While I was down recovering from surgery, I did a lot of shopping on Amazon. One of the things that happened is as I had the surgery and my body shape changed and everything. And so I got to buy extra clothes. So I wanna share some of those really cute things that I got with you today. I also wanna share some makeup and a few home things that I got and of course some purses, some jewelry, some accessories. I'm excited to bring these to you. So let's get into it right now. So let's start off with what I have on. This is a three-piece loungewear suit and I loved this while I was recovering. It's super comfortable, super stretchy, three pieces. It does have the crop top but the pants come up to where the crop top is. So it does look like almost a jumpsuit. It's so cute.  I just really love this. And then I also have this adorable heart necklace, has a little heart up here that lays down and then the puffy heart, the little more puffer heart right here that is on the chain and then I have these really cute three strand huggy earrings, although they're a little bit bigger than huggies or normally for hoops but they do have a smaller size if you're interested in that. So I just love those. Also, let's talk about these cute sunglasses that I got. These are a square frame gold with the brown and the reason that I saw these is there was somebody on TikTok that was talking about their Ray Bands and I was like, oh my gosh, those are so cute. So I went over and I looked at them on Amazon. I'm like, I don't think so. I am not spending $100 for a pair of sunglasses. So these were fairly inexpensive. They do come in several different colors and I just thought they were so dang cute. And yeah, so I picked these ones up just to save a little bit of cash. While we're on the subject of fashion I wanna share with you this purse that I have that I got very recently. This looked like kind of those designer purses that they have out there but of course it's not gonna be a designer price because again, I cannot see spending that kind of money on a purse. What's inside of it is there's a cross body bag that you can use. I find that sometimes I just can't do these big bags although I will tell you that this is one of the lightest big bags I've ever tried. Now this comes in a bunch of colors as well. A bunch of different designs. It's just way cute but it does have the cross body bag that comes with it. It has the makeup pouch that comes with it as well which I thought was really cute because of its little tag or whatever you call that. So the bag is the same color as the purse with the cute detail on it right there. And then it did come with the little card holder right here which I thought was fun for it to match the purse. But you get all four pieces when it comes to you. So I really thought that was cute and really loved the purse itself. And like I said, this is really a much lighter bag than I'm used to getting when I pick up different purses. Also, I could not wait to show you these boots. This is an over the calf boot so it hit you about the knee. And you know what's interesting about this? I mean, it's got some cute detail anyway. It's got like this little duster that goes across the boot part of it. And of course it is the zip up part. This is made so well. The bottom of this though is really has a great grip on it. And it's got the waffle pattern. So when I was out in the snow and worried about falling, you know, after my surgery and everything, these were perfect. And I can wear these all day long and they don't hurt my feet all day. I had them on and yeah, it's just so kind of fun. So it has the lace up tie and then it has the insert that has the lace on it. This is just the cutest boot. I was so glad that I got this and I didn't even realize how cute they were until after I bought it. This is another boot that I got very recently. This is a little bit higher, but this is so cute to wear with skirts or if you're gonna wear tights and you know, maybe a sweater or whatever on them. This has the cutest little ruffle on it. It's so cute. It's the faux suede like the Ugg boots were. Those were the faux suede as well. And it's got the zipper on there. Now this sole is a little bit more flat. So this didn't give me as much traction. So I was a little bit more careful with this and it's a little bit higher too.  These are just absolutely adorable. And I don't know why, but I'm super into this cream color right now. Big time, I'm loving cream. Let's talk about these pants that I found. I was so glad when I found these pants. Okay, I've had to wear a waist cincher for ever since my surgery. I've had to wear some sort of compression garment because of swelling. And so when I found these, I was so excited because I could finally at least take and wear sort of nice different leggings instead of having to wear the garments that they gave me at the hospital. But this is a waist cincher. And as you can see, it's hook and eye closure right there.  If you're somebody that appreciates having that kind of waist control or tummy control, these are for you. And they're so comfortable otherwise.  I have felt in love with these. I got them in navy and I got them in gray so that I could wear them all while I was recovering. All while I was recovering. And the nice thing about them is I'm gonna be using them for a lot longer than that because they still give you that support around your stomach. But at the same time, you get to have just a legging that you're wearing. So cute with a tunic sweater or a long t-shirt. Just really cute. And I loved these. I'm gonna talk about two more purses. This is the purse that I'm using right now. This purse is about the same weight as that purse that I just showed you. That I said was the designer one in the beige. This one is so cute with the puff detail on it and the triangle designer, the diamond design, excuse me. I love that this is a flap over purse. I don't know when I got into flap over purses but I do love them now. And I love that this has a closure on it as well and it has the gold accents. So you can use this as, you know, just carry it over your shoulder or you can let that drop and then you can use this as a crossbody bag if you want to. This truly is one of the cutest bags that I've seen a long time. And I actually bought this separate because I just thought it was so pretty. So this is just a key chain that I just attached to it. And it's got the rose gold and then it's got the butterfly on there. It's got a butterfly up here too. I just thought it was just kind of fun to be able to put that on your purse and kind of dress up your purse. And I've just been putting it from purse to purse depending on which purse I was using. I know this is a random thing but socks drive me crazy sometimes.  The other thing is, is I've gotten sucked in so many times to buying socks that have all the different colors. And then you never have the same color to put on your feet because the make to your sock always gets sucked up in the dryer or something. So I've been really loving these. It comes in a pack of six. You can get the black or the white. Just trust me when I say that these are nice socks. They're not that thick but they're not that thin either. They're kind of just a perfect weight. They go great in boots and they go great in my tennis shoes as well. They're the low cut without being the ones that are the no shows. And those are the ones that slip down into my shoes. So these have been really good. I've really been enjoying these and I've been enjoying having them while I recovered because they're just great weight to keep your feet warm as well. Okay, and then we talk about one more purse and then I'll stop talking about purses. Here's another one that was a quilted purse that I fell in love with with the flap across it. Now what's cute about this, look at this detail with the gold on it. And yes, there's a lot of purses in this video but you guys know I love my purses and this is my job. So I'm always trying lots and lots of things out for you. So it has the twist closure and it really just has enough room for me for the necessities instead of overpacking my purses. I have a tendency to do that so much. Had to grab this out of my other purse because this comes with this purse. It comes with a wallet that will hold all the accordion wallets that hold all of your credit cards and it also came with this little pouch that attaches to the strap. This is such a cute purse. And again, I'm into this ivory beige color. I don't know why other than I just really do like them and I think they're just kind of a little elevated, a little fun and yeah, I just thought this was an adorable purse and really for the price for it to come with three different pieces, I thought that was really good too and I love the detailing on it. Oh, and the strap is thicker, which I like and it's very adjustable. So I really liked that a lot. Just a cute, cute purse, I really love it. Now, you guys have seen these probably all over social media. These are the knockoffs for the Stanley Cup. And those Stanley Cups are so good because they've got the double wall insulation in these cups and there's the stainless steel. They're really good for being able to hold onto the heat or the cold. 40 ounces, two of these filled up will help me almost get my water for the day, which is great, has the handle on it. And I just love this because it's like 34 hours of cold.  But I love these. I actually just sent away for another one that is blue. I think this would make a really great gift for a dad or a hubby that's on the go all the time or a mom that has to have her coffee in the morning, whatever I just think would make a really great gift. Thinking of things that I think would make a great gift. These right here are two little glass containers with pumps on them that I found for my kitchen to put next to my coffee stand. And I put in the skinny syrups or the sugar-free syrups that you can buy off of Amazon or at DJ Mac's, Marshall's, wherever. But I put these on there because I wanted to just have something cute next to them instead of those ugly bottles that you buy that always have the price tag on them that come from DJ Mac's. These are a good size. I think that they're both 16 ounces. I wanna say they're 16 ounces, but they came in the pair and you could get the silver or the gold or this was, this is the black one. Yeah, this is the black one. So I like these a lot. I love having them next to my coffee. Very easy to dispense. You could put oil in here, oil and vinegar in one or the other. You could do, if you wanted them for your dish soap, you could put it there. They're just empty pump bottles and you could put anything you want to in there. So I really like these. Also, while I'm talking a little bit about the kitchen, I wanted to show you something that I did while I was down that I'm so glad I did. First of all, I took all of my spices. I had no idea what I had in there and I transferred all of them into these bottles. These bottles come like this and they have the cute bamboo lid and then they also come with the shaker that you can put on there and they come with different labels. So I think that a black label and they had this white label and they have every spice that you can ever imagine in there. And so I took that and I redid all of my spices, which I'll show you a picture of it on my fridge. And then I also bought these magnetic holders. Now I had originally bought one that was like a shelf and I didn't like that at all, but I love these ones and this is the black one and I think it comes probably in a silver and a white. So cute. These are great and they are sturdy. They will hold a lot of weight on them because they are super magnet. And you can also put them into the wall if you want to do it that way too. If you wanted to have it, you know, somewhere in your kitchen or whatever on the wall. You could use these in any room you wanted to. If you needed it in a bathroom, if you needed it in a garage, whatever, you could use them wherever you need them. I thought this was a great idea. And I was so glad that they looked a little bit more elevated and not cheapy, you know what I mean? So I really had fun doing this project. It was great to be able to see all the spices that I had and redo that. All right, for a little bit of makeup, I have fallen in love with this mirror. And I think I showed this to you in my last Amazon one, but I want to tell you how much I love it. The reason that I love it is it has the regular magnification or no magnification on one side. And then the other side of it, it has a 10 times magnification. And then the brightness and the dimming and all that is right here on the light. So it can be dimmed quite a bit or it can be just regular and you can have it all the way upright. But it's also got three settings for different types of lighting, like daytime office and then warmer light. So this has been a great addition. And it also has this right here, which makes it be able to stand up on any table, surface or vanity or actually use it just for a handle to hold the thing as I'm using it to do my makeup. I have loved this because now that my eyesight keeps going a little bit each year, I have to have some really good magnification that I can do my tweezing with or I can do some closer up work with. So this mirror has fit the bill and I've been loving it. And speaking of tweezing, I think I may have found the best set of four tweezers I've ever found. Tweezers to me, just for me, are like the most elusive thing to find that work well. It's like trying to find the perfect concealer. It's like the unicorn that you can never find. But this comes in a set of four tweezers.  And then the teeny tiny tweezers, like just the really little ones that poke you in the eye if you get them too close. But these are really great for removing splinters. My husband, all the time, we use those on him. So these are really good, they're not that expensive. I even bought my sister these two things as a gift and she could not believe that this is the most perfect gift for her. Because she's like 13 years older than me and she loved that this had magnification in it and she loved that this had all kinds of different tweezers in it for her. So yeah, she loved that gift. I think anybody would love it. Also, I saw this on social media very recently and this is an 18 piece brush set. And I was really impressed with this. Since it was on Amazon, it was quite affordable. And what I really did like about it is that you have 10 pieces of eye brushes. And you know, when I've gotten eye brushes in the past, they've been the kind that just really haven't seemed to be good blenders or even blenders at all. And I liked that there was several different sizes of blending ones. I also love that on the other side of the spoolie to do your eyebrows, there was a really fine tip angled liner brush that you can use. That was so good for lining your upper line with just shadow. That way you can have a softer line. I just really liked that they had all of these. And then I also loved, this is so cute. They have this teeny tiny fan brush. Now what I use this for is I've used it to go down at the middle of my nose and be able to give just a little bit better of a line there. I don't do a lot of contour with my nose because I can't do it that well, but this one does a really great job of that. Oh, by the way, this one is a really great one to do your concealer right here. So I just thought that these were all really good. And I was quite impressed by the fact that they were all usable. And there wasn't just a ton of those angled brushes or brushes that really didn't serve a purpose. I think if you've wanted something that had really good eye brushes in it that you might really like this brush.  And the reason that there's three is because as I was shopping for one in particular, the other ones came up and of course I'm gonna try them for you guys so that you guys don't have to. This first one is more of a makeup brush case. So what I liked about this is that it has the cover for the makeup brushes. It has a bunch of different slats in there. You can put smaller brushes in there. Over here you've got bigger slats to put bigger brushes in there. And then of course to be able to protect them. But I also liked that it had this little case that's on the side for your dual-ended brushes. Now, when I go on a trip, I always have a problem with those dual-ended brushes that they're gonna get ruined because they just get thrown in the bottom of the bag. Well, this is a specific bag just for them.  And I liked that it was a little bit of a rolled up bag. So when you get this full, this is gonna expand and you're gonna have a really nice bag here. So I did like this one very much. And the reason I loved it was because I felt like you could put all of your makeup brushes in here and the dual-sided ones and travel like that. The next one, again, it has a part on this side right here where you can put your makeup brushes. This has two tiers on it, which I thought was really good, really excited about that. But it also has the see-through pouch right here. This is the main pouch that it has. And so let me just open that for you and you can see that it opens up wide and you can put a ton of makeup in there. It also has little pockets that go on this side right here. So you can fit a few things down in the pockets. This was a really nicely made bag as well. It reminded me of that hanging toiletry one that everybody talks about. And then on the front right here, it does have an extra little pouch that is hidden as well. And then it just has the carrying handle for a toiletry bag. So I thought that one was great. And then the last one was the one that I liked the best and I don't have anything in here right now because they just emptied this out. But this is a beautiful makeup bag that has a bunch of pouches right here. It does have another pouch on the back. And then when you open it up, it does have a ton of organizational stuff in there. But on this side right here, it has a light. So you can look down in there and see all of your stuff. I was so excited when I found this. It's just so cool. So you have a ton of storage in here. You have a ton of organization. You can put all different kinds of stuff in here, skincare, makeup, whatever you decide to put down in here. And you can see it at a glance if something gets lost in the bottom of the bag as well. It's a good size. So for travel, this would be great. This is rechargeable, such a fun bag. I was so glad to find this bag. I'm gonna show you two more pair of earrings that I really fell in love with. This first pair right here is a gold pair. What I love about these next two pairs that I'm gonna show you is this one, it has the crystals or the fake diamonds on the front. But it also has it on the inside of the hoop. And these are just smaller hoops. But when you turn, you can see that diamond on the inside of the hoop instead of just seeing gold or whatever. And so it's kind of a little bit more sparkly.  Let me show you how the difference in the two. So that's the two of them. So these are silver and they're a little bit bigger. And what's nice about these as well is it has a double hoop on there. So you get the one side that is just the plain silver and then you get the other side that has the rhinestones on it. So I thought this was really pretty as well. Really like that. I wanna share with you this Avino daily moisturizing oil mist that helped me out so much while I was recovering. It has been so hard for me to reach my legs and put lotion on them or keep everything hydrated. And this is great because you can do it in the shower.  This just made everything so convenient and so easy and super hydrating. So the oil is very penetrating and it makes your skin feel super soft. It does have a fragrance and it's really a nice fragrance. This one is kind of a coconut smell to it. This has oat oil and jojoba oil it says in it. So it just, it really works really good. You can actually shave with this if you want to as well. I haven't been doing any shaving since I've been recovering because I can't bend over with my stomach. So definitely this is something that made my life so much easier while I was in recovery.   But this smells so good and it's just a great product to be able to use while you're in the shower and save the extra step. All right, let's wrap this up with some supplements that really did help me while I was recovering. This is all over social media as well. What this is, is a liquid multivitamin and minerals and what I love about this is if you know anything about vitamins and minerals and when you take them and you take those capsules, your body has to break that capsule down and a lot of times they're made of such hard stuff that it doesn't break them down very much but this is a liquid so it's gonna go into your body and get absorbed by your bloodstream almost immediately so your body's gonna be utilizing it better. So this is Mary Ruth's liquid morning vitamins. This one is in the raspberry. It's not, it doesn't taste like raspberry at all and these don't taste the greatest but if you just do a shot of them, it's not that bad. So this is 32 ounces of it but it has so many good vitamins in it and this has helped me feel so much better and give me so much more energy. So all of those things are vegan and non-GMO and then it has the huge list of vitamins and a few minerals that it has there. I think this is a great way to be able to get your vitamins because we just don't get it in our food anymore. So this was easy to take and I really have been enjoying it now. Also, along with that, I also have been hearing all kinds of things about trace minerals and this is actually, it's called trace minerals. Consent trace is what the name of them are and it's the drops. It has 70 different kinds of trace minerals in here and it's a 96 day supply. So this was really good because the trace minerals are what really has been leached from the soil and so it just doesn't get into our food like it used to. So this has been a really great addition with this and I've just been enjoying taking them both because I felt so much better as soon as I did start taking them which was about three weeks ago. So a couple of weeks into my recovery I was trying to find something that would make me feel better and give me more energy and I feel like this has really done the job for me. All right, that's it for today's video. I'm wrapping it up. I hope that you did enjoy seeing all of these things that I got off of Amazon and I hope that you did enjoy it. Everything will be listed and linked in the description box below. Please take care of yourselves and let me know if there's anything in these past six weeks, five weeks that you have gotten off of Amazon or anywhere else that you've really been enjoying. I always love to hear that from you guys. Thank you so much for being with me and take care of yourselves and I love you very much. Goodbye my friends.


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 the Commission's weekly online event. Yes, we're a webinar. You can call us that. We won't be offended. That we hold every Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m. Central Time. We cover anything that will be of interest to librarians on the show. And we have presentations, interviews, mini-training sessions sometimes. Just anything we can come up with or that we find that's interesting out there to share with librarians. As I said, we do these shows, do the show live every Wednesday morning, but if you are unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record all of our sessions. So if you want to watch, weren't able to join us on Wednesdays, just go to our website and you'll be able to watch any of the recordings of our previous shows. We have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on our new presentation sometimes, and we have guest speakers that come on. And today we have a little mixture of it. Today we are going to be hearing about e-books in South Dakota, actually the changing landscape in South Dakota schools with the e-books that they are using there. And on the line with us, we have Julie Erickson and Joan Appel from the South Dakota State Library. Can you guys say hi? Hi. Good morning. Thank you for having us. Great. And with me here in Nebraska is Susan Nisley, who is our online services librarian, and she's in charge of our Overdrive group. And she'll be talking just briefly about that a little later. Hi, everybody. But what we're going to go to right away is Julie and Joan are going to go ahead and give us a presentation about what's going on with e-books in South Dakota. So go ahead, guys, and take it away. Awesome. Good morning, everybody. We are really excited to talk today about e-books, the changing landscape in South Dakota schools. We're going to be looking at trends we've seen in South Dakota. However, we feel like these will translate into other areas as well. And just for background, the majority of our schools are serving less than 1,000 students. So that helps your perspective in terms of what we're working with. And I'm Joan Yopal. I'm one of the school library coordinators for the South Dakota State Library. And in that role, I do site visits. So I've visited almost every school library in our state by now. And how many is that, Joan? Oh, about 400. Awesome. And I'm Julie Erickson. I'm an electronic resources coordinator for the South Dakota State Library. And I manage the state's online subscription resources in addition to working to coordinate the public library downloadable e-books and audio books through Overdrive. I have a colleague, Jane Healy, who does this with me. Today, we're going to map the route here through e-books. We know we've been talking about e-books for years, but it seems lately we've been getting many, many more questions from the basic to the complicated. And again, we're not endorsing one product over another. We do have examples and things that we're seeing out in the field. But we're going to start with some myth-busting and then show you a few statistics, talk a little history, and then go over a few models and some options. Well, to start with our e-book myth-busting, not every book is available in e-book form. Now, that seems obvious, but we get many, many questions. We recently had a teacher who was just desperate. She needed an e-book copy of a certain picture book and she needed it tomorrow. Well, it just isn't available. And again, e-book availability is due to publisher choice. The other thing we see quite often and I've seen for years is people you can see that a library owns an e-book and they want to know, well, I could interlibrary loan the paper book. Could I interlibrary loan the e-book? Unfortunately, no. You cannot interlibrary loan e-books in most cases. And so even though you see that a library has it and it is an online resource, you can't get access to it. So interlibrary loaning an e-book isn't something that you can easily do or is usually available. The other thing we see quite often is we'll have librarians get really excited because they got e-readers. E-readers is unfortunately just one of the steps to having e-books available to your students. And so just because you have e-readers doesn't mean you have e-books. And that can be really disappointing because typically we've seen that the schools have had to go through a lot of hoops and review to get the e-readers and then wait, we don't really have anything to put on the e-readers. And we'll look at some free resources but as with anything free there are drawbacks to the free resources and some of the other options. And so you may want to consider, you know, and e-readers and e-books are really two separate webinars. That could be a whole other day, right, Joan? Exactly. And then we hear a lot. Well, you don't need a library or even a librarian anymore because everything's on the internet and we can get it for free. Well, unfortunately, not everything is free. Many things are still behind paywalls. And like Julie mentioned, not everything free is what you want, nor is it of the quality that you want. So one of those things is it takes time to sort through those three things. We say it's a little bit like getting a free puppy. The puppy's free, but the shots, the food, everything else are still a cost. And then that leads us right into our last myth that, well, every e-book works on every device. There still seems to be continuing confusion about the different formats of e-books. And, you know, my daughter gave me a nook for Christmas. Now I want e-books. So again, it's that lack of some basic information and understanding, and we're all going to get there sooner or later. So our next step is we're going to take a quick look at where we are in South Dakota. In South Dakota, we have 25% of our schools that currently offer e-books, and 25% of the schools offer bring-your-own-device, or BYOD. What's cool about that is allowing the BYOD means that the schools can focus on offering e-books and not necessarily worrying about having to provide all the devices for all the students. In South Dakota, because the State Library provides subscription access to electronic resources, 100% of our schools have access to the State Library subscription electronic resources. Later on in the webinar, we'll look at some of the resources we provide that have e-books and are able to be transferred to portable reading devices. And finally, the other thing that we really wanted to emphasize is your public library can be a resource for you in the school community. In South Dakota, 77% of students or 77% of South Dakota citizens have access to e-books through their public libraries. So how does that compare nationally? Nationally, 25% of our schools have e-books, 33% offer BYOD, so South Dakota compares really well nationally. 82% of schools nationally have access to subscription electronic resources, South Dakota blows that out of the water, and 67% of citizens have access to e-books through their public libraries. So looking at your public library as a source for e-books is a good place to look. Some of the other things we found while we were preparing for this webinar was a shift. There is the recent, just as we were working on this earlier this spring, the Pew Internet released the teenagers' smartphones and how they're already changing the world, 37% of U.S. teens have a smartphone. And what a lot of people don't realize is you can read e-books on smartphones. Many smartphones have that capability, and it really isn't that small of a screen. Once you, in fact, I don't have a device, I read on my smartphone. The other thing that we found, and this is more anecdotal, is income is not a determinant for students having a smartphone. And so many times you're going to see there are more smartphones than maybe even computers in the home, for example. The other thing that popped up while we were doing our research, and it's been in the media more as there's been discussion about the nook and how their sales have declined, e-book reader preference is declining. And we found a study out of digital book world and how there's a shift from e-readers, people who use dedicated e-readers, to using tablets with the apps for their programs downloaded on them. You know, Kindle has an app, Nook has an app. I have both of those on my smartphone, and trust me, they let you buy books that way too. E-book readers who prefer a tablet have increased in just a few months, and the e-book readers who prefer a dedicated reader have decreased in that same time period. And so that is definitely something to think about as you are looking at, you know, thinking about devices and thinking about, you know, how you're going to have students read e-books. And then Joan has another comment here about how they e-read. Right. There's a recent study out of Scholastic who of course looked at the K-12 student, and kids have been reading e-books for a long time through, of course, desktop computers. But the switch now is they prefer to read on anything except a desktop computer. So smartphones, any handheld device, any tablet is really increasing, especially in the under 30 age, of course. And e-books have been around for a lot longer than we think. In fact, one of the things we like to ask is, you know, when do you think e-books started? And if you look at this awesome slide that Nebraska's Michael Sowers put together, thanks Michael, you'll see that Project Gutenberg originated back in 1971. The other thing we like to talk about is, you know, when do you think the iPad was released? And when we do this before we release the slide and have interaction, we typically get, oh, that was five, six, was it ten years ago? No, it was in 2010. And so if you think about that, feels like the iPad has been around forever, but it hasn't. It's only been around for a few years. So, you know, the technology has been around for a long time. It's changing really quickly. But, you know, you're really not that far behind if, you know, you don't have an iPad. Well, or, you know, you haven't even thought about a tablet. It's only been a couple of years. You can still get, you know, into the program. And the fact that, you know, eBooks have been around since the 70s is actually really quite cool. And to help wrap our mind around what's available and who needs it out there, we really feel like we have, can narrow it down to three audience models. You have the consumers, which primarily are the adults, but that also includes kids and their families. Then you have the public library audience. And then, of course, you have the school library audience as your third group there. Now, when you look at the consumer model or the consumer audience, of course, right away, everyone thinks of Amazon and Barnes & Noble. That is what's through the media. That's what the general public know about. They equate eBooks with Kindles and Nooks. And, rightfully so. They've gotten the word out. And that has the use of eBooks through those two have increased greatly. Because not only did they offer you the device, but the content at the same time. And, of course, as Julie mentioned, there are apps for all of these. You can read them. I started out reading eBooks first on my BlackBerry, for instance. Then moved on to other devices. And, of course, then the iPad and the iPhone. But besides Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple, we do have the library model for the consumer, which seems to be a little harder to get that news out there. For example, I have a 24-year-old niece who used her library all the time for print and never thought that it would be available electronically. The public library is a great place to see what your options are. In South Dakota, most of our libraries have overdrive. However, some of the libraries are adding other eBook resources. One has recently added Access 360. As a school, you know, encourage your students to look to the public library because most students are able to get a public library in their community. And if they don't qualify to get a public library card in their community, they may be able to purchase one. Joan purchases a card to one of the local libraries for $35 a year, has access to their entire print and eCollection. Another way that the public library and the schools are working together in South Dakota is the public library may build special collections to support the schools. In one of our communities, the public, the high school has iPads, and so every student has an iPad. The public library purchases additional young adult content so the students have recreational reading materials to use on the school-provided devices. So they're developing a targeted collection and they are working with the school to, you know, help promote that. And when we look to the school, we have found several years ago we had a few districts that received a grant. And so they invested in some Sony readers, some did nooks, some did kindles at that time. And one of the things that they found with these maybe small classroom collections of devices is they just weren't finding enough or being able to purchase enough, fast enough of content for their purposes. So what we have seen them move to rather than buy the device and provide the content that way, the majority of our schools are doing what we call, I guess in the old days, we would call they're using jobbers. Follett Shelf is one of our big ones. The majority of our schools also have Follett Destiny and this is a great choice because of course it integrates right in and they're able to provide that collection that supports the school curriculum. We also have a district that says they prefer Follett Shelf of the many other options for note taking and research. And now Follett Shelf as well as the several other jobbers are including additional components. But the other big what we call the jobber platform is the overdrive. We have schools who have subscribed to overdrive as a district and they feel that that's meeting their recreational fiction reading needs, especially for their older students and also for their older students it's meeting some of the nonfiction needs. But rather than to provide the device, if they are providing the content through these two, they're getting access to many more publishers. For instance, we have a school district that's just one building, one library, K-12, less than 400 students and they just couldn't see how they could provide an overdrive subscription by themselves. So they talk to their local public library and together they added their funding together and they were able to, with their shared resources, the public library subscribed to overdrive and the school said all we ask in return for our funds is that we make sure every one of our students has a public library card. And of course you get into some of those technical things that we know you have to think about whether your local tech person is, well they certainly need to be on the same page with you, but whether they're right with you and I'm being able to download and we know there are certain restrictions on school networks. But all of that of course is another webinar too. These are just some choices. So now we get to the phrase that strikes fear in our hearts, we need to do e-books. There isn't one answer to doing e-books. And as we went through and prepared for this webinar, we really tried to think about ways to describe the content and ways to describe it and how to think about it. We came up with a visual to hopefully make it a little more clear. There are three basic models for platform and content and what you actually pay for. The first one is you have the platform history, but the books, you have to pay for the books. The next one is you pay a fee for the platform and you have to pay for the content. Overdrive is a good example of that. You pay an access fee to have access to their platform plus you have to buy the content book by book. And then finally, there are some models that allow you to have, you pay one set fee for the platform and you get all the content included. Other things that come along with the different models are you may end up with some resources that have interactivity or games and quizzes. So those are all things to look at. Like we've said, in South Dakota, Overdrive is very popular. The schools are using it for their recreational fiction needs and with Overdrive, you have to pay for the platform plus build your collection. Most of Overdrive is a one book per person model and so if you want to have a class read one book, you're going to have to buy enough copies for the class. They do have an annual subscription called the Simultaneous Use Plan, which is from selected publishers and suppliers. So not every book would be available and there's other restrictions around that. The other cool thing about Overdrive that we didn't see in a lot of the other platforms is they do have a district option. And so while some of the models require that every school, if they want to have the book, they have to purchase a copy of that book. With Overdrive, you have a district option and so you could set up the elementary collection, the high school collection and the high school collection and all of your elementary schools would have access to the same titles. So we've been pushing you to look at your public libraries. In South Dakota, our graphics designer has created an excellent map to illustrate where which libraries have e-book access and the glowing stars of the libraries that have downloadable e-books and audio books in South Dakota. And Krista, you've invited Susan, who coordinates Overdrive and you're in Nebraska. We'd just like to kind of know what kind of coverage you have in Nebraska and how that works. Sure. Hi. Well, for us, our, as far as public libraries go, we have Omaha Public Library and they have their own collection. They went before the group got started and so they've got their own standalone collection. Lincoln City Libraries also has its own standalone collection and those were probably the only two libraries in the state that could afford their own standalone collection given the set up costs initially. So we do have, then, a group. It's about, I think we're up to about 140 public libraries now and actually I think there's one school in there that got grandfathered in back with our very first group that got set up. So we got, when we look at the population coverage in the state between the group collection, Omaha and Lincoln, we've got about 1.38 million patrons covered out of the state population of 1.7 million. So we're getting there. Yay. Well, it's huge. When you think about how many citizens have access, it is really cool and I know you guys have done some really great things down there. I know. We're always having new libraries join the group as well. It's an ongoing, growing group, growing process. Right. And many of the public libraries that haven't joined yet are the libraries that serve under 1,000 pop served.  We've got an initial, they're really small libraries. It costs $1,000 the first year to get to join the group and then $500 in subsequent years. And some of them, that's still too much. So it's still kind of a challenge. It is. Our lowest tier for the public libraries is $600. And it's, we have libraries that struggle to reach that. However, we're up to 70 libraries in South Dakota and we still get interest in libraries at Inquirer. So it is. But what's great about having, you know, access to the public library is, you know, you can encourage students to get a library card at their public library and then they'll have access to downloadable e-books and audio books, even if the school can't afford to have access. Thanks, Susan. Sure. The other thing that we mentioned early on is many of the subscription resources that the South Dakota State Library provides to all schools, public libraries, and academic institutions in South Dakota have e-books. And so the four big ones that have e-books that you can download and transfer are Learning Express, World Book, e-books on Absco, and Gale Virtual Reference Library. And so while these aren't the, you know, popular best-selling fiction books, they are great for research and there's a lot of the classics in World Book Advanced. And then for schools, again, we talk about the job or platforms. And the advantage here, again, is you're having access to multiple publishers. Of course, only publishers who offer e-content would be included. It's not everything that you necessarily need or want. And of course, we're not saying that the print collections are going away. These are working hand in hand. One of the questions I get is, well, if I buy it in an e-book, why would I spend the money to buy it in a print book? Well, of course, that's a local decision, but you have available multiple formats or multiple reasons would be my answer. And that meets the multiple needs of all your students and your teachers. With both the Follett Shelf and the Mac and Via, also there are options. There are one-to-one titles that are available, but there are titles that are available according to publisher rights that can be used by an unlimited number of users. And one of the things that we have found, particularly we have a district who has Follett Shelf and they held an open house one evening for parents and allowed parents to bring their own devices and set it up so that they could then access these e-books from home through their own devices. In addition to multiple publishers, then you have just the publisher platform. Capstone seems to be a very popular one, but the downside here is that you select the titles just from Capstone or you get a already pre-selected set of titles, so that's a little different on your collection development. But Capstone is very popular with teachers because, of course, everything projects in your smart board. It's always available. If I'm a second grade teacher and I want to use that frog book on Tuesday, it's there. I simply have to log in. I don't have to download or check it out ahead of time. And then Storia, which is from Scholastic, is another publisher platform. Originally, Storia was marketed as a at-home e-book option. The platform is free and then you purchase the content. And then it was also really set up for classroom use because there are a lot of bells and whistles in Storia where you can track students' reading and things like that. I have found locally that we had a special needs student who had a school-provided iPad that they wanted him to take home and use but they didn't have any content for him. So they were able to use Storia and subscribe to specific content for that student which helped him very much. But Storia, they tell us, is going to further develop and they're really looking more at a library-type model to be included there. So that's one to keep your eye on, too. Another model is streaming. Tumblebooks have been around for a long time. Kids have used those for years on desktop computers. Tumblebook has lots of options now and it's no longer just for the picture book crowd. It goes all the way K-12. And also they have introduced an offline option so that many schools who have a bandwidth problem won't have to worry about that because there is something that they can use offline Starwalk Kids Media came about recently to meet a need for quality non-fiction is part of their purpose and Seymour Simon and many of the other non-fiction authors that are very well-known are part of this. And again, both of these streaming is at the time you want it. You need the bandwidth but always available, always ready. Now, Tumblebooks it seems has associated with Follett and Starwalk Media has associated with Mac and Via so again, some of these multiple publisher platforms are offering not only e-books but things that we would call databases. So a lot of it is looking at what are you getting for what you're subscribing to, I guess is the point there. Now, pay-per-use is another interesting way to look at it. Brain Hive is one platform that was developed specifically for K-12 for school librarians and they totally integrate the Renaissance Learning Accelerated Reader if you're doing that, quizzes everything, totally integrates with Brain Hive. Brain Hive is a $1 per checkout use for the e-books. However, you set it up sort of like a debit card. You could say you have $500 and then you spend it down. I know of one school who has Brain Hive but they don't make it openly available to the entire school. The library uses it as sort of a backup when other e-books are out or when a teacher comes in and they need ten copies of something and they only can find eight, Brain Hive can come to the rescue there for $1. There are lots of options too for Brain Hive such as if you check it out so many times, then you have what they call purchase. And again, in the e-book world, the difference between owning and leasing and purchasing, it's kind of fuzzy. But that's another thing to take a look at there with Brain Hive. Another option that we are always surprised to find that people are unaware of are the differentiated options that are basically provided for free through federal services. The National Library Service Talking Books service is gone totally digital. They now have an online downloadable called BARD so that as students download books, they can own them forever. This is often associated with the senior citizen talking book service. But it's for all ages and of course there are certain criteria that you have to qualify to be able to become a part of this, but it's all for free. And in South Dakota, you would contact through the state library and other states the Braille and Talking Book Services arranged a bit differently, but it's available for everyone. Another federal option is Bookshare, which comes just through the U.S. Department of Education. And Bookshare is also online and it also has a bit different criteria than the National Library Service, but it's all differentiated options that are available for students of all ages. And as we promised earlier, there are free things out there. You do have a link to more free things on the handout that will be posted. For the time being, we'll focus on a couple of them here. As with the free puppy we, Joan mentioned earlier, free isn't always free. The storyline online is a really great one. It's produced by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and they do a nice job of presenting e-books, but that's more about you watch it on the computer type thing. We give books, some schools use that, and Joan, didn't you have experience with that? My granddaughters, when she was in first grade, they used this as a read at home promotion so that all you needed was a desktop computer and you could be part of that program. And then some of the other resources, example we gave here is Adobe Digital Editions. They have a sample e-book library. And so you can get, in some cases, you can get the entire book, but in other cases you only get chapter one or a short synopsis of it. The content and quality is going to vary. You may not have the addition that you need. It may not be the complete addition. And so those are all things to consider when you're looking for the content there. And we have just touched the service and again we're not endorsing one product over the other. We've just tried to talk about the trends with the products and examples that we know of. But since we started this research, the library technology reports have come out with a great document, the e-book platforms for libraries. And in here there are 51 different platforms discussed in detail, and there's contact information, as well as the information has been put into chart format, which I found very helpful. As you take a look across what do they offer, what age is it for, and how do you subscribe. So I would recommend taking a look at that further. And if you have questions, we're ready for those. Okay. Great. Thank you, Julie and Joan. Does anybody have any questions, comments, anything from the audience? You can use the question section of your GoToWebinar interface to type in any questions you have or any comments or any ideas about what you're doing in your school or library. Do you have anything, Susan? You want to? Hi, this is Susan, and I actually have a question for you guys. I'm just really curious about what's your sense of how many of your school libraries have been able to get their own overdrive at collection going. We've obviously had lots of interest in Nebraska, but at some point overdrive changed their policy and they won't let schools join our public library group. They weren't interested in us forming a school library consortium. And it sounded like the lowest price that they would offer to schools at the district level would be that $4,000 a year, and so many of our schools, the district is just a high school, middle school, and elementary school, and they can't afford that. So as far as I know, I just know about one high school in the state that's actually doing a pilot with overdrive. And I just wonder how your schools are doing it if any of them have been able to go it alone with overdrive? Actually, we too had investigated trying to do a group or something to help the schools become overdrive members and that isn't really an option. We do have about a half a dozen schools and I haven't looked lately, but we have about a half a dozen schools and there are larger schools that have actually created overdrive collections and are actively using overdrive. And they kind of went with the district model and so they set up the elementary, the middle school, the high school collections there. And we too have had interest from some of our smaller schools that want to get into e-books and that's kind of where this webinar originated from or this training originated from was we field a lot of questions from the schools and they just, they want e-books but they don't really understand that like with overdrive, it's a platform fee plus you have to buy the content. You know that there are lots of options out there but you need to look at what the best option for your school may be and maybe it is, you know, partnering with your public library or encouraging your students to use the public library for their e-books and doing some different things. So that's kind of where we're at. We have a similar experience. I know you guys, I remember when we first started looking you still had schools being able to join your group and that wasn't an option when we were looking. I know in the e-book world it changes what, minute by minute? Right. And when we first started we were just doing audio books and schools were interested but there weren't a lot of audio books that would work with Macs at the time and so that stopped a lot of them from joining when we were doing audio books and so of course, you know, then when we started getting e-books they were interested again but by that time overdrive changed their criteria for consortium membership. Exactly and one of the things that we're finding too is, you know, the districts that we had that experimented with the e-readers really are moving away from that and we have many one-to-one schools where the students are issued a school laptop or for instance one of our bigger districts next year every student's going to have a Chromebook and so they're interested in what works with those devices but then our smaller districts who aren't one-to-one are really looking at that bring-your-own device. Let's offer the content and see what the kids bring. It's amazing how many kids show up with smartphones and they simply need the information and, you know, a little bit of instruction and they can read e-books on their smartphones. So everything we've said today and will tell you will probably change tomorrow and that's okay. One of the things we encourage our librarians is just jump into something if you're really interested in this even if it's just looking at the free things that we know are going to it's going to take a lot more of your time and a lot more instruction but it's out there and some of it is just giving it a try. We've also found that those who are the consumer of e-books and have tried it personally are much more willing to jump in and give it a try. We have, you know, many who say, I have a Kindle at home and I do this at home but what can I do at school? And so that kind of helps make the transition. But there's no one easy answer. The other thing is we have schools, I guess, who might offer three or four platforms. If you look at their library website, there's three or four, maybe five or six different platforms to get to the content you need and that's what some of them find frustrating that you have to say, well, no, that book is through Capstone. No, this book is you'll find in Follett Shelf and that they have so many portals to enter. But they make it work. You work with what you got, I guess. Anybody out in the audience have any questions or comments? Nothing has come through yet. All right, doesn't look like there's anything urgent. Oh, yes, go ahead. Oh, no, it's just me. I was just going to say thanks. We're glad everybody was able to come today and we really appreciate the opportunity to be able to share this information. Actually, we do have one question that just popped in there, probably typing while I was talking. Questions, do any of them, I assume they mean the schools there, put mark records into their ILS to access the items? Yes, that is another big question we get often. And of course, depending on the platform and the publisher, it's easier sometimes than not. And that's another reason I think they've leaned toward the Follett Shelf because Follett makes it very easy to do that as well as in Follett with the current common core emphasis on text complexity. You're getting lexile levels. You're getting the accelerated reader level information in your mark record and they're finding that's all very useful too. And again, Mac and Via does all that too. It's not just one or the other. It seems that in South Dakota we're leaning to Follett. That does, here in Nebraska we have the... I have heard of, I do know some of our schools who have Follett have gone that route as a way to get started. So that's, I would say that's true in Nebraska also. But I just like to add, I'm really glad that you did this session because obviously we get questions about what's going on in schools and I always feel like we don't adequately answer those questions. So I jumped at the chance to attend your webinar. So thanks for holding it. Well, thank you. And the mark record, again, is a very important thing, especially when you're running maybe three or four or five different platforms to find your content. Right. At least you can give them one place to start and then just send them off to the different places to get what they need. Exactly. Well, it doesn't look like anything urgent has come in while we were talking. That's fine. If anyone does have any questions or you think of anything, there's Julie and Joan's contact information on there. I'm sure they'd be happy to answer any questions you have. So thank you very much, Joan and Julie and Susan, for being here with us today to talk about e-books in schools and a little bit in public libraries too. The session has been recorded. The PowerPoint presentation and the handout that was sent out to everyone will be posted up along with the recording. And all of the links and things that were mentioned during the session have also been captured into our delicious account. So you can go there to get access to everything that was mentioned. So thank you very much. Yeah, thank you.  Oh, and we've got, oh, just, I don't know if you guys didn't know, Jane Healy is actually on the line and she says, great, good job, thanks. Thanks, Jane. Yeah, thanks, Jane. Okay. Just waiting for my screen. There we go. All right. So thank you guys, everyone, very much for attending Encompass Live this week. I hope it was helpful for you. As I said, it was recorded and the recording should be up sometime later today. So you can watch it again or share with your colleagues who may have been unable to join us this morning. I hope you'll join us next week when our topic is technology in libraries. What's next? Michael Sowers, who's the Technology Innovation Librarian here at the Nebraska Library Commission, we're doing this presentation about upcoming technologies available to coming up for libraries. This isn't as usual monthly tech talk. That was actually last week. This is just a separate special presentation that he is doing for us. So sign up for that and join us next week. Also, Encompass Live, we are on Facebook. So if you are a Facebook user, we definitely encourage you to like us on Facebook so you'll get notifications of when new shows are coming up, new topics, when the recordings are available. Reminders, as you've seen here, I did a little reminder this morning, letting people know they could join us for this morning's show.  Other than that, we are done for this morning. Thank you very much everyone for attending and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.


If you see a traditional Chinese medicine doctor and you have them feel your pulse and look at your tongue and maybe touch your abdomen you might wonder how did they actually use these tools these diagnostics to come to a conclusion about what might be going on in your body. So I thought in this video I would just demonstrate on a live patient and you could see how do we utilize these three sort of obscure pieces of information to come up with a pattern and a diagnosis. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Hain doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. So today we are here with Julie again and we're gonna demonstrate what based on what I see in her tongue her pulse and her abdomen what some common symptoms are that she may be experiencing. So I'm gonna have her start by very embarrassingly sticking her tongue out at the camera. So the first thing we're spotting is just look at the tongue body. You can see the scalloping on the tongue is very very diagnostic so you see that right here that scallop shape is very often an issue with digestion primarily usually with the spleen and the stomach. So very often people with the scalping are prone to digestive bloating can be prone to food sensitivities sometimes they're very prone to having food allergies in general there are a lot of things that flare up their digestion and very often it's even indicative of certain formulas or even certain herbs. You guys have seen my video on fooling the herb that we use for bloating and anxiety this tongue is kind of like a fooling tongue in some ways. Now the other part of her tongue is that the tip is a little bit a little bit on the reticent but in general slightly puffy we see the scalloping and overall the the color is somewhat in the middle. So in terms of what just jumps out I'm not a tongue diagnosis specialist I don't use a lot of tongue diagnosis in my practice but I'm just thinking let's flag this as maybe maybe she has some digestive problems that kind of thing. So now I'm going to feel her pulse and I'm just going to start here just I don't normally feel it like this but just for the sake of the video so you can see. So the overall pulse is regular and the main finding that I'm picking up is that there's a difference in the change in quality on the middle position which is the stomach and the spleen position. The quality in this one is that it's actually tight as opposed to a soft kind of pulse. So that tightness on that area the spleen stomach sometimes is what we call a wood overacting on earth pulse which sometimes is indicative of things like abdominal pain and cramping. Now the main finding on the left pulse is also in the middle position and this one is soft so very commonly when there's pathology in the liver and gallbladder or the gallbladder and the triple warmer we tend to find it in this middle position the pulse is soft so almost always I'm assuming there's an issue with the earth organs which are digestive so that's just the first sort of thought that comes to mind based on those two things. So I'm going to have Julie lay down now we're just going to look at the abdomen first see if anything jumps out so we're looking does it look imbalanced in any way puffy sunken maybe a little bit in the epigastrium. You know while we've been talking I've noticed for example some digestive sounds so there's some gurgling then we have to find out did she just eat did she just drink but the upper epigastric area feels a little bit sunken and sometimes when it's sunken or even as we go towards the umbilicus there's areas of hardness very often these are issues related to what we call spleen sheet efficiency so issues often with bloating gas food baby food sensitivities that sort of thing so I just noticed there's a sunken area in the epigastric area very often is a spleen or digestive finding then we can ask her more about her history and things like that but based on the tongue we've seen the scalloping which is often a spleen stomach finding sometimes also people with long-term issues with spleen and digestion have issues with blood formation so we tend to ask you know do you have issues with anemia do you have issues with anemia so she does have issues with anemia and you can also look at her complexion and her body type too to see maybe there's a constitutional pattern there as well but long-term issues with the spleen we say that the spleen generates the blood so if there is long-term issues with digestion sometimes there's a failure to generate blood so some women will have scanty cycles or no cycles at all for example but we've taken three pieces of objective data the tongue the pulse and the abdomen the main area that jumps out just via superficial palpation was just the epigastric area and it's a common area to find findings but overall we're seeing a lot of possible constitutional issues related to digestion so then we can ask her more about her history but we can tie the threads between the tongue the pulse and the abdomen just in about five minutes before even asking the patient any questions what might be going on in their body so that's just a very very very quick way of looking at how diagnosis comes together in traditional Chinese medicine and again if you guys want to learn more check out more about my practice as well as the free guide I've put together there's two links right below this video one is on the free guide for daily rituals that can possibly help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine


We talked in the jobs plan about creating sector-specific strategies that would help guide our work. And so I'm pleased to be here today to announce the first of one of those strategies. It's a five-year tourism strategy that we are calling gaining the edge. It will maximize economic growth and job creation all across our province. You, in this room, have put an incredible amount of work into this document, and it really does belong to you as much as it does to the government. It will grow tourism revenues by 5% a year, up to $18 billion by 2016. And it outlines five specific areas where we will grow tourism. First, we are going to focus on key products. So examples of those key products are Aboriginal tourism, ecotourism, outdoor adventure, touring vacations, conventions and meetings, city experiences in our great skiing and snowboarding you'll find in every part of British Columbia. Second, the strategy targets markets where our products have the greatest growth potential. Third, the strategy focuses on facilitating world-class experiences, and that means more partnerships with local governments and businesses to make sure that we are market-ready. Fourth, it means working with industry to remove the barriers for growth, not unlike what we're trying to do with all kinds of other industries in British Columbia, and making sure that you have workers that have the skills that you need to provide the very unique services that each of you provides. And fifth, it means creating a stable action plan for predictable long-term funding. We cannot stay the world's best-kept secret. We have a chance to outperform every other economy in Canada. And we have a plan that belongs not just to government, one that also belongs to you. And if we can work on this together, if we can see this plan as a plan that doesn't belong to government, it doesn't belong to one party, it belongs to every single person in British Columbia. We can make the most of this chance. We can take this opportunity, and we can reach out around the world and welcome them here into our great province. I believe that this is our chance to lead. It is our chance to step up in Confederation and do more than we ever have for Canada. And that is why we called that plan. Canada starts here. Thank you so much.