Good evening everyone. Welcome to the Board of Selectments meeting for Wednesday, May 4th, 2016. Thank you Mr. Byrne. Scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., one of our colleagues is out of town, Mr. Greeley, and Mr. Dunn is on his way shortly, so what we're going to do, and I apologize for starting a little bit late, take care of some of the other agenda items, and because of the debt exclusion and legal issues, we will refrain on numbers seven and eight until Mr. Dunn arrives, which he should be here any minute. So first, request, vote of the Board to authorize the town manager to execute contracts for MWRA waterbound bond of $900,000. We have our treasurer and collector of taxes here, Mr. Gilligan. Thank you for your patience, gentlemen. Thank you Madam Chairman, and members of the Board. The request this evening is for the Board to vote to authorize the town manager to execute a contract for a loan agreement with the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority for the amount of $900,000. That $900,000 will be an interest-free loan in the form of a water bond, and it is to accommodate a local system water assistance program project that will basically install over 4,000 linear feet of water main along Jason Street, Pleasant View, and Hillside. The loan is to be repaid over a 10-year period in equal amounts of $90,000 per year. Upon execution of the contract, the MWRA will forward the bond certificates for authorization of the closing by the Board, and that will take place on Monday, provided there's an approval tonight. Thank you, Mr. Gilligan. Overproal. Mr. Curell moves approval, seconded by Mr. Byrne. Second. Mr. Byrne. Any questions, comments? I'll set Mr. Chapter Lane. No, I'm good. I should do it for question. And obviously, thank you for your work on this. Is this from the new MWRA program that just came out, maybe last month that was released, that they released all the money for new bonds? Yes, the MWRA establishes their sewer facilities assistance plan and their local water system plans over certain periods of time. So they did not re-up this at the end of last year. So this is a continuation of a previous program, but it's all new funding. Excellent. Thank you. Any further questions or comments? If not, are there a motion by Mr. Curell, seconded by Mr. Byrne? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, unanimous vote. Thank you very much. I appreciate the time of the Board, and as soon as I get the contracts back from the manager, they'll be overnighted to the MWRA, and I'll see you on Monday night. Thank you so much. Next, we have our consent agenda. Minutes of meeting, April 11, 2016, April 25, 2016. A request for a one-day beer and wine license on May 28, 2016, Allington Town Hall for a private wedding, Jessica Fagnoli and Daniel Rosenthal request contractor drain layers license, J. White Contracting Inc., 3 Murray Hill Lane and Overmass, a request for contractor drain layer license, NCCLC Enterprises, LLC, 21 Water Street and Wakefield Mass, as well as another request for a contract drain layers license, Tufts Construction Inc. 209 Mystic Avenue in Medford Mass. Move approval. Move by Mr. Byrne. Seconded. Seconded by Mr. Carrow. Any questions or comments? If not, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, unanimous vote. Correspondence received. We have a piece of correspondence from Patrick Sackpibit, Professional Engineering, P.E., Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration from FEMA, which is entitled No Revision to the Effective Flood Insurance Rate Maps. Move receipt. Move receipt by Mr. Byrne. Seconded by Mr. Carrow. Any questions? I just have a question. This does not indicate any action on our part, does it? No, it does not. Just received. Any further questions or comments? If not, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, unanimous vote. Thank you, Mr. Perfect time. Yes. I've started to read quickly, as I normally do, and then I thought, you know what? Slow down. You have perfect timing, Mr. Dunn. Appreciate it. Perfect time. I apologize to everyone for being late. We have taken agenda item one, the consent agenda items two through six, and we just finished up with correspondence received, which didn't require any actions. It was just to move receipt. I appreciate you keeping moving along, and I apologize again. No worries. We will now go to agenda item seven. Discussion and vote, special town meeting, article six, Minuteman School Building Bond Authorization. I'd like to ask our Vice Chair, Mr. Dunn. Actually, it's okay. Do you want me to do a brief introduction? So tonight, what's before the board is discussion and potentially a vote if the board so chooses to either vote in support or not in support of moving forward with the currently proposed MSBA Minuteman Building Project. What's attached to this agenda item is the Finance Committee's recommendation to town meeting, which is favorable action contingent upon a successful debt exclusion for the Minuteman Project. And what you see is what I will say is a very well written and comprehensive report by Chairman of the Finance Committee, Al Tosti, who was on the board of Selectman's Minuteman Building Project Assessment Task Force, really lays out what a close call the issue is, what the pros and cons of moving forward are, and what some of the impacts of moving forward would be. Also attached to that report is the proposed vote, historical enrollment at Minuteman, as well as both a low end and a high end of debt projections of what Arlington could pay based on lower enrollments from Arlington or higher enrollments from Arlington in relation to the total enrollment of the school. So I don't want to rehash the entire discussion, but really, you know, at least from where I come from, where this analysis comes down to is the lack of a clear cut appropriate alternative seems to inform us that this is though expensive and though certainly also having some risk to it is a safe and appropriate choice to continue providing vocational and technical education to Arlington students. So I'll close with that, but if you're ready, Dan. I'm good. Thank you. It's worth mentioning that the task force that we commissioned, recommended, I think it was 8 to 1, was a final vote in favor of the bill option. So we've got a reasonably strong endorsement from that group. We've got an endorsement from Fincom, which is definitely there are a number of people who are very torn on the issue. My thinking has changed from where I was two weeks ago, where I walked us through, you know, the no build option versus the build options and the various grades of good and bad that could come in between. And so I would like to go. I want the building to be built. And I think that if we give our unanimous approval, I think it gives it a little bit more chance on time meeting floor Monday night. So it's appropriate. I'm ready to make a motion. I move that we move favorable action on building the minimum building and support the finance commit these main motion. Second. Motion by Mr. Dunn, second by Mr. Byrne. Any questions? I just want to say one thing that's important. You know, I is that this vote is contingent upon approval of the ballot question, which is our next item. So sorry. I'm curious and what how like how does the actions of other towns playing for this? It's a good question. So there's no one who has said no yet. There are several towns that are yes, town meetings contingent upon debt exclusions. And those are mostly voting this week and next week. Belmont town meeting is voting tonight. Belmont is definitely one of the really tricky ones. Even let's imagine the Belmont boats know tonight. I still will want us to go forward and say yes on Monday. There's a couple scenarios where Belmont could be brought to the table on a future vote. And I think it's also I think we should we should take a position one way or another. Yeah. So a shorter answer is if one town votes no, then this particular bond is dead and a minute man has said they will not put it forward to a ballot. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I'm glad to have the opportunity for us to go on record with this because I do regret that even a town meeting member I will be away next week on business. So I won't have an opportunity to weigh in as a as a town meeting member. But Dan is right. I think a lot of people are torn on this.  But I think that folks came down on the side of this this this proposal, you know, partially based on what do you get for your money? We're going to do patchwork, you know, over a course of years or decades with no state participation whatsoever. You know, they have been proposed improvements to the educational program, which is much more of a 21st century educational program up at the minute man, which really are only feasible if this building project goes forward. It does shrink the building from what it is now. So even though there's a lot of debate over whether it's right size, it's better size than what it is right now. There's also one factor that I, you know, I don't think I vocalized previously, but this is part of our educational offering to our students here in Arlington. I could very easily envision a scenario where when we go towards renovating the Arlington High School during those few years where there is disruption at the Arlington High campus, that some students may well find that this is a good option for them during that period of time to go to the minute man route if the educational program satisfies their needs. Thank you very much. You know, Dan has again done, you know, lion's share work on this, but I appreciate it. It was a very delicate balance to, and I know Doug had to do a lot of work with Bond Council as well, so I think we have to acknowledge that as well. Thank you. Any further questions? On a motion by Mr. Dunn, seconded by Mr. Byrne. All those in favor say aye. Aye. I suppose. unanimous vote. We now come to agenda item 8, which is the vote to authorize the debt exclusion questions for June 14th, just a sort of a prelude, and then I'll ask the town manager or town council if there's anything they want to add before we get into our discussion. I met with the Mr. Chapter Lane and Mr. Hyme around the proposed ballot questions. It seems on the high school feasibility study and the Thompson PIB's addition renovations, that that's, we seem to have come to agreement on that in hearing from all the board members and not only town council and the town manager, but town council's consultation with MSBA and previous votes and the wording. The only thing that I would note, I'm taking the two easy ones first because, you know, I anticipate that we'll be in agreement on that is Mr. Chapter Lane and Mr. Hyme and I have discussed, we haven't done it in the bold face, but under Tom, right now it says Thompson Gibbs and Audison additions and renovations. If you look at the actual wording of the vote, it cites Thompson School and Gibbs School. We took out the Audison based on the discussions and the vote by the school enrollment task force the other night to request the school committee to have a meeting, which I understand, I believe for Mr. Curell that they have scheduled for Monday. It's upcoming Monday. We took out Audison because it became abundantly clear that it was going to be a Gibbs option, just not what it was. And just about all of the school committee was attending that meeting and spoke to that. So what I would like to do on the first two is, if I could, because then we'll get to the meat of the matter, if anyone has any further comments, suggestions on the high school feasibility study ballot question or the Thompson Gibbs addition and renovations ballot question. Okay, so let's, oh, Mr. Curell, my only question is, I had asked Tom Council about this. I believe we have to take separate votes for each of them, is that correct? Yes, okay. Yes, I did. Mr. And I would also like to set the order while we do it. I think Thompson Gibbs is first. Arlington High is second, Minuteman third in terms of whatever. I agree. I was hoping. Okay. And sorry, just so we can, the other thing I just want to get, whoever makes the motion, I hope you include that polls open at 7 a.m. close at 8 p.m. Right. That's going to be my question, whether we're also including the language to open the polls on that date. I did stop by the town clerk's office last week and making sure that she was okay with 7 a.m. and she was absolutely fine with it. And I did also check with Marie. I did a check with Marie before I checked with the town clerk. Important to note. And I do want to note because I know we've received some pieces of correspondence that we were all CC'd on about why wasn't it a Saturday election. We've stated this before. First of all, there are no Saturdays available for Town Hall in June. They've already been booked for a year plus in advance for weddings as well as getting poll workers for that, you know, an informal poll indicated that it really was going to be a herculean task and close to impossible. And so then this committee, along with others, took into account the last day of school, fifth grade graduation and came up with a day that was least disruptive. So I understand that people are used to Saturday elections for issues like this, but it just wasn't doable. So, and I agree with that order. I was hoping I was seeing all, you know, now when we get, before we move on, I would like to ask Mr. Chaplain and Mr. Heim on either of those. I'll go first. I think the board, it would be important for the board to sort of have a public announcement of what the amounts of these debt exclusions would be based on the vote. So the board has been provided a memo that's available on Novus that has a cover memo that outlines the amounts, the Arlington High School Feasibility Study amount that would be proposed to be debt excluded would be two million dollars. The amount for the Thompson Elementary School expansion that would be proposed to be excluded would be four million dollars. The Gibbs renovation would be proposed to be 25 million dollars. And the Minuteman question, though it's yet to be discussed, would be, it's harder to say it's an exact amount because there's a variable amount, but what we would say is the maximum projected impact would be 32 million dollars. Also provided to the board is a number of charts that show what the dollar for dollar impact would be on the average single family tax bill. It's shown in several different manners and these have been put together by Deputy Town Manager Sandy Poole. We'll answer any questions about those and if there's any other variations of this that the board would like to see as this debt exclusion discussion goes on, we'd be happy to provide them. Just one question on that and I'm just going by my memory which may be incorrect because I know one of the school task force members presented some figures for the three different options, two different in terms of educational configuration and then the other one, Audison versus Gibbs. And I had it in my head that that individual member projected the Gibbs at 32 million and we're at 25. So we're higher numbers projected some time ago based on square footage cost. The architect's proposals or excuse me study that was presented had a Gibbs number and an Audison number. The Gibbs number was lower. Actual construction is just about 17 million dollars but there were several items not included in the study when you added well, I should say the study had construction and soft costs to a total of 19 million. We then added in fixtures, furniture and equipment, technology as well as construction contingency and that brought it up to just below 25 million dollars in estimated project costs. And we did so in coordination with the chair of the permanent town building committee to assure that we were on the same page. Okay and now on to Minutman which when we take three separate votes, do we take three separate votes to put them on and then a fourth vote for the order? Mr. Hyde. Madam Chairwoman, I would say that yes, I would vote each individual question first and then have a last vote to say this is how the order with which we want to appear on the ballot and when we want the polls to open. Okay and I'm getting ahead of myself, I just wanted just so everybody. On scenario one which is Minutman and I'll state my feelings on it and then you can see there are three options here, scenario one, two and three. I am right now strongly in favor of option one in the sense that putting something forth to the voters although I'm very comfortable now in terms of the order that might allay some of my concerns but basically when I met with the town manager and town council and I spoke to some parents and others that we've about spoken with in order to put the most concise what's on our plate, what's on the table right now into a dead exclusion ballot question, all that's before us is what is contained in scenario one. My concern in and I'll let Mr. Dunn and Mr. Attorney Hyde because both have two different versions which basically says puts forth the way I read it to be corrected that the first part of the preamble of ballot question paragraph is addressing what scenario one is which is what's before us, what we're being requested to do but then it takes it a step out, step further to say that if for some reason the dead exclusion as requested by or the monies as requested by Minutman that process falls apart but Mr. Dunn spoke to earlier this evening that we then have a backup plan. My concern with that was is you know we are going to go to the voters you know with the coordinated campaign and I'm sure there'll be somebody also coordinating another campaign. I'm not going to get into the specifics of it because I don't want to violate any you know ethics commission law, open meeting law but just looking at it and I'm fearful enough but not terrified that people who might be on the fence when they see the two Minutman options might think that we're sort of asking for you know a blank check it's either this or that you know we don't really know there could actually be even a third option who knows what because who knows what happens with Minutman in terms of what they might ask for if the original request for Minutman isn't funded or go through the process. The only thing that would change my mind right now but I will go with the majority of the board is the reason I say that is I'm anticipating that first of all I have pretty high hopes that somehow the initial request even if you know one town meeting initially says no and a lot of that is in part to Mr. Dunn's negotiations and bringing everyone to the table that probably still will move forward and then the second one which would be my question that if that did happen that it kind of fell apart and Minutman had to go back to square one just looking at what I anticipate what they would need to do in the construction schedule that would put them in line with phase two of this building rebuilding our Arlington schools which includes Minutman that when we're ready to hit the ground running after the feasibility study for Arlington High that's where number one we could put what the new Minutman option request is and number two they're going to need that time to do all that am I going to I didn't say it I'm going to take that one no I think that's fair I think if the MSBA project fails it would be probably between 12 to 18 maybe 24 months before a distinct project or plan was agreed upon can't guarantee that but and just my last comments on that is just thinking a working for a successful debt exclusion and be giving out all the information that we have before us if we sort of have this nebulous hanging in there and it's going to take them the same time as when Arlington High finishes the feasibility study and we move on and it almost seems like a natural marriage to me that you know 18 months 24 months in the future we have Arlington High School after feasibility study we have Minutman after if the initial what's before us gets turned down they do their due diligence get their feasibility plan for whatever is new architects and the two appear on the ballot the same so with that Mr. Dunn I didn't mean to I do prefer scenario two the one with the or and I think you you're correctly anticipating one of the things that I'm worried about which is that Minutman is going to cost like there's going to be capital costs associated with Minutman no matter what happens and by putting the what I'm referring to is the or version the scenario to then we get to have we have relief in our budget for either plan and so I agree that it is possible that we that it might work out that the we could do so as I mean as we voted our last meeting we said there's going to be we've got three two debt exclusions in an override in our future we've got this one that we were June 14th we've got the Arlington High School full rebuild that we've got the operating override and so we could hypothetically put Minutman on one or the other of those depending upon that I would rather do it now I'd rather get it out of the way and I feel and I share your concern and goal of getting the voters on June 14th to say yes and I feel like I feel like we can make the case that says Minutman is going to cost us money whether it's from column A or whether it's from column B it's going to cost us money this is the time to vote yes that said I think I think I share what something that I think I heard you say which is that I'm I'm I'm prepared to support either option going forward I prefer to but I would you know the will of the board is to go with one then I'll be happy to support that through the tonight and through the override process and just quickly and then I'll call on my colleagues Mr. Burner Mr. Curell my my only concern is if the first request is not successful if it is successful we have it there we have the money allocated if it's not successful basically what we're saying to the voters is both the second part of the or but we don't really know until a it's initial request is not successful and B we really don't know how much it is yet and my thinking is going to the voters I we all want to be very concise and precise in terms of and the town manager will do this with the assistant town manager and others in terms of this is what we need to do this is what the costs are and this is what we're asking for and my feeling is putting that or in right now we don't know that until three other dominoes fall which include you know what I would like to do is when we go to the voters if we we flip to the second scenario we already know because right now we don't know that to me which I totally respect kind of like chess we're thinking three moves out but we we're still at the first move but I'm monopolizing so when when would we have that information for the or do you know like when so for the rebuild for the yeah for the or when for the rebuild when when could we have an accurate or you know potential estimate on what that would be you know I guess there's a lot of there's a lot of uncertainty about what the path would be so this project goes down based on Belmont voting no there's a chance that Belmont asks to leave the district there's a chance they'd be allowed out of the district that would be another 40 or so students maybe a little less than 40 students and so they probably start to be talked even on our behalf about it's minimum and even viable so we probably go through some cycles of trying to figure out you know do we want to stay in are there other options what is this what does this look like at the same time the district would probably start talking about what we need to do the roof or we need to do you know maybe the boiler or whatever it might be so I think there's at least a year before there's clarity and that's I think that's optimistic and so you know in within that year that they need a new roof they you know as you're saying they need all these kind of upgrades if this that exclusion was to go through with the or rehab we would then use that potential pool of funds to make those piecemeal upgrades so and then I guess my my my thought process here is that we would you know we would have some sort of pool of funds we don't know exactly how much we really need for these potential upgrades so I'm trying to balance you know balance information coming in with funding going out type of yeah and I'd like to provide more clarity but I'm not sure that I can because if they if the if the district chooses to pursue some smaller piecemeal changes and they don't borrow and they include it as sort of operating capital I don't believe and I don't know that we fully resolve this but I don't believe that we can exclude debt because it's not debt yeah it's it's an assessment so there's there's the chance that there could be let's say significant costs not million dollar you know multimillion dollar costs but significant costs that we can't debt exclude and the manner in which they piecemeal it will be will tell us you know whether they have to borrow or not and that yet is yet to be seen and then we're not trying to muddy it but I think that's yeah no and then we'd have to take funds that we you know are lacking anyway so yeah before I call Mr. Carroll and get it not prepared to do this and if it's appropriate could I kind of put you on the spot and ask you in terms of you know what we're discussing here just from the town manager standpoint or anything else that you deem appropriate if you have any feelings on yeah so let me I'll I guess I'll address quickly administrative concerns and then let's say public relations concerns so administrative concerns is there is risk in scenario to probably low risk but risk that the MSBA would not be on board with having the or scenario MSBA does have regulations that talk about having singular questions to approve their projects and this is a little different because it's a district it's not us doing a project the district doing a project and us doing a question so is it highly likely that the MSBA will have a problem no but it's certainly a risk that we should be aware of in scenario too so that's an administrative concern from a public relations point of view and then I guess well let me go back to administrative I'm sorry from an administrative concern again low risk and the DOR has said they would approve this but there's the chance we could go back to a different member of the personnel at DOR and have them not feel clear about how much was excluded as part of the DOR question and have concerns about how we raise those taxes we'd certainly fight through that and I think we could be successful but again low risk there from the public relations point of view I think there is a challenge in clearly and articulately telling the voters what they are voting for with scenario too I absolutely see and I also appreciate the want to give us budget stability and also not suffer through a public relations challenge of having to go to the ballot again you know maybe in between this in the high school project based on what happens in that that's laudable but I do fear that there could be confusion and lack of clarity by pursuing scenario too Mr. Carroll I have to say I came in here really feeling the scenario too was the way to go but now I'm definitely leaning towards scenario one for a couple of reasons some of the reasons that have been stated but also I think I'm actually somewhat swayed also by the good work that Mr. Pooler has done on the projections of impacts to the tax base those are predictive if the building project goes through but if this passes and we're looking at the capital amounts as they are planned out by the district of the future those graphs and projections don't really hold anymore they're not valid so I think it does create a communications problem and explaining what the full impact and the phasing in of this is because that's one thing that I think we also have to make clear in our communications the voters that this isn't all hitting all at once it's phasing in over four years so I think I'm leaning towards one Mr. Dunn? Two points I should have made earlier one is we have it we do have a the I reckon I totally agree that there's clarity challenged but we've done it before if you look at both of our elementary school overrides they didn't have numbers for the tax they said this is the amount of money this is what we're gonna do and this one is the same thing this is the amount of money and this is what we're gonna do so we've done that before the second point is that in terms of there's a set of people so for instance look at the finance committee which split very closely on whether or not there should be a new building but they would virtually unanimously agree that there's a lot of money that needs to be spent on Minuteman and if we make this vote only about the new building we're gonna lose some of the people in support of this third question and so that means we're gonna get from say capital planning or from finance committee we're going to get support for questions one and two and negative for three which is a model which is less clear than I've achieved I've made my case I'll make my last case and then I guess I'll call my colleagues for a motion first I would say and I'll do respect to them the finance committee capital planning committee are not policy making decision makers and it's we the board of select minutes the school committee number one number two is the person sharing the campaign to begin phase one of a two phase project I would respectfully ask my colleagues especially if you're on the fence really to make that campaign with the most success as possible in terms of going with the scenario one not just in light of the remarks that I've made but in terms of the town manager so that we can have more clarity when we go forth on the campaign trail because I anticipate if we have the or scenario unfortunately I feel the conversation around minute man will get bogged down for some people who might not be in favor or for some reason want to just talk about things focus on that part of it which we do not have all the information about and might pick up on DOR and MSFBA and it totally detracts from you know I want to have a really clear pure as accurate as possible message to the voters including when Mr. Chapterland and Mr. Poole which already have done the calculations when they ask for the same calculation on the or pod we're just not going to have that we're going to have a ballpark so I if you're on the fence someone we're all going to be working on this but I can tell you as someone who's chairing it I would really emphasize and respectfully respectfully request we go with scenario one so with that if there's any further questions or comments does anyone do you want to start with a motion just can I get a motion from my colleagues on the I actually have a question it's the bottom sorry if we what happens if we start voting down motions are we you know can we just like are we binding ourselves by voting I know we need a what a two-thirds or a three-quarter vote here so it's not like Mr. Burnett it's not like a zoning article at town meeting yeah I mean the town the board of selection can obviously come back and try to put a ballot question on what you're really dealing with is the time constraint to put it on the special election ballot for June 14th and we just don't have that much time so so I guess with that I have one more question for the town manager and that would be how out of whack would our long-range plan be if we you know looked at some of these improvements that need to be made a minimum and didn't exclude that that for you know with that rebuild language could you guess that if if it was piecemeal you know little here a little there it wouldn't be dramatic impacts but there would be impacts if there was a larger scale project that was not that excluded you know a full rehab it would have catastrophic impacts meaning if they did a 60 million 70 million dollar repair that was not MSBA reimbursed that wasn't this project and we didn't have a debt exclusion that would be very challenging and I would say if the board voted on scenario one tonight and that situation occurred as challenging as it would be I would certainly be advising that a further debt exclusion vote would need to be considered in the future so but I think I'm I'm leaning towards option two here one I think and I realize that probably gives us a 50% split which is probably not where obviously not ideal when there is four of us here tonight it gives your chair who's going to chair that's a vote no but yep I think for you know to do if we're looking at you know our long term you know our long range plan for example I think that it's a safer option to you know build in some you know some leeway for us if we do face a large scale expense at Minuteman and you know and that being said if there's and I wouldn't and I wouldn't want a minute like I would not want a large scale Minuteman project on the same debt exclusion as a our high school I think that that would be much harder to take being that there's you know though those would be too massive exclusions like that would be 30 on top of I think what would be a larger exclusion than we're facing here with the gifts and I think that is something I'm considering so I do feel like option two is a safer play right now can I ask the town manager if say we did option two because in the first pod failed and Minuteman came out with this outrageous rebuild that we pre-approved in this debt exclusion for 70 to 100 million we would be bound to fund that versus no no so this only would allow us to to debt excluded town meeting would still need to approve the borrowing so there's there is that protection it doesn't automatically make you spend money here so the way it's written is that it says that the option to the whore is written is it says for any it only can be used to pay for bonded Minuteman projects and any bonded Minuteman project town meeting has the opportunity to reject it in the exact same way the town meeting has the opportunity to reject it on Monday well I guess how how strongly you feel about this because I feel very strongly about this I've had many conversations with some of the core group that we've had interesting thing I think Diane is that you and I are doing we have the exact same motivation which is to get the overrides the debt exclusion to prove and we have different degrees on the easiest way to do that I think I believe that we are absolutely aimed at the same goal but we but we are not in agreement about the methods I can support the option one with a smile on my face because it's a good option I think you want to make that motion I think it makes it harder for us to win on June 14th see I think the other way I know it makes it easier having worked on since when they want to close bracket appears moving forward just knowing the nature of exclusions all the ones that I've worked on the first one failed which I felt very strongly about at that point and was basically asked to be quiet and and that's the first one that I moved that we adopt version one is there a second I'll second it any further discussion I'm happy to support it as well all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed on a motion by Mr Dunn seconded by Mr. Curell I thank you so that is for scenario one on Minuteman rehab or rebuild Madam Chairman I'm sorry man yes I just want to be clear that the board of Selectman has voted to place on the ballot for June 14th debt exclusion as described in scenario one for the Minuteman rebuild is that that was my the intent of my motion yes would you like us to vote again nope thank you Mr. Dunn okay second motion Alex set from one of my colleagues regarding the high school feasibility study in its language I will move the language is presented here by Mr. Curell seconded by Mr. Byrne any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed and then third on what will be known as Gibbs and Audison addition renovations Gibson Thompson I'm reading that's why you have a vice chair Gibson Thompson Mr. Byrne the language is presented Mr. Byrne motion by Mr. Byrne seconded by second Mr. Dunn any further questions or discussion if not all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed and then the next motion can we take can it be two part a establishing the order of the ballot questions as well as the details of June 14th yes Madam Chair motion by I move that we go the order of Gibbs Thompson first Arlington High second Minuteman third and then the polls be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on June 14th second motion by Mr. Dunn seconded by Mr. Byrne and Mr. Carroll so I'll leave that to Miss Kruppelke any further discussion or questions if not all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed unanimous vote and we now will recess recess and down to tell me I move by Mr. Dunn seconded by Mr. Byrne all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed unanimous vote thank you so much


Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is a commission's weekly online event. We are called a webinar, a webcast, an online show. The word, I don't know, the terminology is up for debate. But whatever we are, we're here live online every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you are unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record all of our shows. So you can always go to our website whenever you like and see the recordings of all of our shows going back to January 2009 when we first started Encompass Live. So we're in what that makes our seventh year. It's a long time. Eight. Whoa, really? That can't be right. Yeah, we're just starting our eighth year. Gosh. Oh, wow. OK, that's longer than I thought. And we're still going strong. Wow. We do make sure things here on the show, presentations, interviews, mini training sessions, training sessions, book review sessions. Basically anything library related, we're happy to have on the show, which is probably a reason of our longevity. You do something in the library, we'll share about it. And we bring in guest speakers sometimes, but we also sometimes have library commission staff. And that's what we have this morning. With me today is Debra Dracos and Susan Isley are both from the Library Commission. And our topic today is writing the range from your armchair, which just looking at the title, you might not know what that means, but it's book reviews, book discussion about Westerns. So we're continuing a theme started by our continuing education coordinator, Laura Johnson, who's now retired. Yes, she retired last month. She's left us. She retired last month. But she thought it was very important to talk about books every once in a while. And sometimes we've talked about specific genres. Sometimes we've just talked about, you know, hot reads, what's going on right now. But this particular time we chose to talk about Westerns. And I actually read the Westerns, which are not my usual genre. And Susan did research on what constitutes a Western and some of the resources that you can use to find some new ones. So. OK, I need to hang on. I might need to. There we go. Nice. OK, so. Normally, when you're talking with a patron about what they are looking for as far as reading goes, when you're doing your readers advisory interview, you ask about things like, well, what did you like in the book? Was it the setting? Was it the time period? What was the, you know, were there certain appeals? And sometimes people when they think Westerns think, well, Westerns are all the same. But actually, that's not true. It's like any other genre. There are different subcategories, basically. So for the setting, did you want to talk about? Well, it's interesting as you read information about the genre. You see some sort of what's what's the standard understanding, but then it always expands from there. So oftentimes articles will reference Westerns as being from after the Civil War until early 20th century. You have people who think that the frontier closed in 1890. So that's a cutoff that some people use. You also see people talking a lot about how the Western really started out the roots of the West were James Fenningmore Cooper and his leather stocking tales. And those, of course, start in upstate New York. And the frontier back then was anything West of. West of New York? West of New York, you know, anything West of the Appalachians. So, you know, you have Ohio, Kentucky back then, that was the frontier. So it really depends on what your patron is interested in. Do they really want what's their definition of the West? And is that the most important part of the book for them? Are they more interested in people going out into uncharted territory, or do they really want something set in Wyoming or Texas? So, you know, when you're looking for books for the patron, that makes a difference. You can often look for books set in particular states. If they're not particular, you can have Westerns that are set in Western Canada. You can have Westerns that are set in Alaska, Alaska, that crossover into Mexico, Arizona. Definitely, you know, West can be anything, probably West of Eastern Seaboard. So, again, you know, what is it about the setting? What is their definition of a Western setting that appeals to them? So that's open to interpretation. Right.  The Western writers of America website, when they're handing out awards, actually defines their traditional or historical Westerns as anything that where the story takes place pre-1940, and then anything after 1940 is a contemporary Western story. So they do acknowledge the contemporary time period too. And there's actually another organization that is called Western Fictioneers. They're a professional writing group. They didn't establish themselves until 2010, that they offer something called a Peacemaker Award. And they're very specific about their time period. They will only, the only titles that are eligible for awards are those that are 50%, at least 50% of the story has to be set between 1830 and 1920. So that's their definition. And they do promote themselves as wanting to focus attention on what they call the traditional Western. And so they've got a very narrowly defined time period. So the appeal of a Western, I think... This is basically why do people like Westerns? What is it about the Western that they like? And lots of times it's the good always, the white hats always win, right? Go to a Western movie and the white hats always win. The good guy wins. There's some kind of justice usually at the end. Often the hero is somewhat of a loner, can be somewhat of a loner. They're struggling against something. And another person or against the nature, whatever's going on, sort of survivalist type thing. And sometimes, well, in a large number of them that I read too, it's, they're trying to bring in some kind of civilizing influence. But on the other hand, they still want to be independent. The independent rugged person who can make it on their own if they need to. Well, again, it really runs the gamut. I think with the traditional Western, you get lots of, when people are writing about the genre, they talk about some people like Westerns because they feel a real connection to the land. And so those people might really think of the Western as being set, they might think about where they grew up, their childhood, where they grown up in Wyoming or Montana or on a farm or in Texas. So for them, the appeal might be a certain type of landscape or way of life that they have some connection to. So it's a nostalgia for a past time. There's also sort of that, again, that nostalgic instinct where there's clear cut good guys and bad guys, men were men and women were women. You didn't really have a lot of ambiguity or exploration of, didn't really like question the boundaries as much. And so, you've got books that appeal to patrons who are looking for that type of material. I think once you get into more literary Westerns, you get, Deborah mentioned the lone hero, a lone in the wilderness, good guys, bad guys. I think sometimes in the literary Westerns, you get more of that sort of exploration, that existential angst or the moral ambiguity questioning those kinds of issues. And so those might appeal to people who aren't necessarily interested in Westerns per se, but are more interested in that sort of human condition. They're looking more for the character-driven plot as opposed to action or character-driven stories. Right, a Western that you might be able to interest one of those types of readers and might not be the same type of Western that you interest someone who has that more nostalgic. You know, viewpoint or that little bit more conservative or, you know, as far as crossovers, some of the material that I read talked about, you might even be able to interest people in what are considered gentle reads set in a Western setting. And again, it's sort of a nostalgic view of life. Yeah. And, you know, there are many romances that take place in the West. And some vendors are marking them as Western stories. Well, depending on your patron, they might not really be interested in that romantic twist to the story. They may be looking for something else. So, is there anything else we wanted to talk about here? Do you want to go to Novelist? Well, I think what we kind of wanted to do at this point before we started talking about specific books is jump to Novelist, which is a resource that we now have statewide access to in Nebraska. And talk a little bit about how you can use a resource like that to familiarize yourself with a genre like Westerns, how you can use that to connect your patrons to books they might be interested in. And the first thing I wanted to show you in Novelist is what they call a keeping up page for the Western genre. So, I'm going to just jump to that page here. And this page brings together many lists and articles that Novelist staff have compiled about the Westerns. And so, if you're trying to brush up on your knowledge of Westerns, this is a great place to start. It's also a great place to go if you're wanting to do some collection development or develop reading lists or book displays and you need some ideas. So, you'll always get background information on the genre. And you'll see, they're going to talk about classic Westerns versus modern Westerns. You've got reading lists that focus on particular archetypes in the genre. So, outlaws and gunslingers, Western short stories, and then there's a really fun list that lists titles that they consider weird Wild West stories. And so, that actually sort of blends with other genres like sometimes steampunk. There are some Westerns that have zombies in them, et cetera. So, you can really have a lot of fun with this genre in terms of bringing users that might not, readers that might not normally like Western genre as sort of into it. You can sort of, there's sort of a, some crossover potential here. I do want to just pull up a couple of these articles so you can see the type of material that you can get in Novelist. There are usually introductory articles on specific genres. And so, these answer the kinds of questions that Devran and I started up talking about what are Westerns, what happens, why do people like them. They'll always give you some key titles, some key authors, and some tips on helping Western fans. And this particular article does mention awards that are given specifically to Westerns. So, if you want to look at those award lists, that's a way then to get some ideas for titles to either add to your collection or recommend a catering. So, finding awards that are genre specific is a useful way to get title ideas. I also just want to show you a couple of these articles. They will talk about specific types of Westerns. And the nice thing about these articles is they will always have title suggestions within them.  So, you know, you can really get ideas for collection development for titleists that you might want to hand out to your patrons. If you scroll down, you'll have more title suggestions on this page. You'll even have a handout or a small poster that you can print out and put up to give your readers some ideas and titles they might be interested in, so they've got those pre-made. And then, they're also on the main novelist page. You've got recommended reading lists over on the left. And by default, we're looking at adult fiction, recommended reads lists, and you've got the Western category. So, you have everything from classic Westerns to the weird Wild West that I talked about. So, we'll just go ahead and pull up the weird Wild West. These are actually reading lists that you can print out and hand out to your patrons. I'm trying to see, I think, I don't remember which one of these is the zombie one, but one of these is the actual zombie one. So, you can, I'm gonna change how this is displayed, so we get a little brief description for each title. And then, if you were wanting to print that out, so you could hand it to patrons, have them look at it, and share with you what they might be interested in. You can have a nice clean print out to hand out to patrons who are interested in. Maybe Westerns with a twist. Also, to the right, you'll always have additional links to articles and title lists. And I believe, having trouble reading the text small, but if I'm remembering right, this particular article talks about Westerns written in the 50s and 60s, which is kind of considered the heyday. And they actually have a bookmark, a pre-made bookmark that you can print out that has titles and descriptions for your patrons. So again, another way to get some ideas of books is to promote to your patrons and a handout that you can give them to take home. So, tools like novelists are really helpful when you are working with genres, particularly those you're not comfortable with. I'm gonna just do one search before we get started talking about specific books. In this particular database, they do a lot with genre headings, and they have a genre heading that they don't, I would say that there are some books in here that would be of interest to people who are interested in Westerns, there's a few that don't have this genre heading associated with it, but by and large, the sort of universal genre heading they use for Westerns is Western stories. And there are other ways to actually do this genre search, but I'm just typing in the field code, G-N, capitalized, and then because my genre heading is more than one word, I do have to put quotation marks around it. So I just do a search for genre Western stories. I get over 6,000 titles. And I think it's interesting, the first one that comes up is something that would probably be considered pretty atypical. It's Seth McFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West, which of course was a movie. So that's gonna be not something that's of interest to people who are fans of traditional Westerns, but right away it's- It'll fit into that weird category, right? Because it's something- It shows you some of the variability in the collection. What I really wanna show you though is because 6,000 titles is too many to go through, it's really nice you've got these limit options over on the left. So I can pop this open and you can see other genres that are associated with the titles in this list. And so you can kind of look through these with your patron or based on what your patron said about the material they like, you can book. Are they interested in literary fiction? Books to Movies is a nice subcategory because that might help you with promoting material or capitalizing on current interest. I know right now in the theaters you've got Revenant and the hateful aid are in the theaters and so you've got people who are gonna be seeing those movies and you might be able to interest them in some similar Western stories. So that's a way to kind of drum up some leadership. Mystery stories, so there are books that are both Westerns and mystery stories. So if your patrons seems to be interested in that problem solving mystery, solving aspect of books, that would be a way to limit your search. You can also look at subject headings associated with Westerns and you've got everything from outlaws to ranch life, to ranchers, revenge, small town life. So again, based on what they're really interested in you can narrow that 6,000 plus search to something that meets their interests. So we just wanted to talk a little bit about that as a way to zero in on people's areas of interest before we turn it back to Debra and she's gonna talk about some specific titles that she's read and that to me get back there for you. Okay, and before I talk about specific books too I just wanted to, I threw in a few slides here to show what variety there is. A hero or actually any character in the story could be a cowhunter, a gunfighter, a mountain man, could be a law man of some sort, a prospector. There's just a variety. On the villain side, you'll notice that some of these headings are the same as the last one.  In addition to those type of characters that your patrons might be looking for you also have the women, okay? So if we're talking traditional Western normally the women aren't the main characters but I found it amusing actually how many of the books that were written within the last few years that I read, one of the characters is an unfaithful life. It's just, okay, were they really that way back then or is this modern events being put into the past?  The Pretty School Marm, one of the very first popular Western Westerns was The Reginian written by Ellen Wister and it started the flood of Western books that were written and he wrote about Cowboy and The Pretty School Marm. Well that was rather a romanticized view of the West, okay? So the very first book that I am going to talk about is called Log of a Cowboy, a Narrative of the Old Trail Days by Andy Adams. This book has often been mistaken for a nonfiction work because he really was a cowboy and he did herd cattle from Texas up to Montana. He had experience in doing that but for this book he did actually fictionalize not only his experiences but experiences that other Cowboys told him about. He wrote it in response to The Reginian but unfortunately it is the only book he ever wrote. If someone is really interested in what was it really like at that time? What are some of the things that really happened when they were herding cattle? This is an excellent book. It's widely available in e-book format and you can still buy a copy of it to a paper copy of it also. I found it really interesting. You'll find in all the different westerns no matter when they were written that the authors often try to have the characters speak in the vernacular of that time and some do a better job than others. Since this one was written in 1903 by a gentleman who actually rode the range I think his is a pretty accurate portrayal of how people actually spoke at that time too. And for this particular book the action takes place on the trail from Mexico from that real grand area in Texas. They bring the herd of cattle across from Mexico and then drive it all the way to the Blackfoot Reservation up in Northwest Montana because the boss has a government contract to supply beef to the Indians. It'd be very interesting to compare that to the writing and like this is vernacular of other stories who are obviously someone who didn't actually experience it. Right. See how close they come. This is another story. The Flying New Ranch by B. M. Bauer that was actually written more contemporaneous to the time. It was written in 1914. Mrs. Bauer actually is a woman. She did write or publish using her initials because the publishers refused to allow their buyers, the readers to know that these books were written by a woman, heaven forbid. Anyway, scandalous, yes. Bauer did actually live on a ranch in Montana during the 1890s and into the early 1900s. She, when the first, she wrote short stories to begin with and sold them to the popular magazines. And then she did get a contract with a publisher to write full length stories. She did have a cowboy who lived on the ranch help her with her writing. He was also a writer, he was starting to write. And so she helped him and he helped her. He verified her facts basically on what life was really like for the cowboys. This book in particular is one of three that take place on the Flying New Ranch which is in Montana. It's, I would call, I thought folksy. It was my first thought when I read this book. It is generally covers day to day life on a ranch. The plot is that sheep ranchers moved in next door, bought up property and it's a battle between, okay, do we let you run your sheep that tear up the land muddy up our water into our water hole or not, okay. In novelists, I just wanted to point out, well, there are a couple of things I wanted to point out, but one of the things I wanted to point out, Susan pulled a list for me for each of these books and I thought folksy, they say it's a taste. And I thought that, yeah, I thought that sort of amusing, but I have to say, Mrs. Bauer says that the cowboys curse, but she doesn't say the actual words that they use. So I guess you would call it taste. She would go that far, yeah. It's time I could build, but with some limitation. Right, right, yes. It's right, so I like so. Yeah, okay, yep, yep. She definitely does. So again, if you really, if you wanna have a good, sort of an overview of what ranch life was like, written by a person who actually lived on a ranch back in the 1890s, early 1900s, and isn't looking for a lot of action, actually. This is a really good book. Okay, we're going to go back to the library here. Okay, next, oh, and I also wanted to say, for this particular book, the University of Nebraska Press has reprinted it, but it is also available as an e-book from several different publishers. So, okay, the next one that I wanna talk about, and I'm sort of stuck on Montana writers, because I know them a little bit better, because I lived in Montana for a while, and Dorothy M. Johnson wrote some really classic stories that were made into movies. The main one being the van who shot, and I'll say it the Hollywood way, Liberty Balance. I actually heard her on the Missoula radio station in the University of Montana radio station before she died back in the 80s, and she said, well, they never asked me, but that's not how he pronounces last name. So, they wrote this song and made this movie and said, Liberty Balance, but no, it was Liberty, the Lance. Somebody should remake it. Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. Johnson's works were more gritty, and actually, the man who shot Liberty Balance softened the story by quite a bit. So, if you want, if you have someone who wants a bit more gritty, good versus evil, somebody, a man who really regrets something he did and feels guilty for the rest of his life, that type of a story, I would suggest her works. There are actually, three of these are actually short stories, and one is a novella, and it is available in this combined format now for purchase, so. So, that's another type of story that your patrons might be looking for. Okay, if you remember Mrs. Bauer, she was really popular back in the early 1900s, and many Western writers actually were very influenced by her work, including TV Olsen, who was actually a theater, this is not another, initials hiding a woman, and I had read that he was really influenced by her, and then I read this book that he wrote called Kino, and I was sort of surprised, because while I call the Flying New Ranch folksy, this is very definitely gritty, and you have a main character who has had a very hard life, the man who raised him since he was two years old beat him regularly until Kino got old enough and big enough to fight back, but he's gotten a message from his foster father to come meet him in sort of a desert remote area to run a con with some other guys. They are actually going to, planning on stealing money from a cattle rancher, a powerful man in the area, who is actually stealing money from the government and the Indians because he's mining gold on reservation property, okay? But Kino still has a sense of right and wrong, and he fights in justice, I guess you would say, but it's just a very gritty life, okay? I found it, so comparing it to the Bauer book, I found it really interesting. Let me see what's there. Okay, so moving, oops, I hit it one too many times. Moving on, okay, Louis the Moor, very, very, very, very popular. So I debated about whether talking about him, but he remained popular, and a lot of current writers use the same basic themes and settings that Louis the Moor does. He did tend to write sort of what I would call family sagas. He had his Thackett series, for example, where he followed the, had a story about the father and then a number of the sons and then other things happened, et cetera. The one that I picked to talk about today called Thackett is about one of the sons named William Tell Thackett or Tell for Short, okay? He has been a roamer. He's at the beginning of the story, he was working as a cow puncher and he's ready to move on. His brothers have married and settled down and he's thinking about that too. He's been wandering around the West for a while now and he's sort of thinking about finding somebody, a woman, a good woman to marry and settling down on a ranch and having kids himself. But on his way to, from Montana or up north, to his brother's place down in Colorado, he happens to come across a gold mine. Lots of prospecting in some of these books. And some of the themes in this book are greed, of course. And I would say family loyalty, but also this is one where the main character is very independent and self-sufficient. At one point he gets caught in a cave, out in an uninhabited valley and there's a really big ice storm and then a snow storm on top of it. And he needs, he doesn't have enough food to last out the winter if he does get caught here and his horses, mules are sort of stuck. He can't get food to them. So he actually makes himself snowshoes so that he can move around. So very self-sufficient. It's very respectful of women and it's very quick read. And I think that's one thing that might appeal to traditional Western readers. The books often tend to be fairly short and if you're listening to the audio version, which I did several, for several of these titles, they take less than five hours, generally, somewhere between four and a half and five hours. Oops, and before I go there, I'm sorry, I was going to go to the, show you the novelist page just to show you that if you are looking for, looking for, if somebody does want a Louis Lamour type book, okay, in novelists, you do have the read-alikes. James Mitchner is another one that I think of as writing sort of like sagas. Wouldn't be short. Wouldn't be short. No. You understand what I like about that. Yeah, Louis Lamour. Yeah, Elton, gosh, Elmer Kelton, have a hard time with his name, is another one who's fairly popular, but wrote some years ago and is sort of the loner out on his own. William Johnstone, whom I'll talk about at one of his books. I think you hover over those in electric telly. Oh, sorry, let me just hover here a second. It will actually tell you what the similarities are. For example, Plot Driven, Western Stories, Outlaws, so you can kind of get a sense, is this the overlap in the area that is interesting, the patron? Right, yeah, and of course, tell has to battle outlaws who want to take his gold, the, yeah, that he found, so. So, yeah, we have a variety of read-alikes down here, but if they do want, if they wanted the family sagas, you can specify which parts they liked about this book and then do another search, too. So, yeah, there's some of that. The gunfights aren't actually, stand on the street and shoot them out, gunslinger type thing, but there are some fights, yeah. So, so that's that. Louis Lamour, okay, so then we go on to William Johnstone, and I decided to go ahead and talk about Johnstone because I think his writing is very similar to Louis Lamour and he is still writing, even though he is getting out there in years, he is still writing, and he sometimes writes with his nephew, J.A. Johnstone. He also follows what he calls a family, the Jensen family. They're actually three men that have sort of formed their own family. They're not biologically related, but this particular book, The Hard Ride to Hell, is longer than a Louis Lamour book, but that's because, and I have to admit, I didn't go back and look through other family Jensen books just to see if he follows the same format, but in this one, he gives each of the three men a story before they then come together to solve the big final problem. So it turns into a bit of a longer book. In this particular one, preacher is visiting an Indian chief that he knows and the Indian encampment is raided and the chief's daughter and grandson are kidnapped. So he sends for Matt and Smoke, the two boys, to come and help him. Well, Matt, sorry, Smoke is dealing with rustlers, so he has that to solve before he can head off to help the preacher and Matt is helping the station agent at another place to deal with some stagecoach robbers. So you have multiple different, yeah, there's always something going on. But again, you've got the men who roam, which basically, preacher is a mountain man, that's how he describes himself, that's how he's described in the book. Matt roams around doing jobs here and there in someplace else. He'll work as a cow puncher and sometimes he'll do something like help, stop, stage robbers. Smoke has a vow, he married a school teacher and has his own ranch. So there's a bit of a variety there. There is action in this story. So I think people would enjoy that one. Okay, for something just a little bit different, Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert E. Parker. Unfortunately, Parker has died, but the series is being continued by Robert Knot. In this one, there are two men. So I don't know that just say necessarily that one is the main character and the other one's a sidekick. Although one tends to speak for the other because one sort of doesn't talk a lot. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. Sometimes in some books they're lawmen and sometimes they're pseudo-lawmen. They're fighting for the right thing when the local sheriff or whatever is not doing his job. So they switch back and forth. But when I read this one, which was written by Robert E. Parker, what really struck me was the dry humor in it. If you ever saw the movie Silverado, it reminded me of that one. A lot of stuff is sort of tongue-in-cheek, you know? But it's humorous. Most of it, usually the action takes place in a town where they're trying to solve some kind of problem. Whether you've got people who are taking advantage of other people or people who are trying to steal from other people or whatever's going on. So it's again a very quick read. I did look at one of the books that was written by Robert Knott and while the characters are still there, they're still doing the same types of things and there wasn't quite as much of the same humor. So that changes a little bit, but they're still off having adventures. And I think, sorry, looking at my notes here, I was going to go to the novelist. I lost my pointer there for a second. Here we go. Okay, on this particular one, they point to different books for read-alikes variety. It is very fast-paced. This one they say gritty and I would agree with that to an extent. It's not as gritty as quinoe, but it's more, they're more, they're hard men basically, okay? And yeah, it's witty. They say things that are humorous and yeah, this one had the police misconduct. So moving on. And if anyone has any titles or authors that they want to contribute as being similar or being that people might like for the same style, please feel free to send them in too, okay? And I, we'll get this right here sooner or later. One at a time. But the next title I was going to talk about is Tenbow by Matt Brown. We're back with the law-type character, but in this particular case, the main character is a private investigator. He did it one time. He worked very briefly for the US Marshals and he also worked as a detective for different banks and railroads. But at this time, he is working on his own as a private investigator. And he's been hired to find out who is killing ranchers in the Tenbow Valley of Wyoming. He does work as a track, as a tracker. He's trying to, he goes to the places where the shootings have occurred and he finds where the sniper basically because the killer is shooting over a very long distance where the sniper actually was while he, where he waited and then where he shot the person. And he tracks, he follows the forensic evidence, I guess you would say. So I found it interesting. He took on different characters at one point. He took on the character of a gambler and then he went out to a ranch and posed as a horse breaker. And he could fit into a variety of different fields. He could do different things while he was trying to gather this information. And he does solve at the end who the perpetrator was. And this is one of those books where the wife was unfaithful to the husband. That's part of the main plot line. I guess that's mostly what I was gonna say about this one. Okay, Rough Justice by Lyle Brand. This was written within the past couple years that this is actually number two in the Gideon Rider series. Gideon Rider has been hired by the Secret Service. Again, he was a US Marshal, but because of a scandal he got kicked out. This takes place just after the Civil War and the Secret Service in relation to the stories has just been established. Gideon is out in Texas and he has been assigned different jobs, problems that are going on that need to be solved. In the first book, he handles pirates and smugglers. In this particular book, Rough Justice, he is trying to find out what he can about the KRS, the Knights of the Rising Sun. Think Klu Klux Klan, basically. There is a contingent in Texas that doesn't want to accept that they lost, the South lost the Civil War, that the African-Americans are now not allowed to be held in slavery. They go after people who are trying to set up schools and help the freed men in Texas and Gideon is trying to find out who's the head of the organization in Texas and whether they are actually trying to raise up, put in motion a rebellion and send in motion another war, basically. So he has to handle those guys. The next one is Black Justice by Jason Elder. This is part of the Outcast series and again it's number two. This one's a little bit different in that there is a group of men that is traveling together towards California and along the way they keep running into incidents where they help out, okay? And they're called the Outcasts because for one reason or another, they can't go back home and other people don't really want them around, okay? Okay, so in this particular one, they've stopped in a town for a couple days to eat and replenish their supplies, et cetera, but they run into trouble. One of them is actually bitten by a snake, a rattlesnake, as he's trying to get away from the sheriff because he cuckolded the sheriff. That's why that guy doesn't like him, yeah. Yep, so he's hiding out and in the process of hiding out, he sees a murder occur for which a black man is arrested and tried and going to be hung, okay? But he doesn't want to go to the sheriff and say, hey, I saw this murder occur and I know that it wasn't done by this particular man. So the others in the group try to figure out who actually did murder the guy. And so it is mystery. Several of these you'll notice do have very much a mystery theme. Something occurs and someone is trying to figure out who did it, why did it happen, et cetera. So that's another book that has certain things to it. Let it bleed. I put this one in. I was trying to do something of a variety. This is part of a series, Gunsmith. His nickname is Gunsmith, his real name is Clint Adams. There are a number of books written about that J.R. Roberts has written about him. And in each one he has a different adventure. This particular series is a bit more graphic in its description of the interactions between men and men. It shows bumbling police and power hungry politicians. But as a twist, there's a journalist from Boston who's been following a serial killer across the country. And now this serial killer is an Abilene. So the journalist has talked the Gunsmith into partnering with him to try to track down this man who's been killing women everywhere he goes. When I read this, what I thought of in comparison is a TV series, okay? I should see, it does have the subject on the cover of the All Action Western series. Yeah, well, in this particular one was quite so much action, but the story moved along really fast because every chapter was only about two and a half pages long. So you jump from scene to scene to scene to scene, just like in a TV, you know, an episode of a TV series. What is the 397, is that how many are in the series? No, that's how many he has written, but I could not find that there are actually 397 that are particularly focused on the Gunsmith. So, yeah, that was a little strange. The other thing about this cover is none of the illustrations really portray exactly what happened to the story. So you can't go by the cover necessarily. It's a little license with their advertising there. Right, right. So far I've talked about mainly what are considered sort of traditional stories. They take place in the late 1800s. There usually is some kind of action, good trying to overcome evil. Some are gritty, some aren't, but they are more fictionalized characters, okay? So someone here did actually comment and say Gunsmith is very popular in her library. Yeah, so. Yeah, I imagine so. Whoops. On the other side of what I've been talking about are the more literary and what some people have defined, what the Western writers of America have defined as historical westerns, okay? Where in this particular title, The Last Kind Words Saloon, Lurie McMurtry does a fictionalized version of, sorry, I just lost the words on it, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday and the shootout at The Last Corral is at the very end, okay? Charles Goodnight, a famous cowboy down in Texas is in there. They bring in an English peer who plans on building this big castle down in the Southwest, which actually happens sometimes. So in your historical westerns, you have actual people who lived historical real people, historical real events and things of that nature, okay? Lurie McMurtry also writes at a different literary level, I guess you would say. But on the other hand, as Susan mentioned earlier, sometimes you've got those books where it's more, they're looking at the internal, sometimes internal angst of which way you go and on a particular issue and it's more character driven. There was action in this story, however, there is very, it's very gritty. Many of the characters are very dysfunctional. There's wife abuse. There's very graphic descriptions of torture by Indians. He doesn't totally stick to the facts. He imagines, yes, he takes literary license. He imagines what has happened between these characters before this shootout occurs. So some people really like that type of thing and others prefer not to. And I'm going to pop the novelist here for just a second if I can get my pointer in the right way. There we go. Okay. Oh, and Buffalo Bill's Wild West show is involved in this story, too. Story line, so. So they have action packed, engaging, gritty. Characters are exaggerated, definitely. There's abusive men. There's alcoholics. You've got the British in the United States. You're different people. It's ranchers and all those types of things. So you've got both, you have a wide range to pick from. So we go back to the reader's advisory. We keep cycling back to that. What exactly are your patrons looking for? What is the appeal in the books that they really like? Just to wrap up, I did want to point out some of the Western writers who've recently won awards. Historic novels, we've got authors that I did not talk about, but they've written books recently that have been award worthy. You have contemporary. When we're talking contemporary, that just means post 1940. The story takes place post 1940, where these others take place before 1940, okay? So those are some authors that have won awards. And then we just wanted to talk for a minute about some other authors that maybe are writing contemporary books that take place in the contemporary time, but have Western settings and themes that are like the traditional Westerns. So of course, Craig Johnson, who writes about Walt Longmeyer, who's a sheriff in Wyoming. CJ Box, who's also, I don't know what's his name, Joe Pickett, who's, I just lost it, he's a game warden in Wyoming. J.A. Jance writes several different series that follow law people in the West. And of course, Tony Hillerman's classic, Jolie Porn and Jim Chee Books. Some other authors that you might not have heard of, Patrick McManus writes about Sheriff Bo Tully and his is Bartongan Cheek, we're wacky characters again.  And then he writes the Sean Stranahan mystery series, which take place in Montana. Stranahan is an XPI and he's now a fishing guy, but he keeps getting involved in mysteries. But there's a lot of outdoors in it and Western themes. Michael McGarrity has actually written both a contemporary modern series and he's then went on to write a historical series. In the contemporary series, his main character is Kevin Kearney and he works, he's in New Mexico and over the series of 12 titles, he has worked for the State Patrol, he's been a sheriff, a police chief, he keeps moving around from one agency to another. But he does pull in a lot of historical information and works with the Native Americans in the area and that type of thing. His historical series actually follow Kevin Kearney's ancestors who moved to New Mexico. So, John Tolton writes a series about David Mapstone, who's a former county sheriff in Arizona.  There are many out there, you can in novelist as Susan showed, you narrow down to the genre term of Western stories and add a state in, if people are looking for a particular state. They don't read something about their home state. Right. So, and I found that a lot of the books, I did talk about all of the books I read, but a lot of them that are traditional take place in Colorado, a lot based there too. So, go on to the last one. And I just put this slide together just sort of for the fun of it. Since I started working with novelist in July, as I go along and I'm looking for materials, I'm always taken by just the large number of terms that they have compiled to describe books to help librarians and readers identify what it is about books that appeal to them. And so, when I'm working on a project like this, when I'm looking at information about Westerns, as I go along, I just as a matter of course, kind of keep a running tab of terms that they use. So, genre terms that are associated with many of the mystery stories, locations, appeal terms, subject headings. And the nice thing about these is that, with a little background information on how to do searching in novelist, you can kind of start mixing in match at least on behalf of your patrons. So, Western stories, like I've said, and like Debra has said, that's sort of the overarching, the most likely genre term to use to get the most titles. But you can mix and match it with other genres, for instance. And I'll just point out, I do have a little screenshot of the keyword search screen in novelist. And the way you would do a search and target these terms is you've got the field label, which is a two character capitalized label. And I've got those codes behind each category. So genre is capital G, capital N. Location is capital S, capital D. So I can put down genre, and then adventure stories is a term that's used. And because it's more than one word, I do have to put it in location marks, then the capital and, and then I just plugged in the location, SD, the West is another terminology term that they use. So if what your patron really likes is the adventure aspect of Westerns and the setting of the West, you can try some searches like that and maybe identify titles that get lost in the shuffle if you've just done, you've put up all 6,000 Western stories. Or like we were saying, you can put SD and then your state name, if the patron really wants to read about things in a particular state. I really had to, I had a lot more subject terms written down than would fit on here. So that's just, just to give you an idea of, specific sort of character archetypes that are in these books. If somebody, for example, if somebody's seen Revenant and once other books that are kind of about mountain men, mountain men is a subject term that you can use. So it takes a little playing around with the database to get to the point where you can really use these tools, but it gives you a lot of power in terms of pulling out material. So I just kind of wanted to give you a sense of how much you have at your disposal when you have a resource like Novelist available to you. Did you guys want to show, you had brought up previously the Western Writers of America page? It's, I have to close some of these probably. There it is. Here you go. Yes. You can go into, if you want to, you can go, if you go into about the awards, you'll actually pull off a PDF document that gives a description for each of the different types of awards that they give, and then I'll just pop down to winners. And they list all of them all the way back to 1953. The categories that they give awards in have changed over the years, but this last year, as we said, they do give an award to a contemporary novel, which is the post of 1940. The historical is actually pre-1940, but has a historical person place or event in it. And then the traditional novel is pre-1940, but does not include historical people or events. Okay. And then they go on to others. They do talk about juvenile, which we have not talked about here today, but there are kids who like to read Westerns and lots of authors to choose from there. They do give to the first novel, and they do non-fiction awards, also biographies and that type of thing. So this is another source to find ideas of authors and titles. The other thing that I think is interesting here, if you're doing readers advisory in a particular genre, and you'll often find associations and organizations out there that promote that genre, and so their websites are really great resources for you as the librarian, and maybe for patrons who are real big fans of that genre. They might be interested in following that association as well. Many of these associations now are available. In this case, you'll notice along the left, they're available on Facebook and Twitter. There's apps that you can download. So again, depending on how plugged in your patron is to social media, you might be able to get them hooked up with some of these resources so they can do some of that research themselves and discover new authors. Right. And we know you can't buy everything. And you might have some patrons who read a great deal and are always in asking for more and more and more. There's always in a library loan. Yes, absolutely. But also a lot of Western books, not all of these authors unfortunately, but a lot of them are available through vendors like Overdrive and for those libraries who are part of the Nebraska Overdrive group, we do try to buy a variety of Western titles to put into the collection too. And not everybody wants the print version. A lot of patrons do want the audio version also. So we do put those into Overdrive also. And there's always online used booksellers. Right. I know a lot of people who are constantly buying used books through Amazon for pennies on the, you know. Yeah, for a lot of these that are written, a lot of your titles you mentioned have worked really old ones and they're probably not gonna, yeah, you gotta find them through your current. Right. Unless they've been reprinted. Right. Some works are reprinted often, but others, yeah. And they might be paperbacks and they might not be in the best condition, but that means they might be cheap. Yeah. They might get them a couple of bucks and so. One of them that I checked out from our local library here in Lincoln. That's an old edition. You can tell they're looking at it, yeah. It's 1970 and it's been rebound. Because I guess they decided it was a plastic and they wanted to keep it, you know. Now people were checking out the previous version before it got in the cover, yeah. Yeah. So. And despite what Harper Collins thinks, I bet you can check them out more than 26 times. Yeah. Yeah. So. Are there any questions? Any comments? No, except for the one about the gunsmith thing very popular at someone's library. Does anybody have any questions or comments about anything? I know before we do wrap up. Just realize we're sticking around over time. Yeah, we're a little over. That's okay. Everybody's still stuck around until the end here, so. Oh, okay. Well, if you have any suggestions, especially, and I'll say, especially those libraries in Nebraska, if you have suggestions for authors or titles, you know, things that your patrons are looking for that aren't currently in our shared overdrive collection, please do feel free to send in suggestions and we'll see if we can add those titles to the collection. And for those of you that are watching too, you noticed in the slides, there were the links to the novelist for some of the titles. If you're well in Nebraska or anywhere you have novelists, that will work. And we put up the slides we posted so you have access to that along with the recording afterwards, so you'll be able to see where, although you might be able to get more information about all those books. And if you don't have novelists, I don't know if you see what you guys have in your states that you can do something similar with. Sure, books in print and other. Goodreads. Yeah, goodreads, library thing. They might not. Yeah, they might not. They won't put in all of the appeals and things like that, but you can definitely search for Western stories. Oh, someone did just say we've got Western readers, so thanks for all the suggestions. Yes, so they definitely learned some new ones, probably that they hadn't done before. All right, well, it doesn't look like any other urgent questions have come in, so that's great. But thank you very much, Deborah and Susan. Like as we said, this is an infrequent series, we'll call it, of library commission staff sharing books that they've read or genres, and there'll be more coming up. As I said, we don't have an actual exact schedule of when, but when every few months we come up with an idea. It takes some time to get up to speed on some of these genres. It does, if you haven't read them, yeah. Previously, I think we've done really good, where we've found people on staff who read the certain area, certain genres, certain type of book, and then gather them together, but this is not always gonna happen like this one. This was brand new to both of you guys. But we learned a lot about it, so cool. All right, so thank you very much, Deborah and Susan, for sharing all that information. Listen, thank you everyone for attending. The show has been recorded as usual, and it will be here on our Encompass Live website, over here where we have our archived Encompass Live sessions, right beneath all our upcoming ones. It'll be posted here with the recording, the slides, and links to, well, I guess we have not blessed the Western Writers in America webpage, we'll have those links up there for you as well. Later today, I'll say, if I'm feeling ambitious, I gotta wait for everything to process and get everything posted and uploaded, but we'll get up there and you'll all get emails when it's ready to view. So I hope that'll wrap it up for today. I'll help you join us next week when, as I mentioned at the beginning, we are gradually moving the Library Commission to Windows 10, some of our computers, like the one we're using today, is in Windows 10. The computer in my office is not yet, so I'm bouncing back and forth, and I know lots of other people are doing the same thing, but next week we'll have our topic will be moving to Windows 10. Holly Wolt, who is one of our IT people here at the Library Commission, is gonna come and tell us what's going on with it, overview of it, and how you can use it at your library if you do need to move to Windows 10. So just to get an idea about what the heck is going on with this wonderful new version of Windows that some of us may have to use at some point. And also, sign up for any of our other topics. We've got our upcoming shows there. We've got more coming into the schedule. Lily posted as I get the full information from all of our presenters, so keep on our schedule there.  As you see this morning, I posted a reminder to log in for our show. You can log in on the fly if you don't pre-register. And when our recordings are available, I post up here. So if you are big on Facebook, definitely give us a like over there. Other than that, that wraps it up for today. Thank you very much, everyone. I'll see you next week.


Hello, my name is Roger Watson and I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education and Practice, and that journal is published by Elsevier. In this session, I want to talk to you about unethical research practices concerned with publication, and these are things that editors hate. Now there are other issues I want to go on to, I want to talk about authorship first authorship is a tricky issue and in fact authorship issues are the issues that editors most commonly have to deal with, they are remarkably common. And if you look at the Committee on Publication Ethics annual reviews of the problems that have been brought to their attention, authorship is not always the most common issue brought to their attention, however it's completely steady over the years, something like 25% for several years of the complaints they've had to deal with have been authorship issues. So it's one of these things where other problems fluctuate and go way up and go way down, authorship issues are very steady and therefore very, very common, and I know that I've often had to deal with authorship issues. If you want to know what the appropriate standards are for authorship, I would strongly urge you to refer to Cope, the Committee on Publication Ethics, but they will refer you through to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Now it doesn't matter which field you're working in, the International Medical Journal Editors give a very good explanation of who should be an author and who shouldn't be. Now I don't have time to go into that in detail here, but it is quite clear who should and who shouldn't be. And I'll just give an example, who shouldn't be an author is someone who happens to be in charge of say a laboratory or a hospital area or something like that, who happens to be the senior person there but who had nothing to do with the actual preparation of the article or indeed with doing the research. And that's called a gift authorship or honorary authorship and we don't like it. Now we don't necessarily know that this has happened unless somebody draws it to our attention, but of course it does occasionally get drawn to our attention and we have to deal with it. On the other hand of course occasionally and probably more often what we do get referred to us is cases of where people were legitimately authors on an article and weren't included, we also have to deal with that. The other thing that we encounter increasingly is ghost authorship, where in fact someone else has written the article, but it's not obvious they're not attributed as an author. Now there are some arguments about how this should be dealt with. My feeling is that somebody who's really engaged with a manuscript, especially if they've got any subject expertise and have contributed to the development of the manuscript, not just it's writing the words, I think there may be a case for authorship, but at the very least they should be acknowledged and that can include using people who translate papers for you or translate your work for publication, at the very least they should be acknowledged. They absolutely must be acknowledged, so be aware of ghost authorship, but it's more serious in some fields, particularly in some areas of medicine where papers are written for example by drug companies and then the authorship is attributed to people who are paid to be the authors, often senior medical or even other clinicians. So that's another example of ghost authorship. Anyway that's all we want to say about authorship, please check the International Committee of Medical General Editors. Now another big area and it's really a developing area and again the International Committee of Medical General Editors and the Committee of Publication Ethics have a lot to say about this if you check their websites, then that's the area of conflicts of interest. Now I could sit here and talk about conflicts of interest alone for another another hour probably. Conflicts of interest are absolutely endless, there's no end to what can potentially be a conflict of interest, the most obvious one is financial. If you're being paid for example to test a substance or a drug and you're also carrying out the clinical trial that could be seen as a conflict of interest, but they are much wider than that. For example as an editor I have conflicts of interest, I'm an honorary professor in several universities and if people are publishing from those universities it should be declared at some point in the process that I am a visiting scholar there or I could be seen to be preferring their articles. But personal relationships, political affiliations and even religious affiliations if you're writing about certain topics can be conflicts of interest. Now what usually happens when people get into trouble about conflicts of interest is that they haven't declared them and I've had to deal with a few cases of this and when people haven't declared them the answer I've been given is I didn't want to declare them in case you wouldn't publish my paper and they've got completely the wrong end of the stick about conflicts of interest. It's not that conflicts of interest will prevent you from publishing a paper, it's that they must be declared so that anyone reading the paper can interpret the work in that light, you're not trying to hide anything. Conflicts of interest are usually things that arise after publication that cast some doubt on how independent your judgments were or indeed how independent the judgments of the editor were. So publication ethics is not just for authors, it's for editors and for publishers too, particularly in the area of conflicts of interest.


India and Nepal enjoy a long-standing relationship which is rooted in its people-to-people connectivity, leading to shared growth of the two countries. This has been further strengthened under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Modi, taking our bilateral ties to the next level, including construction of Moti Hari Amlaik Gunch Pipeline, Integrated Checkposts at Bharat Nagar and Veerganj, Road Infrastructure, Post-Earthquake Reconstruction Projects and many more initiatives. This time, it is getting even more stronger with the inauguration of cross-border passenger rail services between Jai Nagar in India and Kurtha in Nepal. This rail line will connect Nepal with all major cities of India through railway via Jai Nagar in India. This is the first cross-border, broad-gauge rail project between India and Nepal, and the first passenger rail service between the two countries since passenger rail services halted in 2014 for upgradation of rail infrastructure. The key highlight of this integrated rail infrastructure project is to convert the old narrow-gauge railway track to broad-gauge and further extend it to Badi Bass in Nepal. The project is being built under Government of India Grant assistance of 876.8 crore Nepalese rupees and is being designed, planned and executed by Aircon International Ltd. The operationalization of the passenger rail services on the section are being undertaken by Nepal Railway Company, with a demo set procured by Nipani side through an arrangement with Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd. The rail section connects the historic city of Janakpur in Nepal with sweet heart-warming mathletradition of Madhubani in India and will further boost people-to-people linkages, which is the core of the India-Nepal relationship. This rail project stands as a perfect example of bilateral partnership and cooperation between India and Nepal as part of Neighborhood First Policy, envisioned by Prime Minister Srinarendra Modi.