Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is a Commission's weekly online event.  I know that the terminology for that is up for debate by many people. But whatever we are, we are online, live every Wednesday morning at 10 AM Central Time. The show is free and open to anyone to watch, both our live sessions and our recorded sessions. This is just our website here for the show. Our recordings are here under our archive sessions. You can see all of our previous shows here that we have done. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, book reviews, many training sessions, basically anything library related we are happy to have on the show. We want to have it on here. And we have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations for us, do sessions, and we sometimes bring in guest speakers. And this morning, we have a guest speaker. We are very excited to have nailed down, I suppose to be. Courtney Young, hi Courtney. Good morning. Who is the current ALA president, American Library Association president, and shh, see. Last fall, Courtney was the keynote speaker at our Nebraska Library Association, Nebraska School Librarians Association annual conference. And I chatted with her after her speaking and asked her to come on the show. And we finally were able to have a date where she was actually in her office, not traveling the world for ALA. So it's great that we were able to finally get Courtney to get you on the show here this morning, Courtney. I'm happy to be here. I did just wanted to say this is not Courtney's first time on Encompass Live. She was actually on way back in the beginning, and I've got a screenshot here of this. There we go. This is our little screenshot of the video. This is from the Computers and Libraries Conference in 2011, actually. I had to go back for that far. We sometimes took Encompass Live on the road to conferences, and we would broadcast remotely from there. And just so people who were attending the conference speak about what they were doing there. And back in for the Computers and Libraries Show in 2011 conference, that's Courtney way back there, peeking her head around, introducing herself long before she was ALA president, long before being involved, or maybe when you're getting started with that, I think I believe you were involved at that point on executive board. Yeah. So she has been on Encompass Live before. So this is her second time. Excellent. So I am going to hand over control to you now so you can get your presentation up on the screen. Okay. Go. Just a little switch here. There she is. There she is today. Excellent. Great. So I'll just hand her to you. She's going to talk about we, there's a lot of different things going on in ALA as everyone knows, but today what we want to talk about was the new strategic planning going on. A lot of things changing. It is that time to switch to a new plan and figure out what they want to do. So Courtney is going to share with us what's going on with that. I'll just hand over to you. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to be at Encompass Live again. That was the first time I ever learned about Encompass Live, and it was great to be a part of that discussion. And whenever I get a chance, I do either come in and watch live or watch the recording. So it's something that I certainly appreciate. I'm really glad to be able to talk with you this morning about ALA's strategic planning process and the strategic directions that we've identified. So let's see if my slides working here correctly should be. So in terms of ALA, the mission is presented here on the screen as providing leadership for development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services, and the profession of librarianship to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all. That's the association's mission. And of course, one of the ways that you support and carry out that mission is through a strategic plan. So in January of 2014, the executive board started to do some of the pre-planning for the strategic planning process. The current ALA strategic plan expires at the end of the annual conference coming up this year, 2015. That was a five-year plan, and I actually did have the fortune of serving on the executive board for three years when they started outlining and implementing that plan. That planning started in 2009 and was approved by ALA Council in 2010 at that annual conference. So in 2014, just before the midwinter meeting in Philadelphia, the executive board started working on this and decided to do things a little bit differently, and we identified three strategic directions for the association. And those directions are advocacy, information policy, and professional and leadership development. Now our core mission, which I've just shown you, and our core values have not changed, and those are not going to change. So those three strategic directions that we've identified really need to reaffirm those values, as well as building on our long tradition of commitment to the library community, libraries, and the public. And so as we plan for the next three to five years, since this plan will have a little more fluidity, I think, than the previous plan, you know, it could be a three-year plan, it could be a five-year plan. We're kind of working with that window, since one of the things that we want to do as the association is to work on being as nimble as we can, given the size of the organization. But as we're doing that planning, we want to make sure that we're also actively pursuing our goals, promoting the association's core values, and moving the association, as well as libraries ahead. And the reason that we selected these strategic directions is that, and having various kitchen table conversations with our members, members of these, of ALA, members at state associations who may or may not be members of ALA. One of the messages that we heard loud and clear was that people were really interested in the association being more focused in its approach to some things. And so this provides us with an opportunity to really drill down and focus in on some areas that we think are of particular need and importance for the association, as I said, during that three to five-year period. And so in terms of our strategic directions, the first one of course being advocacy and then information policy and professional leadership development. Over the course of this year, we've had a series of forums. We did a virtual forum in the fall and November. We had discussion around advocacy and information policy and then December on leadership professional development. And then we've also been having the same sort of almost kitchen table type conversation or forums at a variety of state chapter association meetings and other meetings. We had this meeting with the executive, ALA Executive Board and the boards of the 11 divisions of ALA with representations also from the roundtables. This conversation also took place as part of ALA's planning and budget assembly, which is a mix of various people who serve on those division boards, part of ALA Council and on various ALA committees. So we've had and worked to make sure that as many people as possible have been involved in those conversations and to assist us with our planning. So in doing these conversations to really get us started and get us towards the documents that we hope to have approved at the Indian Annual Conference, we started with these three questions, which turned out to really allow people to kind of really dig into these three areas so that we could get some really good feedback and make sure that we're moving in the right direction. And the questions we asked were, you know, what would success look like? So in the area of advocacy, what would it look like to be successful? How do you think we might get there? You know, what do we need to do so that we can move towards achieving that success? And then that final question of how might you help us get there? And when we're asking this last question, we really wanted people to think about the you in a number of ways. So the you could be how might you as an individual person who is a library advocate or supportive of library issues help us get there? How could you as someone who is a part of a library system or library help us get there? How could you in your role in your state association help us get there? Or as a member of a particular committee or a particular division or round table? You know, there are multiple sort of yous in helping us get there and the ways that you could support getting to that ultimate goal of success in each one of these strategic areas. So in the area of advocacy, when it comes to advocacy, ALA advocates to the public the value of libraries, librarians, and information services. And we really seek to focus on ALA's mission and priorities, working with three constituencies and that's ALA members, libraries, and the public. The important components within this strategic direction is building public support for libraries and librarianship through public awareness, providing a vision of innovation, enabling the future of libraries and promoting libraries as centers of community engagement and participatory librarianship, and promoting ALA's core values and emphasizing the impact of libraries to form the basis for advocacy and community conversations. And so the team at ALA, who were the point people for putting together this advocacy continuum, pulled together the sort of visual representation of, as it says, the advocacy continuum and how that cycle moves through, how it relates to various levels of engagement, ways to transform support into action, and so on and so forth. A lot of the feedback that we got in terms of what would success look like for advocacy revolved around things such as libraries and librarians being at the table when decisions about these cultural institutions were being made. Increased funding for libraries, libraries not being zeroed out in budgets at all levels. The people would no longer question whether or not we still needed to have librarians as well as libraries. There would no longer be a question about the role and importance of school librarians. And so these were some of the different types of successes that people identified in the areas of advocacy. And then we came up with what we needed to do in order to get to that success. What types of tools and resources, for example, would be useful? What kind of work could individuals or could libraries do to get it move us towards that success? And then what role could they play within the committees that they serve on within their communities, within their within your state associations, or your particular library type associations. What could you do so that we could have those successes with regards to advocacy? And when it comes to information policy, information policy is comprised of laws, regulations, and doctrines, and other decision making practices involving information creation, storage, equitable access, communication, accessibility, dissemination, use, and of course preservation. Now ALA operating in the public interest focuses at every level on a diverse set of policy areas including intellectual freedom, privacy, civil liberties, telecommunications, funding for education and research programs, funding for libraries, copyright and licensing, government information, and literacy. Operating on behalf of the public, ALA seeks through libraries to leave the advocacy for legislation, regulation, and policies for public interest. Document the impact of legislation, regulation, and policies on the work of libraries and public access to information. Enable successful models of information access that support the ALA policy agenda and advocate for effective policies that enable libraries to meet the information needs of all sectors of the public. And in pulling together this image related to the information policy cycle, this team came from ALAs, Washington office, as well as the Office for Intellectual Freedom. Since a lot of these issues have to do with policy and legislation, it's very much impacted and the work that we do and what's done on Capitol Hill and just last week was National Library Legislative Day, so this was in the forefront of a number of people's minds. The hundreds of librarians who were there in DC as well as the thousands who participated in Virtual Library Legislative Day, but also the information intellectual freedom components as well in terms of having access to information, but also in also keeping in mind privacy issues as well. The policy revolution document that ALA recently released also becomes a very strong component for information policy in terms of what ALA can do to be successful, what that success would look like, and how you can support information policy personally as well as from your state associations, committees, divisions, and round tables. When we come to professional leadership development, and this is certainly one of those areas it's very near and dear to my heart. It's something that I find a particular interest. I think it's one of the things that really brings value to the association and to the work that we do in libraries to really amplify the transformational role of libraries in the community. I think that by recognizing that professional leadership development of all librarians as well as library workers is essential to high-quality professional practice and the future of libraries and information services, ALA seeks to provide professional development opportunities through multiple venues, coordinating the multiple opportunities through ALA to provide a coherent, transparent, and accessible continuing education framework for all members, increase the diversity of library professionals and sustain their professional growth through multiple strategies and align leadership development and continuing education with the best thinking about the changing information environment. And as you can see from the graphic that was put together with regards to this slide, it really notes the different ways in which these things are really very much connected, connecting career pathways kind of at the same or very much touching on the role of self-assessment and the accreditation process through library school education, recognition for the work that is done and the training that people are achieving, opportunities for self-assessment. And so this is an area that in some ways is very large and has a lot going on, but it fits together very well. I think it's very much a part of the mission that I showed you earlier in terms of what the association's goals are. And so I think that by having this as a particular strategic direction within the association, we're reaffirming our commitment to professional leadership development as well as the role and importance of education at law levels, LIS, high school education, and diversity of the profession. So with regards to all these areas, if you think about it, an effective advocacy campaign on behalf of all libraries of all types will really remind their communities of the vital role libraries play and will raise that community's profile and ultimately build library support with information policy will promote coalitions to advance policy positions and advancing the association's mission and agenda, strong support in the area of leadership and professional development, I really feel will ensure our library employees are all professionals who will renew and improve their skills quickly and frequently as a matter of course and effectively chart the future of library in the communities where they serve. Then we've been working through this process, as I said, for over a year now and so we're at the point where we're pulling together and synthesizing a document and that document will be coming out in the next couple of weeks. It might be right after the Memorial Day, Holiday, but a document will be going out to a variety of constituents, the executive committees of the 11 divisions, ALA council, members of planning and budgets assembly, and as well as to members at large. The goal will be to approve the ALA strategic plan that approval is done by ALA council, which is the governing body of the association, and hopefully that will go forward and be approved during the annual conference at the end of June, which will be in San Francisco. And then of course there's the implementation components and the document that's going to go out is going to highlight, and as I've noted here, further outline the objectives supporting each strategy, and the specific tactics that will help us to achieve these objectives as they've been carved out. Is there a variety of objectives to support each strategy that will be outlined in that document in terms of answering sort of that second question, in particular, you know, this first question, sort of what success would look like and how we would get to that success. And all of those pieces come directly from the various conversations that we've had framed with those three questions. And then conversation information continues to go up and be available and posted on ALA Connect. Anyone can sign up and use and get access to ALA Connect to view documents that are available to make comments on documents. So if you still have feedback that you want to provide, you are certainly able to do that. That's where we are in terms of the strategic planning process. And I have another item that I would be happy to mention, but I'll stop here for now to see whether or not there are any questions on the strategic directions. Cool. Yes, great. Thanks, Courtney. I don't know, let's see. If anybody does have any questions, please do type them into the question section of your go-to webinar interface and I can grab them from there. Nothing came in while you were talking, but that's common. Most of the people are just listening, taking notes, whatever. I just want to say about the ALA Connect. I was actually, I just found out from Courtney this morning earlier when we were chatting. I assumed incorrectly that it was just for ALA members and it's not. Anyone who wants to, you said, can create an account. So, and because I do know that ALA is, I mean, there are benefits to being ALA member, of course, but some people can't afford it or don't choose to join their local organization or something else instead, but still pay attention as what I do.  So it's, I think it's great that anyone can get in there and get their input into the process. Great, yeah. And hopefully, hopefully, yeah, the association is having a positive effect on what we all do in libraries, but certainly there are a variety of reasons why people may choose to, you know, get more involved and be a member in their state association. A number of states, an increasing number of states, have joint membership. So you can join your state association as well as the American Library Association. And that has helped to bridge some of those gaps. But yeah, anyone can create an account, an ALA Connect, you know, a particular interest, I think, for people who are participating as non-members of ALA, maybe the membership interest groups. And I'll put in a plug for the diversity membership interest group that was created about a year ago by a past chair of ALA's Diversity Committee that I'm working with her, Alex Rivera, and another member, Melissa Cardenas-Dow, to get people more engaged and having broader and stronger conversations around diversity in libraries and diversity in librarianship. It's a great group to join diversity touches everything that we all do, and I think is of increasing importance these days. So it's only one of many migs, because in libraries, of course we like acronyms, but it's one of many migs for people to investigate and contribute to and learn from and get involved with. Yeah, I remember that was one of the things that you were very much involved in was the diversity. I think that's important, too, is that it's not just both from our side, as far as the profession, but are the users of our libraries. I mean, we get everything, public library, academic, whatever, you never know who's going to walk in the door. Absolutely, and you need to, yeah, and the library is a place where we're welcoming and open to all. So it's really important to have a sense of who your users are, who you want to have coming into your libraries, and even if there isn't any diversity in the community that you're in, there may be a real interest in learning and having an understanding and wanting to get access to appropriate, accurate, timely, useful resources related to diversity that's not reflected in the community, and so we need to be thinking about that as well, even if we think, well, I'm not in a community that's diverse, every community has some possibilities and potential with diversity or possible interest. You may be surprised when you start looking around. Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that was, as you said, Nirenjord, your heart about also made the professional and leadership development, the professional development part of the strategic plan is something obviously here from my side, that's what I do a lot here is the training, these Encompass Live shows, other training we do here, something that I'm really trying to keep going here with this show is people who can't travel, travel to the conferences, whether it's ALA or even a local one sometimes, getting these professional development opportunities out there with these webinars. Here within Encompass Live in Nebraska, we give continuing education credits to anyone who watches these either live or in recordings. And since our shows and everything are out there free, other states have done that as well. If someone watches one of our shows, they can then go to their own continuing education people and show this as I'm working on. I've learned something new about whatever the topic was. So I think that's one of the things that I've been looking into and paying attention to myself. Right, yeah. And how can, as an association, we make sure that we have those connections because there are a variety of different types of training and professional development and leadership development that people can be doing. We don't want to necessarily reinvent the wheel, but how do we tap into and connect and recognize and highlight the fact that Nebraska Library Commission is doing this and providing this training. And that's a great way, particularly because the recordings are available to people that there are shows that might help them to get up to speed on something before they dip their toe into maybe another type of training opportunity. There are a lot of people who are in and working in their libraries and they're the only person who's there. To leave, even to go to a state library conference is nearly impossible because it means that you're shutting your doors and that no one from whatever type of community you're in or you're serving, they won't have that kind of access and we know that people are lying on their libraries more and more for so many basic functions and necessities that that's a really difficult thing to do but people do still need to have the skills to provide their users with 21st century library services and resources. Yeah, and that which meant there about the traditionally the small and rural libraries who are the one person operations or if they're lucky too that was one of our main reasons for starting this show and doing these kind of things online is for them that the Nebraska we are rural almost the entire state except for the eastern part and that's the kind of people that are our major users and our major library staff that we're trying to help here and it's people both with MLS's without the degrees with them whoever they are they're working 10 hours a week just keeping the library open but they need to learn something about something new did they get ebooks now did you know are they did they add some new computers and they need to figure out how to keep them secure and whatnot. Yeah, how can they get tapped into the resources that are being provided by the state on a consortium. Yeah, no and very, very, very important and because of the being rural that means that you're probably even more important to that community because it's not like where I live here in Pittsburgh where it's like oh I might go over to the branch library in this neighborhood or that neighborhood your neighborhoods can be spread out quite a bit and as I've had an opportunity to go to a variety of state associations I've been reminded even more and more just how important that is Nebraska certainly being one of those states was at the Alaska Library Association and you know a small library serving a community of 250 people your library is probably having a tremendous impact positive impact and changing the lives of the 250 people in that community. Absolutely, yeah. Well while we've been chatting doesn't look like any questions came in at the moment so that's fine you wanted to go on and share some other? Yeah I thought it might be fun and useful for me to mention the Connected Library Challenge Initiative which was announced I guess almost two weeks ago now so President Barack Obama's Connected Library Challenge Initiative it aims to ensure that all school students receive public library cards through their schools and of course ALA was encouraged by this announcement to ensure that all students have access to the wealth of reading materials educational assistance and digital resources that are made available through the nation's public libraries. I mean we know that learning doesn't end in the classroom and that our nation's libraries create really dynamic learning environments and they're bringing together trained information professionals our collections that are both print as well as electronic and of course that ever growing important free access to high-speed internet so that library card program we know is going to have a tremendous positive impact but of course there are lots of libraries that have been doing this already and some of them are included in the libraries that are going to be a part of this sort of pilot start to this project and so there are a variety of partners that will be participating in this including the institution museum of library services which is going to convene a meeting of national library government school leaders to discuss the best practices for developing and implementing the school public library card program in local districts the ALA is going to be part of those conversations as well what else do I want to highlight so one of the studies that I am I am a less dead found that the most powerful demographic predictor of library card ownership as poverty more than 60% of children living below the poverty level did not have a library card first grade children who were living at or above the poverty level were more than twice likely to have a library card than their more impoverished peer so we think that this is going to have a real tremendous impact in that area as well and so I think it's incredibly important for us to see how see the hopefully the positive impact that this initiative is going to have and hopefully it will also provide us with another sort of it's the word I want to use it will provide us with yet another tool I guess or another sort of piece of the puzzle to ensure and advocate for the importance of having a school library and in the schools as well because the public library of course is going to support those students once school once they're done with school for the day but while they're in class during the day they should also still be using their school library as well and school library and it's incredibly important in supporting that academic success and lifelong learning so I just wanted to highlight that I did have the opportunity to go to the White House the morning that that announcement was made that was on April 30th and met with the team from the White House the White House staffers who were working on this project brought together a number of us who were sort of from the library world so I was there for the American Library Association IMLS was represented the Digital Public Library of America Urban Libraries the Council was also represented but there are also publishers there as well who are going to be providing the free electronic content that is particularly at the level for these school children to learn so there were I would think four or five of those publishers who were providing you know book content as well as serial content for the students so it's a it's a it's a good start and I thought it was something that is fairly new that I would highlight for you all as well yes I I did see that made a huge splash in the library world when the announcement went out about that yeah that I'd heard of connected Ed before of course that's been around doing various things already but having the connection now to the ALA in the Digital Public Library of America that was a great thing right the school librarians thing is very important I agree to there's too many times I'm hearing of schools getting rid of their librarian and thinking they don't need it and it's just so painful because I remember using it when I was in school I mean I may sound like some you know of course I became a librarian but no that wasn't it but that was a place we went every every week or something there was a session a part of your school was to go and was going there and I just can't understand I don't just can't wrap my mind around not having a librarian in the school I mean it's learning its education it seems to be a no brainer to me but obviously to other people it's not right and it's one of the reasons that they have the can see pieces so important yes yes that connects to advocating for the importance of school librarians because they do have a positive impact on student learning studies are starting to come out that demonstrate that's the case it's a difference yeah yeah so hopefully we will move forward and their positive things will happen as a result but yeah the kid but this particular initiative with connect that is a slightly different kind of collaboration I think that the staffers of the White House are very interested in this new collaboration and all of the positive potential positive outcomes from it's also going to be very useful I think to our public library colleagues who have also been working very hard to be in the loop on school curricula so that they can truly support the students who are coming in and so with this partnership this actually means that more purposeful and productive conversations will happen between administrators in the schools in the libraries also hopefully that means that let the librarians who are involved both from the schools and the public libraries will also be connected so that that the support that's provided is not just goes just beyond providing a card but actually provides the librarians and both locations with the information they need so that they can better serve these students yeah that is something that is so inconsistent I hear some some libraries some public libraries say of course we work in the schools all the time we actually go into the classrooms and talk to the kids about how they can then use the public library and go back and forth all the time and then you hear from other ones who say oh god no we would never they don't want us there it just doesn't happen and it's just so unfortunately inconsistent across the whole country right so so hopefully this will this will become a a common practice and yeah we'll continue to see you know positive real some real positives as a result for particularly because what's you know our goal is to is for the students to have the information and resources that they need and to feel supported as they're going through that that process and be successful yeah education happens when she leaves school too whether you know it or not it's happening yes yes now the e-content the publishers are offering is that is that yet to be determined what exactly will be made available or is that still being like what exactly the titles and lists and whatnot I believe I believe they're still working on the con on what that content will be and if I peek out of the frame that's okay just oh no actually I think I've got it here I might be able to highlight some of the publishers who I know are are participating then in some places some schools and like some libraries do already have contracts and things that they're doing e-books and e-journals and whatnot but I just wonder you know they'll then then have to smash that up with what's now going to be available from this new program and see how that all runs so I guess so let's say so some of the major publishers and their authors have pledged to donate titles to low-income students and those include McMillan Simon and Schuster Penguin Random House Heshet Candlewick Bloomsbury Lee and Lowe and Lee and Lowe was one of the there was a representative from Lee and Lowe and they're the leading independent publisher of multicultural books and they're including unlimited access to over 700 of their titles and Cricut Media Cricut Media was also also had a representative at this meeting at the White House and they're offering full digital access excuse me 12 it's market leading magazines for children and young adults including Ladybug and Cricut and Harper Collins nice okay so that's a nice range of different publishers different genres that'll be out there yes so you said that it would be offered to the low-income students has it been determined how how they will has it been figured out how they will determine who are the low-income students who are going to be receiving these resources or is that also to be done yeah yeah well a number of these things you're still too yeah I know it's just announced I'm probably asking things that yeah have to be figured out okay yeah but I'm sure that particularly librarians are going to be asking those questions I'm sure IMLS is probably yes that's poverty rates and things like that things that are typically would indicate that these are the areas of that need the most assistance and another thing that I know it came up in when librarians were talking about this new initiative was the e-content is great to offer this to the library especially for ones that maybe can't afford to have their own e-book programs or whatnot but what about the devices that the students or that they paid the kids need to actually access them nobody's gonna read on a cell phone I don't read on my cell phone that's I've tried it's painful but as I have but is there's some part of this because honestly I haven't read every single thing about it that will help getting devices into the kids hands or into the libraries or schools for them to be able to access the content that I don't know I'm checking my my notes because they're because New York public is going to be developing an e-reader wrap e-reader app that will provide access to the materials but I don't recall as I've looked at this let's see to do let's see New York public that's going to work with first book a mayor actually where there was a representative from first book on our meeting their book donation nonprofit to help make sure e-books reach students and low-income families so I don't know whether or not that will be a e-reader commitments or some other you know computer commitment I'm sure that that's something that's still being tablet being being worked out but yeah I mean certainly yes access to electronic content is that just being that's that the library card provides you with that information with just logging in with that library card number then means that you have access to it if you're in the public library or if it also means beyond the walls of the library I'm not sure like you said this just announced lots of lots of things still to be determined and it's good that they've got the librarians involved in it because they're the ones that are on on the ground I would say dealing with the kids who come in and say you know I don't have a cell phone I don't have an internet plan at home we can't afford that so how do I do this do you have something loaned to me those kind of things it's already being the programs are there at libraries just like the ebook programs are at libraries as well but having even more is good yeah right right and then you know then hopefully then for the kind of work that I do as someone who works at a you know university library that I'm going to also have students who if they've had some experience with this program that they're going to have expectations of the kinds of information and services and you know resources as well to provide for students a lot of the schools do that one to one program now too where every student is given a device of some sort the elementary and high schools a tablet a laptop whatever I can see there potentially being a domino effect I guess this program's out there and we've never looked into doing that at our school in particular but maybe we should now that we have all these resources these resources we got for free let's now put our money into the other end of it to help continue it on now not every place will be able to do that but you know there could be that kind of a it's working towards closing gaps and that's that's sort of the the goal is that how can we continue to close these gaps and bridge them you know at the same time yeah well I think it's great yeah when I was reading like trying to read up a much of it as much of it as I could but like you said still things to be done so it's definitely something to keep an eye on as the program is more developed so does anybody on the line have any questions I've been the only one asking questions so far but if anybody else does please do type into your questions section of your GoToWebinar interface I will say that the websites that Courtney has mentioned on ALA ALA Connect I've been saving to our let's just count yep there's the the strategic planning community there on ALA Connect but if we do a show we always save any links as well that are mentioned so I've got that in there for you so you'll be able to get to it quickly afterwards and I looked up information also about the ConnectEd program and the the press release and the IMLS website for that so you'll have easy access to those afterwards with the recording of the show as well fantastic yeah well it doesn't look anybody's typing anything urgent in so that's that's fine we covered everything anything else that you want to share while you have the floor the floor you know definitely you know if you haven't looked at ALA Connect please do so you know the three areas that I've focused on during my presidential year have been diversity engagement and outreach and and professional development so hopefully we'll be making some announcements and doing some more things around diversity before the end of my presidential term which will be at the end of the annual conference in June but even still doing some things while I'm the immediate past president during the next year you know if you ever have questions or comments or concerns you know we're more than happy to to hear from you and to get that information you know the association is is this organization is an association of people so it's all about people having conversations making connections and doing things that support and improve libraries of all types and the people who work in those libraries and the people who use them so never never be afraid to ask those questions or bring up those concerns because what you have to say certainly matters to the work of all of us so there and there's where you can contact Courtney ask her anything you need to know about LA and if I and and and because you know I'm a reference librarian at heart if I don't know the answer I'm sure that I'll be able to connect you to someone who does know the answer that's what I think or that's a better idea people always think who you're a librarian you can answer this question I said no I don't know everything but I know how to find out exactly knowledge is power yes exactly well thank you very much Courtney for being with us I'm glad we were able to get you on the show finally it took us quite a few months to get things nailed down glad you're having some downtime maybe relaxing actually in your office before you head out again on your next trip a little a little break before the the next trip coming up here in a couple of days but yeah I know it's good to be able to to to do this sort of thing I mean this is an example of the type of thing that you know we need to do and that I hope to continue to do more of because not everyone of course got to out to the the Nebraska Library Association conference to see me in October so it's good to be able to you know be here on everyone's desktop in Nebraska and other states as well I know that there are many people who who you know and asking about other professional development opportunities in Compass Live is always one of the ones that I mention to people or that people I know gravitate to so it's good to be able to participate again and maybe next time it will be four-year gap no a part of it as well yeah we could have you come on sometime when when the ALA things have died down to talk about what you're doing there at Penn State that'd be something great to to bring in yeah awesome yeah it was good oh yes you were talking about people from yeah I was trying to remember what I was going to say yeah we are all like I said we're free and open to anyone and we do you pretty much we are the Nebraska Library Association or Commission but our top our sessions are so you're not generally Nebraska specific all the time no we bring in the speakers from Nebraska who talk about just what they're doing in their libraries which would be relevant to anyone and we bring in people from the outside like Courtney and anywhere anywhere from across the country to bring you know basically bringing them to us and to anyone who can watch so it's a nice broad mixture and variety I think I'm glad that you like it and we're we're out that we're helping where we're you're useful we're useful that's that's my goal yes all right well thank you very much Courtney thank you everyone for attending I'm going to pull back control to my computer now here and show you here this is one of the what we were just talking about about the program there here we go there's you at the White House or when they were doing the announcement and that yep April 30th so I've got that page the connect dead page here the library challenge page from the IMLS website and as I said all of these are in our delicious account so they'll be linked all together for you and all the other ones that we've grabbed that I grabbed from this morning we added as well so that will wrap us up for this morning thank you very much Courtney thank you everyone for attending the show has been recorded and will be posted to our archive page probably tomorrow will be when we get it all together up there we'll have Courtney I think you're going to send me your slides if anybody wants those we'll have them we'll post them to our slide share account and our recording will go on our YouTube account that'll be here under our archive and Compass live session so look for that tomorrow that I hope you'll join us next week when our topic is reading and sharing the system directors talk about books here in the Nebraska library and here in Nebraska we have four regional library systems which provide consulting and assistance to libraries in our state and we invited them to come on and talk about their favorite things they've read recently basically just some book talks sharing some interesting titles so definitely sign up and join us for that and any of our other shows that we have coming up we just kind of mentioned security for IT security computer security that's come up later this month too that sign up for any of those also and Compass Live is on Facebook so if you are a big Facebook user please do go ahead and like us over there you'll get notifications it comes up there we go of when recordings are available when a show is starting up I always give a reminder like I did here to login right now if you log in on the fly so if you are big on Facebook please do go ahead and like us over there other than that that wraps it up for this morning thank you very much for being here and we'll see you next time on Encompass Live bye bye


Gabriel Zamora just came out and did a whole Snapchat story talking about Tati Westbrook as well as the new video from PewDiePie and talking more about this James Charles situation. So in this video we're going to break it down a little bit but we're going to be talking about the very, very, very important subject of confirmation bias. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. If you're new to my channel, what I like to do is take a look at the YouTube community or pop culture, see all the drama going on and try to turn this mess and turn it into a message, alright? So if you're into that kind of stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. Okay, so yeah, Gabriel Zamora just made a long Snapchat story just talking about Tati Westbrook and he talks a little bit more about the details of the situation that Tati Westbrook described when it comes to James Charles and the waiter from Seattle. I talked a little bit about that in my last video. I hope you guys check it out. I try to offer a new perspective because in so many of these situations we get this kind of confirmation bias, alright?  Confirmation bias is something that no matter who you are, unless you're like the supreme like Buddhist monk, we all have confirmation bias, okay? It is our mind's natural tendency to grasp on and find things that confirm the beliefs that we already had, okay? It makes sense. Now, they've actually done neurological studies on this thing where they have hooked people up to brain scans where it shows that people who have a certain belief, right? They get in pain if something tries to disagree with their belief or if new information is present. That's why people get so defensive about these situations, alright? So long story short, being right feels good. Being wrong feels bad. So this is also a problem with our ego. Our ego is so fragile. Our ego wants us to be right. What we know is true. Any new information is wrong and it kind of sucks because it skews our perception of reality which hurts our ability to be objective in any situation. And like I said, everybody has this problem. The best thing that we can do is be aware of this issue and try to take a step back and say, okay, what kind of biases do I have going into this situation? So in PewDiePie's video, he took a look at it and he made his whole video about it. I talked about that in a different video and something that doesn't sit right with me is a lot of people are saying, oh, PewDiePie doesn't know enough about the situation. PewDiePie even said he doesn't know, oh, he needs to know about the situation. The reality is PewDiePie not being involved in the beauty community or the drama is probably the best person to talk about this situation because he doesn't have any biases going into this thing. He hasn't met any of these people. He doesn't have any skin in the game. So this is the type of the person that you would want to speak on the subject. And I would argue like for anybody saying that PewDiePie doesn't know everything about the situation, like Taty Westbrook made an entire 40 minute video that PewDiePie watched. I would say he's pretty much caught up to speed aside from some of the other allegations floating around on the internet, which I'll touch on a little bit later. But I will say this, where does PewDiePie's confirmation bias come in? Well, I believe that although he is an outsider on this situation, PewDiePie is somebody who has been attacked many, many, many times throughout his career. So I would imagine that his bias is that he's a little bit more empathetic to anybody who's getting attacked the way James Charles is in this situation. But we have to ask ourselves, when Gabriel Zamora saw PewDiePie's video, right or wrong, how much bias did Gabriel Zamora have? Obviously, he feels hurt by Taty. So anything that he sees that's going against Taty is going to play into Gabriel Zamora's confirmation bias. Now, same thing with all of us, right? Like, no matter what side of this you're on, you're going to find things that agree with your opinion, right? If you think James Charles is a monster, you're going to agree with that. If you think this thing has been blown out of proportion, you're going to find things that agree with that. Now, I'm not here to say which ones right or wrong, but I just want you to get your wheels turning because so many of us get stuck in this autopilot and with so much information being thrown out there right now, we just don't even pay attention to the way our mind is working, the way our ego is working, the way our confirmation bias is working, and all of these things. Now, something else that we need to think about when it comes to Gabriel Zamora, Taty Westbrook, James Charles, and pretty much anybody. Like, this is why we need to really try to practice empathy for anybody involved in any situation is that we often forget that we are only seeing the external world of that of a person that we're looking at. Right? We don't know what kind of life experiences have built up to the moment that they're currently in. So one of the reasons that I don't know that one would argue that these people are coming out and vocalizing different things and saying different parts of the story and everything like that is because one person's perspective is their reality. Now, the second thing I want to talk about, because the first one is people with their confirmation bias on the side of James Charles. The other side that I want to talk about is everybody who is against James Charles in this situation because something absolutely terrible and absolutely disgusting is happening right now. And I'm going to link down below the new video from I'm Alex. I'm Alex summarized it perfectly. All right. I touched on this briefly, but like I had a whole video plan. I had a whole video planned and I didn't even have. I didn't have the guts that I'm Alex did to call out what's going on. And he discussed it perfectly. What am I talking about? Somebody creating a fake story about assault on James Charles. It was completely fabricated. All right. So go check out our analysis video. He had some pretty strong evidence that this was all fake, including the fact that these DMs were photoshopped. But what I want to talk to you, what I want to talk to you about is something that I will talk about until the day I die because it is deja vu from 2016. And here's what it is. What freaks me out is that that tweet, that tweet with this bogus story with such a serious claim against James Charles had 24,000 retweets. 24,000 people spread this misinformation, the lies about James Charles. And you know why? Because confirmation bias.  It is possible for somebody like James Charles to have a massive ego to overcharge for his sister's tour. It's possible for him to have messy relationships. It's possible for all those things to happen without him actually assaulting somebody. And that is the problem with the massive, massive issue with confirmation bias is because we forget that.  I don't like that person, so this must be true. And you guys really got to check in with that. You got to check in with that. And the reason why I brought up 2016 is because that was a major problem during the last elections. I'm going to say this. In 2016, when Donald Trump was elected, I was absolutely baffled and confused by so many things. I'm like, how did this happen? Much like many other people. And I just, I'm very analytical. And I started analyzing everything, right? And I started looking around and I was listening to some people like political commentators analyzing the situation. They were talking about people spreading misinformation. And how many people I saw on Facebook, like friends and family members on Facebook, just sharing posts from non-reputable websites like they were the word of gospel. You know what I mean? And that's one of the issues with YouTube and social media is I was thinking about this. With this James Charles situation, like why are some of these serious allegations not on the mainstream news? And here's why. Because the YouTube community, it is the Wild Wild West when it comes to journalism. Like if that person, if that person who accused James Charles of these horrible things went to an actual news organization, there would be an interview. There would have to be evidence. Because any journalist, any journalist who tried to bring that to their editor without the proper evidence and making such a serious claim, their editor would just smack them right in the face. But the problem is, is that we're living in this world where the court of public opinion and people's emotions overrun them. People can just make up fake information, share fake information. But even going back to people like Gage or that waiter, like YouTube's an amazing thing because people can have a voice and speak their side of the story. But here's what everybody keeps forgetting is that whenever you get out of any type of relationship, you're always the victim. How many relationships do we get out of where we're like, oh no, no, I was just totally in the wrong? It is a very rare occasion. We always think that we're a victim. So I believe, in my opinion, that's one of the reasons why so many people are going to the sides of people like Gage or people like, I'm sorry, I forgot the waiter kid's name. But people are going to their side because they're like, you know what, you're right. You're right. I think that James Charles is an awful person. Tati Westbrook said he's an awful person. People online are saying he's an awful person. So yeah, I'm going to go side with this other kid. And people are completely neglecting facts, evidence, text messages. I don't know. But anyways, the last thing I just want to remind you guys is please check in with your confirmation bias in any situation that you're going into. Any situation, whether it's sharing news stories, when you're bickering with people online, check in with your own biases and see what's going on. Because this affects us in our everyday life.    I don't know what it is. But this plays into so many aspects of our lives. And because of this, we don't walk into situations giving people a fair chance, all right? So whether Gabriel Zamora is in the right, whether Tati Westbrook is right, whether James Charles is right or anything like that, regardless, all of us struggle with confirmation bias. We just need to have some self-awareness about it. All right, so do me a favor, quit spreading misinformation on the internet. It is not good. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel of our Patreon. You are all amazing. And if you would like to get your name up on the credits, get access to our monthly Q&A, some other perks and benefits, click or tap right there. All right, thanks again so, so much for watching. I'll see you next time.


Researchers launched a study of more than 3 million people, by far the largest ever, to uncover what we can do, other than just not smoking, to reduce our risk of developing an abdominal aortic aneurysm in the first place. In terms of diet, apparently the riskiest thing we can do is eat meat. Eating meat just a few times a month appears to significantly increase our risk, which makes sense. Another name for atherosclerosis is hardening of the arteries. That's what all that cholesterol goop in our arteries can do, harden and stiffen the walls of our aorta, making it less pliable. And so instead of just bouncing right back after every heartbeat, our aorta is at risk for stretching bit by bit over time until eventually we can end up with a balloon animal in our gut, and then sometimes pop goes the weasel. The most important thing, though, no smoking, which can dramatically increase our risk. Albert Einstein died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, and he was a vegetarian, but he didn't start eating healthy until late in his life, unfortunately, and he was a heavy smoker. So minimize both smoking and meat eating, and maximize fruit and vegetable consumption, and eat nuts every day. The two most powerful dietary behaviors found to reduce one's risk. May cut our odds of developing an abdominal aortic aneurysm in half.


I'm Gavin Chait from a company called Whitehawk and my company specializes in open data consulting all over the world. At the beginning of the year and end of last year I started doing FOI requests to every single local authority and asking them please provide me with a complete list of all the commercial properties as well as the vacancies so let me know exactly which ones are empty and which ones are not. One of my things is just you know having a particular interest in entrepreneurship is that I find it cripplingly painful and horrible when I see someone sitting in an empty shop and suffering and they should never have been here in the first place. The objective is to make the same sort of intelligence that big businesses use make available free of charge via intermediaries like Zoopla to any person starting a small business. Without FOI there was no mechanism to approach local authorities to request the data and no legal mechanism for me to be able to have some authority as someone who has other than pulled with any local authority and I've got no sort of commercial reason or should I say no legal reason to simply go in there and say hey you know give me all your data without FOI. As a novice without any idea of how FOI works and of what the process is the platform is tremendous I mean it's just step by step you start here and at the beginning I mean I feel like a pro now because I've done you know 350 requests I think I've done a fair number that have gone right through the entire process including the various legal steps but at the time I had no idea what I was doing and to have something that already has the complete database of everybody you need to contact already has a very structured way of simply doing it as well as recommendations of how to structure a request is really really helpful and the team are incredibly responsive and so when I had a query of is this normal I just got this response and it doesn't make any sense to me and have someone go oh yeah yeah they're like that it's great. I ran a non-profit organization for 10 years doing small business consulting and my experience is that small businesses do not pay for intelligence they prefer to just kind of wing you know they put down their deposit they take a five year lease or they go and sometimes they discover after they're stuck in a five year lease that this is a really terrible area for their type of business. The idea is that with time we build a sufficiently strong database of information that is available to business startups so that we can reduce that that business risk and businesses can gain additional insights in advance of any problems turning up. During the discovery process when you're looking for rentals when you're looking for a new factory looking for a new office space or a new retail space you flip over the card for the empty property and on the back you basically see right you'll need to hire this number of staff your rental is likely to this your rate select this and this is what you're gonna and we looking at this either recommend or don't recommend this sites for tenants and that's kind of the long-term objective. Another thing we don't know or didn't know at the time was which of the properties are empty which of the properties are actively trading as businesses and as much as we hear about the anti-high streets problem and there's a lot of research in that area there's no comprehensive open data database of property activity you can get if you have deep pockets if you're one of the big chains or one of the big companies international firms they spend millions of dollars a year buying business intelligence buying information on property availabilities so we're specifically requesting empty commercial property information you'll hear numbers in media and the press about you know 10% of properties 5% of properties 25% of properties could be vacant in a particular local authority but there's no dates from that. Most local authorities do not publish this data so quite a few you know I think I basically spent I think a month just looking through every single local authorities website to try and assess I'd give you a sense of the 350 local authorities in England and Wales and I looked at each of them to see whether they're really published and if so what what do they publish do they publish the right information I think there's only like 5 to 8% of them already publish this type of commercial property data even though most recognized this is one of the more popular requests