Hey Co-Friends, I'm Bianca Renee and you're watching Bianca Renee Today and today by popular demand, I'm reviewing the entire For You by Tia Products. If you have been living under a rock and you don't follow me on Instagram, first of all, we have to fix that immediately. Follow me at Ms. Bianca Renee. But you might have seen that I was personally invited to go to the For You by Tia launch party where I got to meet Tia Mori, you know, sister-sister, what am I like, idols growing up, being a curly girl growing up in the 90s, we didn't have much representation. So I looked up to Tia and Tamara and Scary Spice and I've always loved my curls and possibly because of them and that type of representation that I didn't really realize was a big deal until now. But at the party, they gave us a goodie bag of all the products in the line and they talked about them. They talked about the ingredients. So I'm going to share all that with you today and try all of them. Now even though I love Tia Mori and I was invited to her launch party, I'm still not giving an honest review per usual. First of all, the products are 13 fluid ounces. So they're pretty big bottles. I feel like an average bottle lately has been like eight or 10 ounces. So I'm happy with the 13 fluid ounces. Okay. Second thing is the price range. These are available at Walmart and on their website and they're only $9.99 per bottle. $9.99 seems to be the magic number lately for my hair products that I've been trying. So I just love being able to give you guys more affordable options. Sometimes you guys get mad at me like, I'm the one making up the prices, but I'm always for affordability because that will encourage more people to try it and more people to rock their natural curly hair. That's all I'm trying to do. It's getting more people to rock their natural curly hair. So thank you Tia for making some affordable curly hair products. So what's in the line? We got two different types of cleansers and two different types of conditioners. So before we get into the stylers, let me show you how I applied these in the shower. Starting off with the For You Clarifying Shampoo. This is supposed to deeply cleanse and remove buildup. It has apple cider vinegar and hemi 15. When I saw apple cider vinegar, that was one of the ingredients I got so excited about because I love what apple cider vinegar does for our hair, but I hate the smell. So let's do a little smell test again. Luckily it does not smell like apple cider vinegar. It kind of doesn't really smell like anything. It smells like a clear gel. Like just, I don't know what, I don't know, I don't know. You know that youth to the people cleanser that everyone loves? Kind of like that. But thank God it doesn't smell like apple cider vinegar. Okay, let's talk about this hemi 15 situation ingredient. I've never heard of it before, but apparently it is a silicone alternative and you know I'm all about that. So according to the website, hemi 15 is clinically proven to improve the health of hair, instantly smoothing texture and increasing hair's ability to retain moisture. This hemi 15 ingredient is a breakthrough silicone alternative because from 100% sustainable and ethically grown renewable sugarcane. So I thought the clarifying shampoo is decent. So then after I rinse it out, now I'm going to do double shampoo, which I normally don't do but I want to try both of them. This is a moisturizing shampoo. It gently cleanses and softens your hair. It has watermelon and hemi 15. Now this one, this one smells good. This one I'm getting like the sweet juicy watermelon vibes from it. So I'm very big on scents and I like that. This is supposed to be a rich shampoo that cleanses without stripping a central moisture. It's supposed to make your hair soft and hydrated. Which is just like an added bonus that I think from a shampoo because that's not where I expect to get my hydration, but I'll take it if I can. The moisturizing shampoo got really bubbly, really fast and I like a shampoo that lathers. So if I had to choose between the two, I'm going to go with the moisturizing shampoo. Here's my hair before I took a shower. I had some product buildup going on. I did use these products earlier in the week or revisit that later. And then here's how my scalp looked after. So it does look nice and clean now, but stay tuned. Now that I've tried both of the shampoos, let's do a side-by-side split comparison of the conditioners. This is the lightweight conditioner and gently moisturizes and detangles. It has CMOS and hemi 15. It's a lightweight conditioner that gently detangles curls, hydrated hair without the weight. So when it comes to a conditioner, things that I look for, I want slip. That's all we really care about. Nobody likes the detangles, okay? It just takes too long. We want to be able to run our fingers through our hair like Jay Holiday and just be done. So I would say this conditioner has a good slip, but wasn't amazing. Let's see if the moisturizer conditioner does better. This one, it's a little smell test. All these products are so lightweight that you have to do an intense sniff to smell anything. So if you are sensitive to smells and fragrances and scents, you're probably going to like this line because it's very, very, very faint. This one does smell better than the lightweight one. It's a little more floral. There's supposed to be a deeply moisturizing conditioner that nourishes and detangles. Although it's saying deeply moisturizing, I would not call this a deep conditioner. It's a very loose, runny consistency. So I really hope that they add a thick, deep conditioner to the collection in the future. If you want help, call me. I got you. So once I rinse the conditioner out of my hair, I felt them and I did notice that the moisturizer conditioner side did feel a little bit more moisturized than the other, but they were pretty similar. All right, let's get into my favorite part, the stylers. I'm all about the stylers because I like instant results. And once you do your hair with stylers, you know exactly what's going to work pretty quickly. So we've got two different stylers here. The leave-in curl cream and we have the curl defining gel. You guys know that I always say that a leave-in conditioner is not a styler unless it tells you that it is. So this is a leave-in curl cream that actually states it's supposed to smooth, frizz, and softly hold. Two things that a leave-in conditioner usually doesn't do. It has flax seed in it, which is like, makes me excited because I love my homemade flax seed gel. So that was a good sign plus this heavy 15 situation. So I'm going to start with this. I haven't tried this on its own yet, but it actually might work because of the flax seed. Like that's what gives me the confidence in it. What it gives, nourished curls without the frizz. Apply to clean, damp hair, comb to distribute evenly. For more hold, follow with the curl defining gel, which you know I'm about to do. So first of all, the packaging. This is new. I have a lot of products and I don't think any of my products have this little twisty do at the bottom. So you twist it and then it comes out. I kind of really like this.  I'm so glad that the shampoo condition did not have pumps. But I'm all about the squeeze. I guess you got to make sure just to like wipe it or maybe that could probably get crusty packaging. I think it's cool. It smells good. Very floral scent, still pretty light. I have to go like to really smell it, start at the ends, work my way up. I would say it has good slip on top of already being detangled, of course. Smooth. The other side, I keep wanting to go like this to close it. Now I guess I need two hands to close it. Okay. Maybe after use is not as easy, but to start is cool. Consistency, it's a very lightweight cream. So I have very fine hair. So I am down for a lightweight leave-in conditioner. If your hair is really dry, it might not be enough for you. I really hope and recommend that they make a deep conditioner next. Something thicker for the thicker, higher density, higher porosity gals and guys. But for my hair, this is doing good. I almost feel confident enough to just use the cream on its own. Like the curls look really shiny and defined right now. Probably for a soft, fluffy look. But let's have the gel. Okay. Leave-in curl cream. I like it. This is the Curl Defining Gel delivers definition and shine aloe vera. We love seeing an aloe vera ingredient plus Hemi 15 long lasting styling gel that defines curls flexible hold and protection from environmental stressors. Now if you know me, you know I'm a strong hold gal. I don't mind my curls being crunchy. It was actually kind of funny at the event when I was talking to Tia and her team. They were like, yeah, it's a gel, but it doesn't leave your hair like, you know, hard and crunchy. And I'm like, all right, here's the consistency. It's kind of goopy, not really like a cream, almost like a cream gel. It smells like hair gel. Like not really a scent. The aloe vera doesn't really have a scent either, so I'm not really surprised. It's everything is super light, even for the scent, so I'm going to smooth. Ooh, I think the aloe vera is giving it some slip. One thing that Tia literally told me was that she likes, maybe she was talking about the cream. When you put in the cream, you don't see any like whiteness and you don't have to wait for it to dry. But when I put in the gel and the cream together, you do see the white. It almost looks like they wouldn't get along, but that would be wild. Adding some more gel to this side. Yeah, it's like a cream gel. I do know that flax seed always makes my hair super shiny and aloe vera does that too, so this should be a good mix. Okay, we are fully applied and styled. So now I'm going to let this air dry for a little bit. I could just go in with my diffuser, but I want to see how much of a cast this creates on its own and then I'll go in and diffuse for extra volume. And I'm back. It has now been one hour and we have a little bit of a cast. It looks very defined, but if we look closely, the soft hold is softened. Because it's soft hold, it would probably be better if I air dried, but to be completely honest, I never air dry. If I'm trying to like look good and go somewhere, I'm going to diffuse. And I like a strong hard cast so that it can withstand my diffuser. So I'm going to diffuse and I can see things probably getting a little fluffy. The curls are curling. Got some good volume for day one.  It's very soft. What do we think? We still have one more thing to try. This is the For You multi-use hair oil. Prevents breakage and adds sheen, vitamin E plus hemi 15 sulfate silicone free. It has squalene in it, which is used for moisture. It's in a lot of skincare products, how I know of it. Let's try it. Now if I had a strong hold gel, I would then use this to break the cast. I don't have a cast to break, so I think it's just going to make my hair even softer. Let's see if it increases the shine. Does it have a scent? It doesn't smell like anything. It kind of smells like sugar water. Did I add a couple drops?  So I got some type of frizz situation going on over here. And I think that's because it's not a strong hold gel. Let's see if I can fix it. Let's just go with the gel. A little bit more. It looks beautiful. This looks great. I think it does look good. I'm really glad with the really look. There's no white cast. There's no white residue. I thought there might have been after looking how it was when it was wet. So that's good. Now I have seen a few reviews saying that it flakes. Let's do a shake test. I should have worn black so you guys could really see. I'm going to hold up my shirt and see if I catch anything. I'm not seeing any flakes. I don't know why they would get flakes and I wouldn't. If we're all using the same thing. Okay, no flakes. But I have noticed that on my scalp. Can you see? There's still like some white. Like it almost looks like product buildup. So I don't know if that is from... See, like what is that? I'm not getting like flakes but I do see some buildup on my scalp. I don't know if that's from the product drying on my scalp. Like maybe the stylers drying on my scalp. Meaning I should focus them more on the lengths of my hair and avoid the top of my head. Or if that's going to be a call to the shampoo. And poo not doing a good enough job cleansing it. I feel like it looked fine after I washed it twice. But you know sometimes when your scalp actually dries that's when you notice things. I don't know what it is. Now the funny thing is like I do think my hair looks really good. It's really soft. I'm still getting definition. I'm getting shine. I feel like in order for me to really use an oil like you got to make it super shiny and smell amazing. You guys know I didn't even use oils until the curl smith one because that smell is just my favorite thing in the world. Yeah, it's shiny. I think I would just be more excited to use it if it had more of a scent. I almost forgot we do have one more product. This is the For You Curl Refresher Mist. It's supposed to hydrate and revive your hair. It has rosemary and hemi-15. It's supposed to be a lightweight mist that revives curls. What it gives. Refreshed hydrated hair. How to use on non-wash days spray evenly onto damp hair. I did use this already. I tried this on a refresh day and it honestly didn't do much for my hair. It kind of felt like I was just spraying water. It's a very light mist. I can't even see it. I kind of love with the smell but like you know if I'm going to use a refresh spray I need to give me hold. I needed to re-hold my now soft curls from being on a day 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 day hair. Overall concluding thoughts on the For You By Tia products. I wanted to absolutely love, love, love, love, love these. I like them. I can't say I love, love, love, love them. What do I want you to try? Try the moisturizing ones. Try the curl cream. Maybe the gel if you're feeling feisty. I'm not really mad at the conditioners. They didn't have the best slip in the world but it was good. If you have fine hair and like a looser curl pattern like me, these can work really well for your hair. I mean I do think my hair looks really good. It'll be good for today but by tomorrow I know I'm going to have to add a lot more gel. But I'd still want more hold. This has not changed how I feel about Tia Maureen. I still love her as a person at the launch party. She was so personable, so humble, so sweet. You always know when a celebrity is nice when they're like hi, my name is Tia.  And that's who she is. There was no arrogance about her at all. So it was a pleasure meeting her. I could feel that she was passionate about these products and having curly hair. People love to take the negative route when it comes to celebrity hair products saying it's just a cash grab, blah, blah. They're like yeah, she is going to make money off of this because of her name and people are going to buy it regardless because they like her. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't genuinely like love or want to create good products. You know how much time it takes to make a brand and like to create products? I don't think you would just do this just because and put out something bad. Like you want to put out something that everybody loves. That's always the goal. We just got to work some things. These products are not going to work for everyone. That's just the facts. So I think if it was remarketed in a way like that this is made for this hair type, it would get a lot more positive feedback. But now we just expand the line from here. We add some thicker products for tighter textures. We add more moisturizing products for drier hair. We add a stronghold gel for me. And we're going to be alright too. We're going to be alright to see a little bit more hold. So you think of my hair. Do you like how it looks? Does it look better? Does it look worse? Do you like lightweight products? Do you like flexible hold? Do you like stronghold? Have you tried them? Will you try them? Do you like the price point? Leave all your thoughts and comments below. If you want to try them, I'll link them in my description box. But make sure you come back next week for my pattern blow dryer review. We got more celebrities making more things. And you know I want to try it and give you an honest review. So come back next Sunday and every Sunday after that because I post new videos every single week. Make sure to give me a thumbs up and subscribe. And follow me on Instagram and Tiktok at Ms. Bianca Renee. And I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching Bianca Renee today.


We're going to show something. Yeah, I'm still this is like a hand-made prototype You have some questions lined up that we'll do right after this top secret. Yeah forgot we had a graphic That's okay. All right. What is so top secret that the world has not seen yet? No, I haven't seen it This is my ESP 32 s3 tft feather So we had this board for the s2, but luckily we used the mini module which is pin compatible with the s3 So I just hot aired the s2 off hot aired the s3 on and got it working. This is Arduino and then Yeah, it's just got the bootloader going so you can have a nice graphical bootloader And then also circuit python support so you get all the joy of having you know, this really nice dual core S3 it says s2, but it's really s3 with four megabytes of flash two megabytes of ps ram with a display cutie semi-qt connector battery USB All ready to rock All right. That's top secret. It's top secret Okay


Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns, your host here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event where we cover commission activities and anything that may be of interest to Nebraska librarians. We have commission staff that do presentations and we bring guest speakers. So everyone is standing at 10 a.m. central time. They are free and are recorded as we're recording this one. So if you want to listen to the review one and the review two, you can. Today is an online tech talk with Michael Sowers, Technology Innovation Library here at the Nebraska Library Commission. And Michael brings in guest speakers and does some talking about various techs in the last month or so. So I'm going to actually hand it over to you to take over and do your thing. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Krista. As mentioned, for those of you who haven't met me before, I'm the Technology Innovation Librarian here at the commission, which basically means if it has to do with technology, I'm the one you generally call or I find out about things and whatnot. And gaming is one of the areas that Krista are into. We're both gamers ourselves, but in slightly different ways. You're more of the online wow sort of gamer. I do do that. And video games. But I do have console games as well. Yes, and well, and you know, I have an Atari 2600. Yeah, I have that. So, you know, if it's got more than one stick and a button, I get confused. But I like my card games and my board games and things like that. So I'm definitely a gamer there and have games on my phone, bubble burst or something like that. So anyways, what we've got today for you is we've got JP Pacaro. I'm going to attempt to unmute him. JP, are you there? Yes. Hi, what's up guys. Thank you for having me. Oh, you're welcome.  JP is going to give us about a 20, 25 minute little talk here and then we'll open it up for Q&A. So if you have questions as we're going along, just go ahead and submit them into the Q&A area. And we'll read them back to JP. Or if you do have a microphone as we do here, you can just let us know in the question section. And we'll unmute you when you can ask your question or your phone. Yep. So what we're going to do here is we're going to make JP a presenter. Yes. Okay, and he should be getting the magic screen. Awesome. Just a second. All right. There we go. And JP, I don't know exactly the presentation you planned, but if you could start out by just telling us a little bit about yourself and 8-Bit Library and where you're coming from with all this. Oh, sure. Okay. Hi, guys. I'm JP Percaro. I am a librarian at New Jersey City University, which is in Jersey City, which is the home to the Statue of Liberty. I also run a website called 8-BitLibrary.com, where one of the highest-trafficked library blogs on the web. And we generally talk a lot about gaming. And here we go. My internet is so slow. Oh, boy. Well, I could show you that later. Anyway, I've been going on kind of a speaking thing, trying to get the word out. What me and Justin who runs the website with me, what we're trying to do is get libraries to start building video game collections. And a lot of libraries, that's a very new thing, a very kind of new idea. A lot of libraries have been having games for a while, so it depends. But one issue that we always face before we can even start building a collection of video games to loan out or to use for programs is, like, why should we have it there? And so I've got this little slide here, some good reasons. Whoops. And of course I can't click it. Okay. Step one, gaming is a storytelling media. This doesn't matter what type of game you're playing. It's telling some kind of story. Even a game like Tetris is telling a story in a certain way, whether it be through the images or the sounds, the mix of it. And then there's games that have a lot of character development or plots, narrative devices. All of the words that we use to describe great books or great stories are words that you could describe video games with. And along those lines, gaming is a literate media, which means that you do need to know how to read to play it, right? There's a lot of ideas that you need to understand. You can't just pick it up and go. And along those lines, gaming is a media. And what I mean by that is a media is something that humans use to convey ideas, that we convey communication to other people, right? And video games is one of those ways that we do that. Books are one of those ways. Music, right? You can think of all different types of media. Video game is one of those types of media. And a library, one of the main roles that a library has always played in its community is the fact that it is a collection of media. So that's something that libraries do. And now this is a new form of media. And once we've got that idea that, okay, a video game does maybe belong here, we've got to think about, okay, so what can we use video games for? Just like what are we using our books for? One of those things is it builds community.  You're going to get some new faces out to your library.   And that goes along with this next thing I have. It reaches out to a new audience or an existing audience in your library. And when I write here, everybody games, what I mean by that is that pick some way that we classify humans, race, gender, socio-economic, age. It doesn't matter what you pick, everybody's gaming. So in the end, gaming is for all ages, and all libraries can be hopping on this boat. So let me go to the next one. So once we've gotten that down, where do you start? Well, that's the question that I get the most. Where do we start? I will make these slides public for you all later so you can go back to click this link. But on my website, we have a sort of already outdated. Well, it's not outdated. It's a $500 startup, and my internet's not loading too well. But it's a $500 startup, which will start you if you can raise $500 to get all of the equipment you need and a couple of games that you can start building that. Also, there's a lot of other great resources on the web right now that can help you build the game, you know, where to start.  It doesn't matter if it's video games or books or whatever collection it is we're building. These are the places that you really need to start. And, you know, starting small is a good way to begin because, you know, these are trying budgetary times. So let's start small. And knowing your audience, that's the key here. How can you find out what your audience needs?  How are you already connecting with your library users? That's the thing you can think about on an institutional level. However, you know, I have some suggestions. Someone, a friend of mine here in New Jersey, what he's done is he bought a few video games, right? And whenever someone would check one out, they would have a little slip. They would make them fill out a slip that said, what other video games would you want to check out? And then they've got an idea building of, you know, what games do they not have yet that they need. And again, since this can apply to any form of collection you have in your library, you can do that with books too. You can do that with DVDs. You can do that with any media that you have, that idea. So knowing your audience is important for a library. Not just for gaming, as well as having a plan. What I mean by having a plan is I've talked to librarians who said, well, we bought video games and it just didn't work, which I sort of don't believe because when I look at the numbers of libraries that are checking out video games, it's always enormous. But having a plan is important. And what I mean by plan is that you can't just buy the games and throw them on the shelf and just expect them to be checked out. And again, this applies to your book collection. This applies to anything we do in the library. We shouldn't exist in a vacuum. So having a plan for how we're going to get these things moving and how we're going to get the community involved is very important. And that's something you can solve on an institutional level. So let's talk about this starting small. You don't have to conquer the world in a day. You're not buying every video game for every console that's out right now. Okay, buy a couple that you feel the community will check out. Starting small, 10 to 20 games per system. And what I mean by system is, okay, so Krista is one of our hosts today and she plays World of Warcraft, which is on a PC. And what I mean by system is there's a thing called a console, which you've heard of a Wii or a PS3 or an Xbox 360. Those are the three current biggest video gaming consoles. So say, okay, we'll get 10 games for each of those three systems and we'll get some popular titles. Now you've got a 30 to 60 video game collection that will circulate and it's small, but it'll be very popular. And know your audience like we talked about before. Open Suggestions should be one of our key ideas in libraries moving forward. I'm not just talking about being open to suggestions for video games, but I mean for anything. As we try to stay relevant in today's economic times or just as the informational landscape is changing, being open to suggestions is important. When you're building a new collection, this will be especially important because they'll be helping you to build it. And right here it says having gaming programs to see what people want. That's just for books, we run book talks, et cetera, things like that.   And when I was a children's librarian before I was in academia, I was a children's librarian for five years. And those were some of our most well-attended and fun programs is just getting people together, making new friendships in the library. Okay, I was just checking that my audio was still working. And talk to people. This is, you know, all of these things apply to librarianship in general, not just to video games. But again, meet people in your community. Meet 30-something. Meet teenagers. Meet little kids. See what they're playing. See my friend Andy Woodworth, who is a contributor to my blog. He runs video game programs for senior citizens. So, you know, just talk to people. It doesn't matter who they are, what their gender, going back to what I said before, it doesn't matter their gender or their race or their socioeconomic standing or their age. You got to meet them. Talk to them. See what they want.  And having a plan is super important. A lot of libraries that I was not so happy with that I've come across don't really have a plan for where they're going as an organization. They just kind of believe that the library belongs here. And they, you know, they're not trying new things. They're not saying, they're not asking this question, where do we want to see this collection in a year? And that is one of the key questions that you should be asking yourself for your video game collection. Where do you want to see it go in a year? Do you want to just buy these 60 games and say, okay, now I have a video game collection. Do you want to continue to buy new game titles? Do you want to buy certain titles? It's going to be up to you. If you have a branch system in your library, you know, are you just buying it for one branch? Are you buying it for multiple branches? So you might have to be pulling in other librarians. Just going back to my last slide, actually, where it says talk to people. I don't even feel like it should be your library users. Talk to other librarians. Talk to your staff. See what they're playing. And then there are things that you need to solve on your institutional level, like checkout dates, fines, oops, sorry, lost items here. You know, that's been a big reason that I've found librarians who I've talked to who don't want to get into the loaning out video game scene is because they say, well, what if it's lost? What I say is that because so many people are gaming now, can we afford to not include this as part of what we are as libraries?  Are we going to let some small issue like, oh, losing a couple of video games stop us from being in that part of people's lives? I really hope that the answer is no to that. But I understand that there's some situations where you might say no. So going back to where to start. I know $2,500 to $5,000 might sound small for some people, but for a lot of people it's going to sound really large. Annual budget aim for $20,000, that sounds like so much money because it is. But there's a couple of things to think about. Again, going back to what I said, we have to stay relevant in libraries. And video games are what people are doing now. At any given time, there's a couple of movies that are released that are based around video games every year. Just walk around your local mall and see how important video game merchandises to people. There's no one who you can talk to that doesn't have some type of video game story, including our host, Michael, who said, oh, well, I had an Atari. Yeah, everyone has a story like that to say that even if they're not playing now, they used to play or they are probably playing now. So just people saying that this is important in my life. Maybe your library should now reconsider some of the materials they're currently buying and say maybe we can fit these video games in. Maybe we'll stop buying a little bit of this and we can buy a little bit of that now. And even if you decide against buying video games, it's still really important for you to look over that budget and say, is this what's important to our users? See, we're purchasing all of these reference materials. Are they being used? Or are they being used more than these video games are being used? Or if you say I don't want video games in my library, at least going through your collection can help you really grow as a librarian and help your library grow in a new place that is important to your users. And the big problem right now with developing a collection is we don't have a review source. For books, you have library journal and school library journal and you have book lists and any number of review sources for books. Video games, it's a lot harder to find. Right now my website is, sorry about that, is a big source of reviews. However, we really don't have a huge number like you would get from a review source. Some places you can go for video game reviews right now are these websites, oneup.com is great. These four, Game Informer, Xbox, Nintendo Power and PlayStation, they're all magazines. And let's say you don't want to start with a video game collection. Let's start by ordering some magazines. Let's get all four of these magazines in your library. See if they circulate, get two copies each. See if they circulate. And when you see just how fast they circulate and how often they circulate, it might maybe change your mind a little bit more towards the fact that this is important for your library. And within the next year, we will hopefully be seeing video game reviews in a couple of the bigger library review sources. I've been behind the scenes with some people, hopefully, you know, to help this along. So this is just a review of what I said at the beginning, though, about why this video gaming is important. And, you know, media is how humans transmit ideas and information. And this is happening through video games. So I can turn off this and maybe we can chat a little bit with Michael. How do I turn? Actually, you know, you can actually stay right where you are if you want. In case anybody's got a question if you want to bring a slide back up or that. We were able to bring up 8bitlibrary.com on this end. So if it didn't come up for you, we'll be able to eventually show everybody. Oh, cool. And as usual, we will be providing with the recording all the slides, all the bookmarks, everything. So if you missed a URL, don't worry about it. We will make that available when we announce the recording later this week. Right. Chris, have any questions come in from the audience at this point? No, the only question I'd say is one person did just say $20,000 question mark. I think wondering about what would that be. I know you started out beginning saying that really you can even get started with just $500 for the basics, but what would $20,000 really entail? I think that might be the concern or question. What do you get for $20,000?  You know, and it's difficult, but for $20,000 you can probably buy each of the new consoles, which run you a couple hundred a piece, and then you can just buy a larger number of titles after that. You know, the video games are about $50 to $60 a title. So, you know, that's two to three books, new books. So it is a considerably larger expense, but I think in the end you'll see a much better turnover as far as getting people in your doors. You know, there's only two ways that libraries can quantify success, and you know, our two quantifiable measures of success are circulation numbers and attendance numbers.  You know, they might have, back when the Vinci Code was popular, you know, ten people on the waiting list for that, and thirty people on the waiting list for video games. So in libraries that I've seen is successful, it's very successful quantifiably. So that's why I would say a large dollar number would pay off in those important numbers to, you know, those of us who were, you know, justifying that budget too. Yeah, and if that is scary to some people, we've done some presentations here on gaming and where I sometimes purchase my own games. There's local stores sometimes in your towns where there's discounts. We have a place here in Lincoln called Gamers where people resell their games and you can buy them for cheaper than the original price. So there is a way to, like you said at the beginning, start out small by searching out those kind of places that are out there. Yeah, absolutely. And actually, I like that you said that because there is other problems, you know, with PC games.  Right, right. But when we, going back to that slide that I had talked about before, when we meet people in our community and we start talking, you know, that's a connection that would be really valuable to have. You know, connections not just with the video game sellers in town, but connections with all the businesses in town. You know, really this talk is, video games is just a catalyst for, you know, successful ideas in libraries and one of those really successful ideas in libraries is building a connection in the community. So if you can make a connection with a local business owner who happens to sell video games, not only will it help you, you know, hopefully save some money, but it will also be a valuable place for the library to get the word out and it will also be valuable for that business owner to know that people in the community are supporting him as well. You know, it's win-win. Yeah, Tonight's Game Night is sponsored by So-and-So Business in town. Yeah. Okay, so I'll let Krista chime in again if we get more questions. Yeah, Krista has no problem interrupting me, I know. But I just kind of made some notes and had some questions for you. I'll try to take them in somewhat of a logical order here. Go ahead. The big one that always comes up is, okay, you know, even if the whole library staff and the director are convinced or whatever, you run into the library board or maybe it is even the director or whatever where you hit that barrier that says games in the library ain't going to happen. Can you give us like one or two pieces of advice on how to deal with that sort of issue? Yeah, absolutely. There's a couple of things. Usually their argument there is not just about video games but about video game content to say, oh, well, video games don't belong in because of the content. So one reason that I would give is we have this big thing called Band Books Week in libraries. And what it is is about content in the books to say, you know, there's some people in the community that say, these books don't belong here. And I think in libraries what we really should be moving away from is censoring content. And then along your question, you know, a lot of librarians I found that have had that argument for me, they say, well, in a book you don't see this content but in a video game you do. And of course I always say, well, you know, in a movie you see it and you have that movie there. But also along those lines what we don't want to do is judge a media based on its content. You should, all media, let me rewind. Just because one book has bad content doesn't mean that we should ban all books. And that goes the same with video games. Even if you decide that content in some video games might not fit for your library, that doesn't mean that all video games should not fit in your library. And then as far as if there's still skepticism to say, well, this is very, you know, expensive or whatever, I would use those ideas. Hey, let's start small and let me show you with numbers how successful this is. And, you know, if the content argument doesn't work and the ban books argument doesn't work and they don't see these huge numbers which they will, you know, they're still kind of against it, that's just something I don't know. How else can we all deal with it? I guess that's an ongoing conversation we have to have in libraries. There's also the idea, and this is something that I've kind of kept an eye on, well, I keep an eye on about lots of things for gaming related, is colleges and universities having gaming courses and gaming programming. I'm not talking about how to become a programmer. I'm talking about using them in their coursework. I just saw an article yesterday about a PC game called Portal that you might know of J.P. They can't see our screen at the moment. I did bookmark that. A college is using this game as quote-unquote required reading in one of their courses and using it. Incoming freshmen, actually. Incoming freshmen is required class to consider it as a class of contemporary work, confront once we mean what we mean to be human and how we understand ourselves, our relationships, our world. They're using it in humanities class and it's part of the starting discussion with these students and they have to actually play the game and then come back and talk about it. And it's not just a gaming class. It's a general class. This is just one part of it. And there's many of those instances that you can find of colleges and universities using these things to complement other courses, history courses, literature courses, economics courses. I mean, it's out there. And get them learning about these games when they're younger and they'll already have that leg up when they get to college and the stuff's in their courses and college. Yeah. And, you know, along those lines, I actually wrote an article about Pokemon for school library journal, which was in the May issue if anyone wants to look it up. And all I did was talk about how we can use Pokemon in the classroom. And, you know, there's a big movement in the education system, just what we described, to use video games in curriculums, not just as a source of content, but also a way of assessment. Lots of really cool stuff. If you are really interested in what Krista said and what I'm talking about, look up a guy named James Paul G. He said, yes, and I do believe, did he come out to one of the old ALA gaming? I don't know if we've ever had him out at one of the gaming events for ALA, but he is the man as far as talking about video games in education. And that could definitely be another great advocacy tool, Krista. So thanks for that. And, you know, along those lines, I heard that like a hundred years from now, people might look at the original Super Mario Brothers on the same level that they look at like Dostoyevsky, some of his work, because of the level of storytelling and involvement. You know, because the book is very involving, right? It takes a lot out of you. So does the video game. You're very involved in it.  You wonder. Yeah, I do. Someone wanted to ask about the name. It's James Paul G. And so it's James Paul. And his last name is G-E-E is how it's spelled. And we'll add his site to our bookmarks. Yeah, we've just got it here now. So that's the person that we're talking about. Can I actually say one more thing about James Paul G? Sure. He had a little thing on PBS. And what he talked about was how the educational landscape is changing. And what he means by that is in the past, to learn something, you have to go to school. That's how you learn something. Now in the digital age, when you can learn things in other places, school becomes less important. And what he called these other places was sort of competition for schools. And one of those things that he listed is libraries, because what libraries do really well is get you information on the map, the information that you need when you need it.  Which is something that I learned from James Paul G. He's not a librarian, so that's very cool of him. I do have a comment on our questions here. This person says more of a comment than a question, but Steam is an online place where you can download games and whatnot, which portal is from? That's where I have it from. It offers the Source U program, S-O-U-R-C-E-U, where you can get access to 15 plus Steam games with private forms for very reasonable prices. And this person says they had planned on holding LAN tournaments, as well as teaching a few source SDK classes, just an idea people may want to check out. Steam is a great site to get games, and sometimes they have really good prices to download these. But that's a great idea. They have access to some private forms, so you could have something set up for the kids coming into your library, where they can all use that area to safely and privately communicate about the games they're playing. Yeah. And going along that communication line, what you just said, what's really important that a library can really get out of bringing video games into their library is just what you said. Having people communicating information to each other, you're helping to build connections in your community, and these connections are built around information. It's going to be built around these kids or these adults or whoever they are sharing information with each other. So what if it's a video game? Who cares what the information is? What's really important is that your library is now sort of this hub of information and communication. So that's really cool. I love that theme idea. But I mean, I think that would happen no matter what game we have in there. It's very cool though. True. You touched on the issue of content in video games, and I want to come back to that for a second. And it's been in my experience in most public libraries that they won't go near any sort of video game labeled anything above teen in the ratings. So no, you know, Grand Theft Auto or Halo or anything like that. And in conjunction with that, I tend to notice that video game collections are shelved in the teen area. And this is something I've noticed a lot with graphic novels also.  I read graphic novels. I don't play as many video games. But, you know, I wouldn't necessarily stumble over them because I don't go to the teen area. Yeah. I mean, that's a problem, I guess. It's just a cliche thing that we have. I mean, the average video game buyer is older than I am.  It's just, you know, we can get over that together, I think. It's a stereotype I think we can get over together. Because along the lines, there was just that article last week in the New York Times that, or maybe two weeks ago, about how the majority of people reading, you know, YA literature are not YA aged. So I wonder if this is not just a conversation we're having about video games, but we're having it about, you know, all kinds of people stereotypically teen media, you know. But I would like to see these video game shelves all over the place. Or not with the teens, but it's fine. Sure. We can start somewhere. Right. I've seen many libraries doing programs now, adult gaming nights.  Because they know that the average gamer, the age of the average gamer, what, is now 35, 36, something like that. That's, you know, the studies, that's what they, that's what it's out there. So they're saying, why should we just have these for the teens? And there shouldn't just be in the teens section. They're just saying, here's the video game section, no matter who you are. I agree.  Good. All you. Okay. Well, I think part of the problem, too, is that, well, I wouldn't call this a problem. But I think teen librarian is a new sort of idea in libraries. I mean, it is a new idea in libraries. It's like the new positions that have been created over the last 10 years. And so I think part of the reason maybe that the teen librarian or the teens are kind of getting this is just because they're looked at. Maybe it's kind of this fresh new librarian with the fresh ideas. But you know what? In my opinion, all librarians are really terrific. And any of us can be doing this. And I just think it might just be because maybe the administration thinks of them as the new kind of fresh idea. But we can all be doing this. We can all be doing this. Sure. Absolutely. And the other thing, the last kind of note I made to myself when we were talking about money, and this is where I just encourage more money be spent, is, and I'm sure JP will agree with me, is get the games, but then get the books that go with the games. Explain how to play it and the cheat codes and all that other stuff. Kind of do a one to one where if you're going to get the game, get the book that goes with it. The strategy guy. That's the word I was looking for. Yeah. Let me explain that a little bit. Video games come out. And a lot of times what will be published right alongside that video game is a pretty lengthy book that describes how to get through this game or secrets or whatever. You could almost think of that as a critique if you think of critiques of literature. And there's a couple reasons why it's a great idea to buy those. First of all, what it just proves to you or could prove to someone skeptical is that an information community exists around this game. And if a whole book can be published just about one game and a whole book could be published about every game, then that means that there is a lot of value outside of just game. And that would be that information community. But then second is that going back to what we said about quantifiable success, now you can be checking out a book and a video game. So now you've got two numbers there that you wouldn't have had in the past. And so if we're talking about quantifying success, that's a great way to do it. And along those lines, not only strategy guides but one thing that I'm big on advocating for is connecting collections. And what I mean by that is you can have someone loan out a video game about World War II and then you can loan out the strategy guide about it and then you can loan out some nonfiction about that time period or you can loan out some fiction or you can loan out similar games or you can loan out similar topics. So now instead of just loaning one video game, now we've loaned out not just the video game but the book strategizes the video game and some nonfiction books that are related. And so now we're not just becoming an entertainment center but we're adding value to our users' lives and in the end also looking pretty successful doing it. Yeah, and that made me think that chances are, especially in a public library in your genre fiction section, there's probably some novels already that you own that are based on video games. I mean there are World of Warcraft novels, there are Gears of War novels, you name it, there are more and more fiction being written based around video games also. And I mean if you can get them reading some of those then you can move them on to other sci-fi and then you can move them on to other fiction and now what you've just done is you've just done Reader's Advisory. It just so happens that not all of them were books. And there are games that were based on novels going the other direction, Lord of the Rings. Yes, it was a huge movie series, it was a series of books first. Some of our teenagers may not know that. And it's not an online game, Lord of the Rings Online. So you can say, you know that game, you know, it's a book, go read it. Yeah, and you know, I mean if anyone watched the Super Bowl this year, one of the biggest commercials was for Dante's Inferno, which was a book based off a pretty popular work of fiction, a video game I should say, a video game based off a book, I'm sorry for that, but that actually was a pretty good game from what I've heard. Okay, all right. JP, thank you very much. Is there anything else you want to kind of throw in and we're going to kind of wrap up this section and switch gears? Yeah, you know, they told, I've been told to stop plugging my website, so I'm not. But at this point, go to www.library.com. Yeah, actually, yeah, one more thing I wouldn't mind adding in, too, is just we're like running this retro game festival on September 11th in New Jersey. So if you're around Jersey at the time, come out. But I also think what's cool about that for any librarian just to hear is that I'm not just talking about these current video games, but almost preserving our heritage and preserving heritage is one of those big things libraries do. And, you know, gaming is an important part of some people's lives. Like Michael was talking about here, Atari 2600. Now, you know, we're going to be playing an Atari 2600 at the library in a couple of weeks. So, you know, that's another thing that we can also think about is, you know, how can we preserve gaming heritage at large? Yeah, and I think at our state conference this year, Chris and I are running the gaming night. And if everything goes well, the Atari will be running. Trouble is, they're not designed to be hooked up to today's projectors. So that's the fun part. That's true. You're right. Yeah. Oh boy. I didn't even think of that. I'm glad you said that. Something to check out. Yeah, we ran into that last year, and we need to figure that out before our conference in November. And I'm just going to throw in, looking at your banner there, that one of you guys, or both of you, are behind the whole Get A Tattoo in ALA. Oh yeah, that was love.  Oh yes. Yes, that was awesome. It started as a joke on Twitter, and it kind of blew up. And at the last ALA, we had a bunch of librarians go as a group to get tattoos, like all the books and the reader thing, and it was cute. Yeah, I've seen people with having that ALA logo now as a tattoo and other things. That's an awesome idea. Do we have one more question coming up? Yeah. We just have a comment. Somebody contributing, Tiffany Keenan, who's a librarian from here in Nebraska Alliance Public Library. There are more and more video games being written by popular authors as well, like Tom Clancy and Clive Barker. So if you know people that like these certain writers already, you can turn them on to the games that they are involved with. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And actually going back to your question, how do we convince a skeptical library board or director or even a skeptical community, a video game with the word Tom Clancy in the title? I mean, how can that not fit in the library? Yeah. And for any Tom Clancy fans, I just found out he's got a new book coming out in December. It's been several years. I'm waiting. I'm impatiently. Well, JP, I want to thank you once again. That was a wonderful presentation, great conversation. And we appreciate you taking some time out of your day to do this for us. Yeah, very easy. Yeah, thank you so much, everyone. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm going to go ahead and take a presentation back from you. You're welcome to hang out for the rest of the show. That's not a problem. We encourage it. But if you do need to go, totally understand. Great. Thanks, guys. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you, JP. All right. I'll talk to you all later. Bye-bye. All right. So we, as was mentioned, we pulled up some of the sites that we're talked about that are currently in the bookmark list for this session. We will be adding these. Steam is at steampowered.com. It's a great way to buy video games without going to a store and purchasing physical objects allows you to, I use Steam for a couple of games because once I purchased it through Steam, I can go to any other computer I own and get that game. And it carries through all of the different computers that I run. Portal is one of those few games that I really do like to play. I also got Plants vs. Zombies recently. And I got sucked into that. I haven't done it yet, but I need to. Yeah, it's a fun game. There is, in case you didn't catch how to spell his name, this is his website, jamespaulg.com. We will bookmark that, and you can take a look at that. There is the Legend of Zelda and Philosophy. There you go. How's that for a little retro there? And Apent Library, as you saw earlier, was able to come up. I think the site was running a little slow. It's a little bit, but now it's running fine. It seems to be working again well. So we had so many people going to his site all at once, I think. Yeah, it's just way too... It's our fault. I'll take credit for that one. Okay, so we got about 15 more minutes left in our hour here. I've got a relatively short list of bookmarks this month. I wanted to be sure to have plenty of opportunity for JP to give his talk. And the first one I will bring up, this one I did actually bookmark this morning. The Portal game, Wabash College, it's on their required reading list. So a video game is being described as required reading in this case. So I find that very, very interesting. And it's a game that makes you think. I am not going to try to explain it. If you look it up, take a look at it, and just keep in mind that the cake is alive. It's not just a game where you're trying to do something. It messes with your mind.  And this one also, you hear people talking about it, and the cake is alive thing, and stuff about what's really going on in this game. But there's also science in this physics, how you're supposed to negotiate through this game. It takes a lot of that kind of thinking too. It's not just a shoot, there's no shoot them up or anything in it actually. Yeah, well they're shooting, but you shoot portals into a wall. Yeah, but not like, but it's very, yeah. It will either be, it's a kind of three-dimensional puzzler too. And so it will either frustrate you instantly, or you'll love every minute of it. I'm kind of stuck in the middle there. Okay, so let me talk about some of the other bookmarks I found recently. Some of these get back to some things that have been asked of me lately. Maybe some previous sessions, things like that. And so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to remind everybody. I mentioned this last month, I will be mentioning it again next month, I'm sure. Every month. Every month until conference, library camp in Nebraska, three. You don't have to live in Nebraska to attend, but chances are you do live in Nebraska if you're going to attend. It is one of the pre-conferences for State Conference this year. It will be on Wednesday, October 13th in Grand Island. You do not need to pay to attend library camp. It is free. And in fact, you can come just to library camp and not come to the rest of the conference if you really want to. But we'd love you to come to the whole conference too. Please, yes. It's not required. But registration is being handled, excuse me, through NLA. And all the instructions are on this website and also on the NLA conference website. So just something to look forward to. We invite everybody to attend that. Online converters. Some people have been asking me lately about services to convert different file formats from one to the other. I've got a WAVE file I wanted as an MP3. I've got a PDF and I wanted it as a Word document. I've got an ePub or a PDF and I want it to be an ePub eBook format, things like that. There are a lot of them out there. This one I just stumbled over earlier this month. And the really cool bit about this is it's got all these formats built into this one interface. I've got bookmarks for image converters. I've got bookmarks for PDF converters. I've got bookmarks for these other converters. This is one place you say, you know what? I've got a document and I want to turn it into a doc format. You choose that. You upload your file or you enter the URL of it. If it's online, you click convert file and depending on whether videos will take longer than documents, that sort of thing. But it will do the conversion for you and you can download the converted file. So this is kind of your handy-dandy tool of the month, I would think. If you've got anything. And you can go through and see all the different formats but literally dozens of conversion options available to you. Oh, we have a comment. Quite a comment. Question, yes. The website. This is David Bibb from the University of Great Falls Library. He says that Zamsar.com. Yep. Z-A-M-Z-A-R.com. We'll add that to our links. Also have a number of formats for audio, video, documents. Yep. I'm familiar with Zamsar. That's what I've used in the past. I don't know if any one of these is any better than any other. I mean, it usually either works or it fails. That Zamsar seems to be taking its time loading up. So we'll let that just kind of run in the background. But yes, we will add that to the bookmarks list. The next two, I'll throw these up here. Kids Tube and Teacher Tube. I'll actually just load Teacher Tube. These are alternatives to YouTube. But they are, and especially Teacher Tube, it's stuff that's already been looked at by adults and have said yes, these videos are all appropriate for use in education. They were really created specifically because a lot of schools block YouTube because there's all sorts of inappropriate content on YouTube. But there's some really good content on YouTube. So what the folks at Teacher Tube and Kidvid have done is they go through YouTube and they find the stuff that's really good for educational purposes and they make this available and then the school gets the IT department to say, well, okay, you're blocking YouTube, but please unblock Teacher Tube. And we know that anything on here the kids can watch and it's not going to be a problem. So even in public libraries, if kids looking for a video or something, you might want to direct them towards Teacher Tube or Kidvid. So they don't maybe stumble over the things that might get the parent upset about what are you showing my child in the library? Oh, is that it? Come up. There we go. And there we go. Also, yep. So upload. You sent me this one time when I was trying to do something. And so you can see there's image formats, doc formats. They might even have more formats than the other one. So there you go. And that's an ad. There we go. Sorry about that. Points for Zanzar for playing us a video ad. All right. And then just a few more. I kind of pulled some things this morning. I tend to go through and say, hey, what have I been looking at? This was just an announcement. This is not available to anybody or to everybody yet. So you may have this and not even know it. But Google is testing and there's a video you can watch that explains it in more detail. Testing search results as you type. So literally as you are typing in the search box, the search results just to what you're typing.  But the moment you say and C, the results will change as you are typing. So you don't have to say, oh, well, I should have limited by another word. I'll type another word, hit search again. So in other words, it's searching as you type, not after you click search. Interesting. Yeah. So I'm just like, ooh, give me access to that. I want to play with it. And it turns out it's testing on a select number of users at the moment. So it's not something you can turn on, but you might want to keep an eye out for it. Sometimes they'll announce these things in like Google Labs and the experimental features. I can see that that would be very interesting to see how, just see dynamically how as you, when you're teaching, like in universities and colleges, teaching the first year students, here's how you run a search. Here's how you do it. We don't use the word bullying and what, and see how the search results change dynamically. You're adding other terms to it. And you can see, oh, that's what you mean by adding that or deleting that, not using that term because you see it change live. In library school, I was taught you write out all your searches in advance. And you plan. And then you do these two searches. And then you combine the previous searches. And none of the freshmen coming in who aren't library school students do that. Yes. They type in one term and take what comes up. Well, and that reminds me of a quote that librarians search patrons fight. You know, search is a very specific thing in a lot of people's minds. Okay. I'm going to mention Firefox. We're using Firefox here in the recording, as you can see. The latest betas of version 4.0 are now out. I think we're on the fourth beta. You can go to the mozilla.com site, find the beta version. It's got some interesting new features in it. I've played with it just a little bit. I've got to admit I've mostly moved to Chrome. I don't use Firefox as much as I used to. But they are starting to integrate some features. Crash protection on tabs. Some of the stuff Chrome has had for a little while. But especially if you're a web designer, you might want to check this out and test your websites against the next version coming out. But it's going to be nice. I think what little I have seen of it so far, I've been impressed with. A couple more here. This one is for a website. Super site for Windows by Paul Thorott. This is something I've noticed is a problem for me at home. And this might, I think, be useful to some of the folks who run the public PCs, possibly, especially for the staff. If you have automatic updating turned on, which maybe in a staff or public PC situation, you probably have turned off. But at home, you probably haven't turned on. And for some of us more techy people, I can remotely log into my computer at home. As long as it's booted up and I'm logged in. Well, the problem is that I go away for a couple of days and then updates run and then the computer reboots itself. The problem is I'm no longer logged in. So I can no longer remotely access my computer. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it kind of does. Especially when I'm gone for like a week and this happens on day two. So there is actually something you can do in the Windows registry to turn off the automatic rebooting. So updates will run and updates will install, but then you have to reboot. This may not be of use to everybody. I thought it was just a neat little trick. I've used it. I've not had the opportunity to actually need to use it yet. But actually I think some updates are coming soon. So we'll check that out next time around. So just kind of a little tip out there for those of you who might eat it. And I will talk about this one here. I write. I have a book project I'm working on right now. And sometimes I have to kind of force myself to get some writing done. So this is a web-based or download application called Write or Die. And you give it either a word count and or a time limit. And it will basically prevent you from doing anything else on your computer to breach that time limit and or a word count. And there are some very interesting features, especially in the desktop edition. You can make it so that the backspace doesn't work during that time. You can make it so that you can't save anything until you've met your goal. So in other words, you better write. You can make it so that the program is always in front. In other words, it becomes your word processor. So you can't switch to another program. You can't do anything else. And so just fun. So you can say, you know what? I need to write a thousand words in the next 45 minutes.  Okay. Chris is like, no, I don't think I want that. Luckily I don't write stuff like that anymore. I don't have to. I can say I feel a deadline to go to school. I know I was the world's greatest procrastinator in college. Yeah. This would have been probably very useful to me then. So and the last thing I'm going to show, I kind of debated this, but I think I'm going to do it. Some of you, this is for the Nebraska folks. Some of you may have heard of a project we've been working on here in Nebraska called Nebraska Libraries on the Web. This is free WordPress based hosted websites for right now public libraries. We have done three test groups so far. We are working right now to put together the next testing group for training this fall. Right now it is invite only, but if you are interested in kind of how it works, there is a wants to participate link in the upper right hand corner here. Our current plan is to, that's new as of yesterday. I thought so. Sorry, I didn't remember that from the last time I looked at this. And like I said, right now invite only, but the plan is early in 2011 we will actually kind of open this up to public libraries statewide and then see how it goes and possibly open it up to other libraries beyond that. Still some decisions to be made, some kinks to work out of the system, that sort of thing. But I just kind of wanted to be out there. We are getting those phone calls. We are getting those emails. When can I get in? When can I use this? We are working on it. The project is going really, really well. We just want to do a couple more things with a couple more test groups to kind of get all the details down. Kinks worked out of the system before we open it up to everybody. But you can keep an eye on what is going on with the project here. Superior Public Library just went live last week, last Thursday. I have got a couple more who fingers crossed will go live this week. They are thinking they are really close to being ready. So things are going quite well, I would say there. This is a really great project to see all these libraries, some very small public libraries who are finally having a web presence. Or they had one before and it was buried somewhere in the city's site. They have their own. They have a blog. They are posting things. It is really great to see these people being out there.  They are pulling it up. She said she really liked this image because it pretty much described Superior. There is nothing out there. There are some things out there. The town is out there. The town is there, yes. The larger area, not much else. Lots of open spaces. Yes, open spaces. That is wonderful. All right, do we have any other questions or comments? Anybody have any questions or comments? Type them into the questions if you want us to unmute you, we can. I see you guys have been just tossing them in here along, which is perfect. Yes, that is great. We are pretty much out of time. It is about our hour. I will just throw in. Actually I think I have the next couple of months of my interviews scheduled already. I think Crystal will talk about what is coming up. But always you can email me and suggestions, questions. If you have an idea for something to specifically talk about like we do with JP, I am happy to discuss that with you. I know a couple of folks this last month sent me something saying, hey, you should talk about X, Y, and Z. I remember one specific case that was kind of time sensitive, so I did not talk about this month. I think I have got it in next month. So always looking for suggestions and ideas. And even if you want to be the interviewee, please, we are happy to do that. You are doing something great and wonderful at your library that you want to share with the rest of your colleagues.  And it does not have to be something technology related. Michael's monthly tech talks are geared that direction. But anything you are doing, we can put you into an intercompass live. Yes. Not a problem. For example, related to gaming. I don't know if you can go to our Incubus Live Home page. Just Google Incubus. Yes. It is not until October, but I will just plug it right now. Hastings College, Perkins Library here in Nebraska, on October 20th, Susan Franklin will be doing a session about their gaming nights they do at the university library. So if you are interested in gaming from today, sign up and join us for that one. Next week will be a session on Heritage Quest, which is a database that we have through our Nebraska Access System of Databases where we have databases for Nebraska libraries. So if you're in a Nebraska library, that would be definitely something you would want to take a look at. Susan Nisley, one of our librarians here, will be showing that. And then this is just a list of our new upcoming sessions. It looks like next month I will be talking about eBooks. That's what you told me. Yep. So I put it on there. I have enough trouble keeping track of what I'm doing on Friday. So next month that is good too. So it looks like, let me just check here, no new questions or anything? I think we'll wrap it up for today. Thank you very much for attending and come us live this week in our Tech Talk. Hope you learned a lot. And we will see you next time. Thank you. Bye.


episode 20 of hashtag LNT with your man and your favorite host Ahmed Ali. Now hashtag LNT we try to to choose topics a variety of topics ranging from cultural social religious and of course scientific. Now tonight's topic is a scientific topic a topic that you know we have a major effect on that matter but that's I that that's all I can say so what you guys have to do is just continue watching to see what we're talking about today and how we're affecting the world but let's go and see what's trending on the bag very soon so do you stay tuned. Once again we do welcome everyone for joining us tonight now Guatemala's volcano one of the most violent eruptions over a century now the Fugo volcano killed 25 people 25 people and its lava and and the steam went 25 miles out from the capital city smooth rocks lava gas and ashes into the sky just yesterday just or the day before yesterday on Sunday it even killed people staying at their homes so people at home they were affected by and they died as a result of it and as you can see the kids right there they're terrified people are trying to help them are everyone is being evacuated from the city just in case anything does happen again and the president of Guatemala stated that it's a three-day morning for the country our prayers do go for the ones that are injured or that are lost their lives in that incident now what are what else is trending Jordan's Prime Minister has resigned after days of protest for the taxes and strike measures this is crazy the guy resigned and the protesters chanting anti-government slogans slashed with the police but you know at the end you can see the protests actually can result to something good I hope in Iraq if the electricity isn't isn't that good anymore we're gonna go protest hashtag Galentee is gonna go protest and we be sure that the mayor of Guatemala gets resigned or someone who is responsible gets resigned but anyways let's go and check out tonight's topic cuz it's very interesting don't you guys feel like every summer the weather is just getting hotter and hotter I mean I can't even and to tell you something for for a fact the afternoons here in Karbala I'm not trying to talk somewhere else the afternoon here's in Karbala the heat is just deadly you know for me when when when I leave to go home I leave during midday so to go home midday the car is steaming I hate myself when I get into the car because I was hot it is you know I tried to park it under shade or something but when the Sun reaches the middle of the sky that's it the car is heating up and I don't have a black car so you know it's it's crazy but the topic of climate change and global warming has been discussed by scientists including myself for decades now today is environment world environment day so hashtag gal and T is trying to celebrate that day and take it scientific with the fam tonight's question is very simple for you guys very simple in three two one three two one that's six seconds all right how are we responsible for global climate global climate change if yes what are we doing and how should we stop it the number to participate is plus nine six four seven seven four zero six seven eighteen thirty six and give us a call via WhatsApp you can send us a text message a voice message you can also go check us live on Facebook so you can go and and and check it out and comment like put that thumbs up share do all that good stuff cuz whoever participates in tonight show whether comments on Facebook or calls us or sends a message or voice message their names will be written down on these sticky notes right here placing this blessed fish bowl right here to have a chance to win a free trip to Karbala along with many many giveaways so let's go take a very short break come back talk about more on climate global climate change now according to 2014 Pew Research Center 40% of US public believe that yes we are responsible for global climate change human activity is responsible for climate change 35% believe that there's no solid evidence to this and 18% believe that there's no such thing actually exists this doesn't exist climate change is happening whether you like it or not and the earth is getting warmer and warmer by the year we'll get to talk about it because tens of thousands of scientists including myself from coming from more than a hundred nations have accumulated researchers and evidences and have concluded one thing that humans are the main cause for global climate change so what are the evidence that they've put forward number one simple chemistry when we burn carbon-based material right there we're making or recreating co2 aka carbon dioxide but we do have a call from Angela from the US Salamun alaykum Angela welcome to hashtag and tonight's question for you how are we responsible are we responsible for global for global climate change yes we are salam alaykum alaykum salam wa alaykum salam rahmatullah yes we are responsible for paper products and plastic product we cut down too many natural trees and everything wasteful the wastefulness pretty much the US he waste a lot of unnecessary item sorry the woods would stop using paper products like more electronic using so much plastic necessary on and filling our landmines stuff that's bio not bio yes yes so we wouldn't have issues if we would stop on over and that thing with all of our of course I mean of course if you think that's why or are responsible yes we are in that matter we are but thank you very much Angela for joining us tonight from the United States I believe your name has been placed in this fishbowl so inshallah thank you very much and we'll do give the chance to others to also participate now we were just mentioning how scientists are providing evidences to how humans are the cause are the main cause for global climate change global climate change now the second evidence that they've provided is basic accounts accounting what do we mean by that the more we burn of carbon dioxide the more the environment is influenced by that burning that we are doing now measuring CO2 in the atmosphere and trapped in ice this is the experiment that they've done they found out that it's increasing and the levels are higher than anything we've seen in hundreds of thousands of years this is crazy the levels of carbon dioxide are increasing huge huge now the fourth evidence that they provide is that the chemical analysis of the atmospheric CO2 that reveals the increase is coming by burning fossil fuels so thank you very much whoever's burning fossil fuels because the more you burn fossil fuels the more or the hotter Basra gets so next year we're trying to see 70 degrees but we do have another call from Hussain from Iraq Salam and alaykum Hussain welcome to hashtag galancy and tonight's question for you are we responsible for global climate change Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh this topic I'll first and foremost thank you so much for choosing this topic and talk about it in your show no problem at your service well 100% we are responsible and there is no doubt that's I would love to share with you something yeah the global warming is led by an excessive of all materials at a larger scale so what is required is that a pressure to adopt a tough anti-evolution regulations and every single country must be able to meet requirements of a climate change of protection everyone is responsible no yes okay and let me take you through the game of numbers we call it's okay in 2000 and sorry in 2013 global carbon dioxide emissions were 61% higher than they were in 1990s this was mentioned in a very well-known book called this changes everything for for a Naomi Klein like a climate expert yeah okay okay yeah and a climate scientist and I would like to share with you a report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science yeah good the climate scientists agree that the climate change is happening here and now based on well-established evidence it is and about 97% of a climate scientist have can include that a human cost the climate change is happening this agreement is documented not just by a single study but about converging stream of evidence over the past two decades so there is no doubt in that we are responsible and we have afford that surprise thank you so much thank you very much Hussain from Iraq for joining us tonight I had one question if you're still on the line okay so he wanted I just want to ask him is Iraq helping a climate changer is it you know increasing pollution we just want to find out but anyways also let us know in your country if you're calling from a different country let us know if your country is helping to reduce climate change or is it increasing climate change but change to this camera now another scientific evidence that scientists have brought forth or brought forward that prove that humans are the reason behind Hussain from Iraq also mentioned a few points and few evidences how humans are responsible for global climate change but another one is the basic physics that show us that CO2 absorbs heat and it does because we'll get I'll leave you that for later on because we do have a few points left on but number six another evidence is that modern climate conditions to find that recent warming of the earth is correlated to and follows rising CO2's emissions okay so Hussain just just texted and says Iraq does increase climate change hopefully we can you know start recycling so we can get a better environment in Iraq but thank you very much Hussain another point that all of them have have concluded you know all the scientists they base their evidences and they base their researchers off of previous scientists and previous reach researchers they continue from where others left off all of them have come together and the points that we are going to mention as well and how we can avoid it they've came to the conclusion that through non-recycling through other points and other matters humans are increasing greenhouse gases and which is very dangerous for the earth because the wasteable gases are not leaving the earth they're staying within the earth and that's very dangerous that's why we see in Iraq and other cities you know just a few days ago I was talking to my friend in Canada and they said that this is the first day in May that we got 35 degrees in the UK they got I think 48 or 47 degrees which is crazy Pakistan people died because of the heat so we can see that the heat is increasing in every part of the world no one's immune no country is immune of this you know climate disease if you are in this environmental disease that we're creating the climate has nothing to do with it we're creating this disease now we just received a text message from Saadak from the UK Saadak says yes it begins with us leaving our phone charges plugged in even when unused to not recycling plastic bags and bottles we need to conserve our resources and move towards sustainable energy yes very true thank you very much Saadak from the UK well said your name has been placed in the fishbowl but thank you very much for participating in tonight's episode we are receiving new Facebook comments from viewers inshallah we'll get talk about them later on but all of the points that we mentioned what can we do what is the best thing in this situation to do right now we have a we have nine things for you guys to do that will reduce greenhouse gases and will make the environment better number one change a light you know these old lights that you have at home the cheap lights from dollar ammo or from wherever change them to eco fluorescent lights because honestly first of all the light looks better that brightens up the room you're consuming less energy which is in in return less carbon dioxide in the air and it's it's it's better for your eyesight it's better for your room when when you know and it saves you money the electricity bill is going to come less so in all ways you know you're paying extra like an extra dollar and a half or extra two dollars but at the end of the month that bill is going to be reduced a lot another one is drive less now someone if you don't understand why you should drive less and how that's not connected to global climate change then honestly I don't know where you're living because driving more you're wasting more gas which you know from the exhaust tips comes out carbon dioxide and sometimes if your engine is blown up it's carbon monoxide both of them are harmful for the environment and for humans for us humans another point is recycle more we got a few messages and Angela from the states did say that we need to recycle more you know in Iraq I've seen this there's no recycling bins and even when I was in Canada I saw people throwing bottles in the same garbage bin as where the rest of the things go separate between newspapers between paper water bottles cans whatever recycle bin is not a garbage bin and that's what we need to understand number four is check your tires what do I mean by that honestly when your tires are inflating or deflating sorry they consume more gas because the car needs to push itself to the right speed so when you do inflate your tires do it regularly so you're not and and plus it saves you money on gas 3% or more per gallon which is which is really really good for you as a consumer of gas or you can just drive less get a bike and you know exercise you're exercising and you're saving the environment number five use less hot water using less hot water in developed countries meaning using less heat using less electricity using less fire and in Iraq you're using less electricity and the second that you're using to boil up water is very bad for the environment so reduce the usage of hot water number six avoid products with a lot of packaging see this one we really can't avoid you know this one we really can't avoid this goes back to the company that makes the products you know for me as a consumer I want to get in a good product that sealed properly I don't want to get my iPhone 7 or iPhone X you know in like a plastic bag or one box no no no I wanted me so this goes back to how you know initiative the company is when they're sending me the bug that the phone when they're sending me headphones or whatever that I'm buying so it just goes back to Amazon or Ali Bob or Ali Express or whatever but number seven adjust your thermometer this is very important as well two degrees just make it two degrees less in in the winter and two degrees more in the summer how will that help it's gonna save you two thousand pounds of carbon dioxide a year two thousand pounds of carbon dioxide which is crazy that's a crazy number just two degrees two degrees that's it but let's go and ask the public before we continue off to the other two let's ask the public what they think about tonight's question are we responsible for climate change yes because we're using up the we're hitting up the system by the cars and the lifestyle is hitting up the globe are we responsible for global global climate change not really do you think we're responsible for global warming in certain respects yes why and because there's things like litter rubbish and pollution so yeah responsible for global global climate change yeah absolutely well if you look at the damage we've done to the planet over the last you know hundred years since the industrial revolution it's heating up massively the Great Barrier Reef has finally died we've wiped out millions hundreds of millions of acres of rainforest as a finite amount of resources and the population just keeps increasing so yeah we're doing some serious damage to the planet are we responsible for global climate change yes everyone's responsible and every human being has a duty to watch how they are polluting the planet so if you have the option to not pollute as much to look after this world better then yes we are responsible so from littering to cars to sound pollution that's all our duty of course welcome back the viewers and thank you very much for those who joined us from the UK now going back to the two points and they mentioned a few points as well and how you can reduce the climate change now another point which is very important for us I started this with myself not to brag or anything but I saw that nearing my how near my house the heat is crazy although you know people think this won't change a thing it will because I went to every neighbor I told them we have to plant trees from one end of the street to the end the end of the street and we actually did it it's it's a looks first of all looks beautiful you have trees in front of your house and second of all you're changing the climate because if you knew it already or if you didn't know it trees or any plant gives you oxygen and feeds off of the carbon dioxide now not saying that you know what burn more so the trees can feed no no no the trees is it's harmful for the trees as well but it takes in the garbage and it gives us oxygen so how beautiful trees are so go and plant a tree a simple tree in Iraq it's comes me which is like 40 cents just go plan a tree it's it's simple if you're living in Iraq plan a tree if you're living in the States I remember when we planted trees in our in our backyard it was like think a dollar and a half for a tree like a small tree plant that water it'll grow grass flowers whatever just plant plant anything the ninth point and the last point for tonight is turn off your electric your electric devices and this is very important as well a lot of people don't notice this when you consume more energy your the company the company is burning more gases it's it's burning more fossil fuel it's it's creating more carbon dioxide then it's gonna harm the environment so when you turn off your TV when you don't need it when you're going to sleep you know turn off the charger if you need your phone okay keep it on but if you're if you're going home if you're going to sleep turn off the charger turn off the lights if you can't sleep when you're you know in the dark area buy like those rechargeable lights turn them on and charge them during the day so it's it's not hard all you have to do is take care of the environment like you take care of yourself because the environment is taking care of you by giving you oxygen so if you want to live in more heat just keep on consuming electricity and consuming gas and all that stuff so you can burn carbon dioxide but let's read out the comments that we received on Facebook so we can continue with a special video that we have for you guys today now Ambrine Azgar says we can't plant or I think she means we can plant trees to control global warming okay Aiman Zahra says yes we are responsible for a climate change is happening because of over pollution, defrostation and industrialization okay these two have already participated thank you very much your names are already in the bowl Maryam Dawn Fleming she says we are responsible too much tree cutting and not replanting etc we need to get back to using less control our carbon footprint side notes okay it's only four degrees where I live in Canada right now crazy oh wow so okay okay so it's good now Maryam Dawn Fleming let's just write her name down AP 20 all right thank you very much Maryam from Canada for joining us tonight your name is going into the bowl once again we do thank you now let's go and check out this very nice video that we got for you guys today about and it summarizes everything that we've said so let's go and check it out this is earth the planet in our solar system that we live on however our planet is not on a good path for continuing to sustain life earth is facing the accelerating detrimental effect of climate change also referred to as global warming well what exactly is climate change climate change is defined as a long-term change in the earth's overall temperature with massive and permanent ramifications climate scientists believe that this isn't caused naturally by the earth but by human activity earth's atmosphere consists of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen and other gases known as greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide nitrous oxide and methane incoming light from the Sun hits the earth's surface the earth absorbs some of that energy heating the surface of the planet the rest of that energy gets reflected some of that energy goes back out into space but greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap the energy and send it right back to the earth's surface heating it up even more this is known as the greenhouse effect now a little greenhouse effect is natural to the earth and is a good thing to have but a large greenhouse effect can be catastrophic causing a lot of that energy to stay in our atmosphere and heat up the earth at an accelerating rate some of the main human activity that emits greenhouse gases are fossil fuel burning animals agriculture and deforestation and waste and recycle pollution but how do we know that our human activity is the cause of accelerated climate change and not the earth's natural process our civilizations produced a devastating 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide last year which equals 700 trillion cubic feet of CO2 that's a little more than 100 Mount Everest's of CO2 it's enough CO2 to fill the entire Grand Canyon five times or it's the equivalence of 19 million Empire State buildings the largest natural pollutant of the earth are volcanoes if we take the largest scientific estimate of carbon emissions produced by volcanoes every year that's 500 million tons of volcanic CO2 but that's not even 2% of the nearly 40 billion tons of CO2 that our civilizations produced over the course of thousands of years our climate goes through a natural climate cycle of carbon dioxide being absorbed and released into the atmosphere but once the industrial revolution kicked in burning fossil fuels became the necessity of manufacture and production plants and the CO2 level shot up violently have not slowed down since the earth has not seen this much carbon dioxide in its atmosphere for millions of years our planet with the greenhouse effect is like a bathtub being filled with more water than it can drain eventually it will fill up with more than it can handle but why should we care about global warming and climate increasing the earth's temperature has risen 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and is projected to rise another 0.5 to 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years animals and plant life are struggling to adapt to these conditions for survival if even one species goes extinct it can create a domino effect with the food chain no living plants or animals means no living humans question is how do we stop this instead of burning fossil fuels we need to convert to renewable energy such as solar and wind power which emit zero carbon emissions when operating energy from the sun and the wind are infinite unlike fossil fuels we will never run out of them more solar energy falls on the earth in one hour than all the energy that our civilizations consume in one year civil engineers from the solutions project calculated that we could power most of the world with only renewable energy if we just actually decided to do it remember climate change is very real and is drastically effective once again i'll end very informed of video but we did have to cut the video short because we're running out of time but big shout out to a few names that have constantly joined us in the show now alia rasumi from australia fazimoon from trinidad angel angela from the us hussain from iraq ismet mahdi from india sadaq from the uk maryam rana from pakistan fatima vakeel from india farhad azizi from kenra zaki anurazia from norway zaynab from pakistan mohammad m from india batul from the us we did promise you a shout out so there's your shout out and lastly we do thank everyone for joining us tonight beautiful night here in karbala yet sorrowful so at the end we do send our condolences to everyone on these very sorrowful nights which we mark the martyrdom of imam ali so in the name of imam ali go do something positive for the environment because environment needs us and we need it more so don't go go out and do something positive thank you very much wasramu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh