so if people do that they get credit. So each of the systems are different. We each kind of figure out what constitutes passing and who, who is a successful graduate of the Apple program. After that, that March ethics program. That's me know who, who has the, who has passed and then we get certificates and it decals we, we go out to the board, and we present the certificate to the, the director in front of her board, or his board, so that they kind of what, what their director has been learning and how hard they have worked over this last year to graduate so that is, that's kind of how we run that project. Okay, I mentioned earlier that we have done some surveys. We do a survey every year at the end, just the same questions just send it out by a survey monkey. But in 2020. About the time, I think, I think the idea came before the pandemic, but since the pandemic hit, it was a good time to send out stuff that didn't need to be done in person. In 2020, I sent out a survey to the 70 previous 74 I think was the total number previous directors who had gone through Apple, and asked them how useful Apple was to them, now that they've been out of the program for a year or or longer. There were a lot of great comments. I learned so much and it's helped me with my job more than you could ever know. I'm thankful for the training. There were so many changes that needed to be implemented at my library. And the Apple course gave me the information I needed to make those changes. They were not all entirely positive. Most of the homework was a waste of time. I have a library to run. I didn't have time to waste doing homework that was of no value. The library law and budget homework were all that were worth taking time to do. That's still good information for us. We can't please everybody all the time, but we got a lot of good information like that. And then for those who found that the content covered in Apple was still useful. There were a few neutrals and a couple of disagrees, but mostly agree and strongly agree were very, very common. So we have from 2013, I guess technically it would be 2014 because the program ended that year, the one we started in 2013. So from 2014 on we have yearly. How did you feel about the program surveys and then in 2020 we did this big kind of longitudinal survey where we asked everybody how they felt about it and and how it went and it seemed to be mostly positive, not entirely all there were there were definitely suggestions. And so we took those suggestions and over the course of the last year, we've kind of re-invent re-envisioned I guess is the term Apple so we keep narrowing down the amount of time we're asking our folks to spend. First off, when I started in 2012, the idea was to do Apple for a year, maybe two and then we'd run out of directors right. So after that we do you know every other year every third year. However, often it was needed to get these new directors. Yeah, in August of 2023, I went on for new director meetings, we had four new directors start in August. The turnover we have never takes the year off it has been every single year. As we talked about earlier you thought, you know, with the three years everyone had to go to so much turnover and well okay that sounds bad that makes it like every library is getting your direction at the time it's not. It's just, we all like here in Nebraska in Kansas we have a lot of libraries in the state to maintain keep up with, and there's always, there's always staff changes. So here in Nebraska, we have 270 something public libraries. That's a lot of, there's going to be staff changes always be somebody leaving someone new coming in, somebody is just moving from one library to another. A whole new situation and a whole new, new climate for them to deal with the new people and whatnot so people need are going to need this kind of thing as a constant refresher, whatever, yeah. I think one year, we did have few enough new directors that we actually opened it up to people who were came in after K place ended but before Apple started. So they were folks who kind of missed that library, so we had a few not first year library directors that year. But that was, that was a single year after that. I mean this year we only had 14 total. It was a very small year as the smallest year we've had so far. But next year, we're going to be begging for more spots because like I said, for, for new director meetings in April, third August, so and then I've been into a couple since then. So there's a lot of new directors that are, are coming up who are going to need this information. Some of them have more experience than others. We do have actually in this year's class, Marie Pico, who is the new director of the Topeka Shalini Public Library. She has, I want to say 28 years of experience in libraries. She has her MLS. She is still going through Apple, not only for her just to kind of get acclimated in the job, but she's also a really great resource for our other libraries. She can, she can help mentor. Working and making those connections that was deaf. Yeah, I mean that's not that's part of it too. The, like when we do, like I said, using Moodle here we do this so much thing where they do all the discussions on them on the on the message boards and whatnot. And it's so it is very interesting and I love reading because I am the instructor, I suppose would be the words not really structures mostly self paced but with us guiding them along. It's very interesting to see the conversations when people have done these things before who are, and ours is not just a new director thing it's just anyone who wants to take these. But that is something I think a lot of libraries, they really, and then, you know, we require them to a certain amount of conversation but inevitably certain ones just keep going and going and going and that's great. That's what you want to be talking about it going back and forth throwing out ideas. Exactly. And, you know, kind of not feeling so alone. Our big thing is that directors tend to be alone. They're, they can't really talk to their staff. Their closest peers are, you know, at least one town over. They, they tend to be out there, not really having a great support system sometimes in Kansas we don't tend to have city libraries. The libraries are, the boundaries are cities but they're not city departments and they don't have that kind of structure underneath them they don't have other department heads they can talk to or that kind of thing so they are kind of one of the things we have, we have found from various surveys and questions, is it people do feel like they're, they're kind of thrown out there with no safety net and Apple kind of helps them, not only gives them information, but gives them people that they feel they can because they also get to know us as consultants because we're always there for for answering questions and things like that so. And now is the new director to Pika, are they from Nebraska, or not sorry from Kansas, they come from outside I don't I'm not sure. Marie has been working in Topeka at the Topeka Public Library for a very long time, so I think he comes from Kansas. Nebraska like something you were to mention too was how this is something I hope everyone understands and forgot people here watching from Nebraska a lot of things Robin is talking about are specific to Kansasness. She's obviously making that very clear in Kansas we do this way. And when you do get library directors like for some of the bigger systems or bigger libraries that come from out of state. I need to know be learned okay this is how it was in your state and this the library statutes there as now in Nebraska or in Kansas is going to be different. So, being a new library director doesn't necessarily mean first time library director ever, but first time at this particular library in this particular situation in time. In this particular state. Yeah, knowledge to learn. Okay, how do I do things now on the new state I've just moved to, you know, and, yeah. Our new the new director of adjacent Kansas just came from Missouri. And I also come from Missouri I worked in Missouri for 14 years in libraries before I moved to Kansas. And so when I emailed him I said, you know, this is a very different environment than you're used to in Missouri. I would like to come and introduce you to the resources that you have available to you that you that were that were different than Missouri Missouri they have a strong central public state library. And then they have support organizations more net provides internet technology and, and different things like that so it's the whole regional system thing is very different. So yeah, it's he, despite the fact that he's been a director before, you know, he has library experience. He's still going to have to go through Apple to learn those those Kansas specific. So, reimagining Apple, we spent a year talking about how to change Apple so that it was less burdensome for the libraries and, you know, it was hard to make the case sometimes that an hour a month is burdensome but that's with homework and, and all this so what we have done is, we have loaded up that April kickoff retreat in Rock Springs, we are having like I said Gina is coming in and Gina Milsep from formerly of to peek a shiny is coming to talk about library and ship and how to be a great librarian director. But we've cut it down to two hours because we're also adding the community awareness, kind of an informal evening on the couch discussion of ethics, planning policies and board relations, those all will be kind of tucked into that kickoff while we're all there together. And then, at some point, we don't have exact dates but I'm hoping, August, the library law webinar will happen and that's a that's a two hour webinar. So what I'm planning to do in Northeast Kansas is have the folks in my region come to Nichols, and we will watch it together and then we will discuss it afterwards, so that they can ask questions, either of the instructor or a bus, and get another dose of togetherness. The webinar, we're going to open it up again next year, because there was so much interest and things change every year. She had, she was talking about the two new laws that were just passed on pregnancy, and making sure that people have pregnant and people who have just given birth have a place to go to express milk or breastfeed. So, those were brand new this year, so she updates it every year, and so we're going to do that again. And then KLA usually is at the end of October, like I said this year, it's at the very beginning of November, but at KLA what we're going to do is ask folks to go to sessions that deal with collection development, customer services, youth services and advocacy, and then meet back on Moodle and give us take away so that everybody has to pick one or two of these topics, but then everybody talks, gets together on Moodle and, you know, posts their takeaways, what they learned from the sessions, and kind of shares that information with everybody. So that's while KLA itself is going to be together and will be in the same physical place, the actual class happenings will happen on Moodle in the discussion forum. And then in late January, early February, depending on on times we also have state statistics that are due in early February and those are a pain. So we don't want to, again, be too burdensome, but budgeting is important and it needs to be done at the beginning of the year. So Eric Norris, the director of the Manhattan Public Library is going to do a two hour session on budgeting in Kansas. And that will be, that'll be interesting. His Laura Devon has been doing it for the past 12 years. We did drop a couple of topics. Technology is no longer included in there. Really? Yeah, we decided after the pandemic that people have kind of what we were doing was teaching them how to connect and almost everybody has at least basic Zoom skills these days. And so we have, you know, that may be in KLA if there are, I usually do at least one technology session at KLA this year I'm doing one on artificial intelligence and chat GPT. So if they want to pick up technology that might be an elective, but it's not a requirement. So it's, it's going to be an interesting, see how that, see how that works out. But that was, there were a couple of things that we, you know, you can't keep adding. Eventually you run out of time. And I'm sure, I mean, he said based on surveys and what people are looking for. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the, one of the questions that we ask every year is what were the most important sessions for you and library law and budgeting are always right up there. Customer service sometimes makes it collection development often. But, you know, technology almost never made it. And that's, you know, as people get, you know, as technology becomes more and more ingrained in our lives, it just becomes less necessary to go through it. So we'll, we'll see how this goes next year. This is brand new for 2024. This year we're still doing the webinars each month we just did the HR webinar actually in September. And, and so we're still doing the class, the way we've done it for the last 10 years this year but next year, this new schedule will will take off and that will be the same responses you I think the one here for our classes and when we do encompass live shows anything youth and teen services and collection development and cataloging the numbers just go through the roof for both of those. It's I don't know if it's just there's so many people that do that work or there's so lacking in training for it. I don't know this doesn't seem like it but those for here are the big easy. We know from the questions we get asked you really need customer service and library law training so we're going to make you take, we'll put that out there too, we can tell. Yeah, I get, I get so many questions from directors about how to help their staff become better at customer service and so it's a real Savannah ball from the Wichita Public Library. She does our customer service webinar she used to be a system consultant and she moved over to to working in Wichita. She still does it. The vast majority of our sessions are taught by system, either system consultants or former system consultants. Like Eric Norris was the state librarian for a little while and then he was the director of North Central and now he's the director of Manhattan. He's never actually been a system consultant but just about everybody else has been at one point or another a system consultant, and they are providing their, their expertise for free. They're doing it as a, you know, because as part of their job to help library directors in Kansas. The HR webinar we do pay and the kickoff motivational kickoff we pay for the way the financing works and this is going to continue. So what we pay for is that each, each year we charge $450 to $500 for tuition for the year, and that pays for the Rock Springs kickoff. The two outside speakers that we pay for any extras, you know, if we have something at KLA a little party or whatever, you know, that kind of thing. They're not paid by the directors, the systems pay those. So if we have nine people in Neckles taking Apple we're paying, you know, $9,500 at 500 bucks each. So the, the systems pay for it so we do require that the library board sign off on the directors taking the time to do this because we're, we're funding it for them. And then for us at Neckles, it's part of the, the accreditation process. If you have not passed Apple within, you know, a couple three years of your being in the, in the position, you're no longer meeting all of your accreditation requirements. Even if you have an MLS, even if you have lots of experience with libraries. This is, this is something we think is really important. So we've made it part of our, our accreditation process. So that's accreditation for the, the director, the person, or for the library. The library. Okay, same thing we have here. Our libraries are accredited and our library staff get certified certified. Yeah. No, we don't do certification of library staff in Kansas, but we do accredited libraries. And that's one of the things that we require here in, in Neckles is that you've gone through Apple in order to ensure your libraries accreditation. So there is one system that does not support new directors. They don't, they weren't interested in joining us, which is fine. But this year of sorry, I've read from my phone off rookie mistake. So the, the one system that's not joining in and basically what, what I do is the manager of Apple is every year I get. Totals from each system and I send them invoices and they pay back and our Neckles business office manages writing checks and keeping track of money and doing all the stuff that I'm really bad at. So, which is lovely. But because we do have that one system that was not interested in joining us, the PLS, which is the public library section of KLA has started a scholarship for up to three students a year who are not supported by their system to join Apple. And so we have, we have somebody from that. The way it worked out this year, they voted on how to spend the money a week and a half before I needed final numbers for rock springs. So we only got one out of the three scholarships, but next year we'll have five scholarships. So, so that is, is expanding the reach a little bit. We can now officially say we are training all of Kansas new directors. And so they just make their application PLS approves them or not and sends that information on to me. And they are students just like any other in their, in their cohort. We have had cohorts of up to 40 some people, which is at that point, some of the staff have to spend the night at the hotel and junction city because there's not enough beds. But this year our cohort is 14. Next year I think it's going to be another bumper crop, but, you know, however that works. But the, the basic thing is it doesn't cost the directors anything if they decide to go to KLA we do have a stipend that we can send them. Of course they can, and most systems have continuing education grants to pay for state conference attendance. But then they can also get a little money from us and get some of that money to attend KLA so that it kind of makes it easier for them to go and attend the sessions and, and then report back by Moodle on what they learned. So, no. We do have a question while you're on this slide here I just saw that it had come in and is on here so wants to know and you may have mentioned this and I missed it. Who do you use for the library law session. That is Richard Brooklyn he is the director of the Southwest Kansas library system. He was a consultant system consultant for a while until he got promoted. He has also been a library director for many, many years prior to working in the system and he has, he keeps, he's part of our government governmental affairs committee for KLA and he has a pretty good grasp of the statutes and the legislature and how things work. So, basically what he covers is, like I said, just, you know, Kansas statute, specifically to Kansas. Yeah. Yeah, specific to Kansas, the things that that Kansas allows and doesn't allow for library boards and libraries. He talks quite a bit about that advocacy in the sense of talking to your local legislators and getting them familiar with your library before they have to vote on on something that has that affects your library so he talks quite a bit about how to do those kind of things. Thank you. That's interesting because that's very similar to what we have here we just did a library law session and there's been multiple ones in around the state at various events things too over the last year. Yeah, here too. And it is one of our we have regional systems here in Nebraska, they are not anything that libraries joined they're more like outreach here from the commission or boots on the ground I like to describe them as, and one of our system director Scott Childers who's the director this Southeast library system is kind of our expert on library law and open meetings act law, because he's just taking that on as his thing. And he also was a previous director at libraries to, but he is the one who's are you know, why go to sometimes about this question. And how would we know how do you interpret this. I mean, you know, none of us are lawyers. Yes, everything we do is prefaced with the I am prefacing with this with the caveat that I am not a lawyer and nothing I say can be taken as legal advice you may want to consult a lawyer if you really are in a legal situation. But here's what we know as with through our experience and working through the laws with other libraries and like his his it himself his own previous experience. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's, that's pretty much how we do it we have Richard come in and he shares his his vast amount of experience with Kansas libraries and, and how the library law affects the operation of Kansas library. All right. Well, there's my email address again. I'm open for questions or. Yeah, all right. Yeah, awesome. Um, thank you. Is anybody if anybody has any questions we have some of them, about 10 minutes left of the session here. Yeah. If you have any questions you want to ask of Robin or myself. If you're in Nebraska person, of course, go ahead and type into the question section of our go to webinar interface and we'll answer all your questions we have here. You can always reach out to Robin later or myself here in Nebraska I am generally as library development director and the person that our libraries would come to for the legal advice board advice. We have other various staff here in the commission that would answer questions at other things. And in our CE training session so this was this is great to hear about what you're doing there Robin and it's it's always good to know every state is trying to get their directors up to speed on things. Right. It's hard. One of the, you know, the hardest thing is like, what do you do to help the new director is not be like terrified. As much if they've never done it before. And we do here in Nebraska have lots of non MLS library directors actually most of them are not right. Small rural. That's not what they're going to do. They're never going to go and get a degree. It's just not a thing but we offer training and ours is the basic skills classes with ongoing training throughout the year of all the different things that you might need to know to do your job. And it's not specific to directors is for any library staff. Things. Yeah, yeah. We do much the same thing. We have, I think 300 and 300 plus public libraries in Kansas. And there are, depending on how you count them 4550 in Northeast Kansas. So, of those, I would guess the vast majority are are led by people who do not have an MLS. And so that's kind of what we feel at Neckles we're providing is that background knowledge. So they can call us and say, Hey, I'm not sure exactly what to do here. We can, you know, I have 28 years of experience in libraries and and the MLS so I often would people call and say, Oh, what do I do. I have, you know, I've seen this before and this worked. So, yeah, and oftentimes it's just needing the, the hand holding is saying it's okay you got this you are doing the right thing. Yeah, don't sweat it. You're working on the right track. I had a librarian who would call me almost weekly with well Robin, it's time to bounce some stuff off of yet. I almost never had to come up with a solution. She was great. She had it all under control that she'd be like so am I right in thinking this. Yeah, absolutely. And that's that we said networking and get people to meet each other and talk to another director and say, Hey, what would you do. Yeah, we do have some comments and questions coming through. Let's see. Okay, this is the long one. Sorry. Okay. All right, we'll start with. I think this first one will help me to the second one. So I'm going to do this in this other order. Okay. All right, so this is someone. Tony who's a library director here in Nebraska, and I'm just going to read what you put in there. It says in my first year as director I reached out to our regional library system. I remember telling them that I thought I was in over my head with the help of Central Plains library system and the Nebraska Library Commission we became accredited and have received grants to help our library grow. Yay. We're happy to do that. I have learned a lot of useful information from the basic skills classes it is nice to have the support system for new directors. You know, more just of a comment there's thank you so much Tony I'm so glad we're able to help you. I work with Tony a lot. Yes, on various things. But so that is the yeah that is what we have here that same kind of trying to get our libraries to do just do do good and do the best they can for their community and they're and there's in the citizens in their area. So the whole the whole purpose of the regional systems is to provide to support libraries in providing the best possible library service for Kansas citizens. That's why we're here. So, whatever it takes. And then the other question that these actually both can make the exact same time says is Apple available only to Kansas librarians. Unfortunately it is a specific I'm not sure it would be as valuable to anybody else but if you are a Nebraska librarian, Krista has resources for you. Right. Exactly. Yeah, and the reason we're putting this here on our show I mean the Brassica and come us live is the Brassica library Christian show but it is worse national show that anybody can come to and watch. That's a good example I think of the kind of things that train that can be done or the kind of things you would want to learn about as a library director. So, if you're not in Kansas, look for something like this in your state. Here in Nebraska which this person is, I can tell from their email that they are here from Nebraska. We don't have this kind of a, we don't have our program is not like the same thing we have a basic skills program here in Nebraska, where we, it's for, it's free, we provide free to any library staff person at any type of library in the state, or, or a citizen of Nebraska actually who's interested in becoming a librarian we're very free and open. It doesn't cost anything except for your time it's all online courses done in Moodle. And actually since we're talking about it I will pop over to. All right, I'm going to bring presenter control to my screen. Sure. To show you. There we go. Do that over there. Okay. So, on our library commission website and I'll see it at Nebraska dot gov. We have education, and there is lots of different things here education related, but basic skills classes on here, and you will see we push this out when on our social media to when new classes are up for open for registration. So if you look at our Facebook or Twitter Instagram you'll see just recently a new one went up saying here's the next class that's open. And this is a series of courses, as you can see all the topics we have here collection management community library communication customer service, etc, etc. And then there are some elective courses down here. Now anyone who wants to, as you can see here in Nebraska residents or people employed by Nebraska library so this is Nebraska specific. If you can take any of these courses you want to you can take them just because you want to learn more about that particular topic, or you can take them for the purpose of become getting your certification. Public library and certification that we for public library directors. So we have our public library staff. Sorry, it's not specific only is not limited to directors. So if you're in Nebraska library employee of any level. So remember, if you just want to, you know, is mainly for running the library but you can take any of these classes you want to. But if you want to do it for the purposes of earning your certification which does feed into your accreditation here in Nebraska we do have public library and certification. And then if you are in order for a library to be accredited the director at a minimum has to be certified and then you can earn more points towards your accreditation the more staff, other staff people that are also certified. So, these classes are done throughout the year. I see the schedule here. At the same time pretty much the same time the same order every single year. So just rotate so every January you know you can take communication. And then right after that it'll follow customer service library governance etc etc etc through all the classes. So to become certified you do six basic classes and then the seven electives, but you, and you have a three year time period to get all of that done so you can take all of this in one year all one, like one giant classwork. You split it up between a month to three years. But if you're just taking the classes for your own education, if you are like the program in outreach library and you just want to pop in and do that one do it. You don't have to do it for the purpose of becoming certified. You can take any classes just because you want to learn a little bit more. And there's our at the end of the year we've got our children's and teens class. So this is what we offer, which would I guess be as similar in Nebraska what we offer it would be as similar to what Apple in Kansas is doing. And just an ongoing program Holly Duggan is our CE coordinator in charge of this it's all done within Moodle. She is working I'm putting some, she is testing out doing things in niche Academy, have you used that at all, Robin. I have not, although I'm working on some classes to go in niche Academy now I don't have them done and haven't really played with the platform yet so. She's experimenting with it to yeah I think she did a communications classes in there as a self paced class. We're trying to do more of that to we've gotten a lot of requests for, well I can't do the particular class at that time of the year. So trying to do some more that are self paced you can do at any time. So you don't necessarily need a. But anytime of the year. I mean you can see here we do have a self paced into the cataloging class that just means there's it's a month long, also the communication one. There's no specific instructor there. You can just monitor it of course, but those are you have a whole month for those and just do it on your own more so, but she's thinking of more self paced as here's just a class you can do at any time of the year when it's convenient to you. And that's something she's working on right now. This is what we've got. So if you're a Nebraska librarian, look at this and this is where you can get that same kind of training as what Robin was talking about in Kansas. Not in Nebraska Kansas check out your own state either state library. If you have regional systems, whatever you have there's probably something in your state that is similar. They may call it something different. Like, you know, yours is very specific for dive by directors, ours is just basic skills for any library staff person. Look around and I'm sure you can find something if you're not. Yeah.