Perfect. So we are at our last session of the day for Big Talk from Small Libraries 2020. I am Krista Porter, your host here from the Nebraska Library Commission. Big Talk from Small Libraries is sponsored by the Association for Rural and Small Libraries and the Nebraska Library Commission. Our annual conference, where all of our presenters are from organizations, public libraries, academic libraries, whatever kind of libraries that have the small FTEs or populations served. We try of generally 10,000 or less, but definitely on our smaller side here. And with us right now is Erin Merrill. Good afternoon, Merrill. Erin, and she is from Westminster College in Utah. Perfect, thank you. Correct, section of integration, yeah. From, yeah, Salt Lake City, Utah. And their FTE is 2,500, correct? Correct. Pop that, yeah. Sorry? We're actually a bit under, but I'll talk about that in just a second. Oh, okay, great. All right, so I will, and she's gonna talk about the textbook donation program, which I think is, any academics is very dear to our heart that there's something in need. So I'll just hand it over to you, Erin, to tell us all about what you did there. Perfect, thank you so much.  It's nice to know that I'm not speaking out to avoid, but I'm happy to be here with everyone today. I will be talking about, like she said, how to create a textbook donation program to build a course reserve. So just to get things started, I can't progress my slide. You should be able to, if you clicked on it, it should likely, there it goes. So just to give you an overview of the presentations so you know what you can expect throughout my session is I'll start by talking about the potential impact of course reserve, then the creation and workflow of a textbook donation program, how to assess the program once you get it going, buries and benefits of the program, and finally, I'll leave the time for questions. But I wanna give you a better idea of our college campus so you know really what we're working with here. This semester we're a little bit lower than usual, but we have 2,215 students here at Westminster. They're pretty smart with an average 3.57 incoming student GPA. Just about half of the students come from out of state or international, and most importantly, we don't have a single classroom with more than 40 students, which we're really just trying to be a small tight-knit community, which is pretty common with liberal arts colleges. To give you a better idea about our library, we only have seven full-time staff. We're quite small. Five of us are librarians, and then we also have two professional support staff. And believe it or not, we're only down to four librarians right now, and we are in the middle of a search for a new head of collections and access. So we're a small team, but we're strong. We also have 17 student employees who help us on the evenings and weekends, and really, all the time always. We're grateful to have their help as well. We're open 93.5 hours a week. We have over 97 databases, 86,000 books, plus nearly a quarter million e-books. And last year, we circulated just over 5,000 items in the academic year. So that includes books, movies, course reserves, anything that students can check out from our collections. I wanna give you an idea of kind of what we're dealing with so you can understand the rest of my presentation in context. But if you're looking to create a textbook donation program, you're trying to figure out where to start. Well, in my opinion, the very first place you should go is examining your student needs. So you have a better idea of how students are actually spending money on textbooks on your campus. So to do this, you'll want to work with your bookstore to obtain a list of required course material for each course. For me, all that means is emailing the bookstore representative and asking if she'll send me the list. Depending on when I ask in the semester, she may not have it yet. As you can imagine, faculty sometimes drag their feet and getting materials in. But as soon as she has the complete list, she always is willing to share that with me and it comes in a PDF. Next, you'll want to record each material's lowest available price, highest available price, and overall average price. The reason why you wanna be collecting multiple prices is so you can get an actual understanding of how students might have to spend money on course materials. You'll also want to track the average number of materials per course. As you can imagine, there's a difference between having four books required and one book required and the four books will be much more expensive. And then finally, you wanna track prices over multiple semesters to determine trends on your campus. One semester is really not enough to have a good idea of what spending for students is like and so you'll wanna do it over time. So what exactly should you be tracking when you are looking at this information? There's several different things. You'll always wanna take note of both the course name and the professor name. This helps you understand which disciplines are more expensive for one, but it also helps you later down the road when you're adding books to course reserve. You don't have to scramble to find out where that book is required and who the professor is. I also record the author, book title, and edition and year of the book. The reason being is that on occasion, you'll find books that have the same title but are actually have very different content. So we wanna make sure that we are giving students exactly what they need. And so recording the author and the edition can make sure that they're dealing with the same, the appropriate material. The other reason why you want edition and year, I know you are all familiar with having to buy a textbook, different editions have different things as you wanna make sure that you have the appropriate year. Next, you wanna track the highest cost. And so if there are five prices listed, you simply just track the very most expensive one. You'll do the same with the lowest cost. So the lowest price is what you record and then the average cost. Now the average cost is not the average between the highest cost and the lowest cost, rather it's the average of every price listed. So if there were five books listed, five prices listed for one book, you will add all five prices and then divide it by five to get the average. It wasn't realistic for me to record every single price for every book. Sometimes there could be even 12 prices listed due to being rented or a used edition or an online edition, there's a lot of different ways that a book might be, one book might be available to students. So for me, the best thing I could do is just get the overall average. One thing to note though is not every book will have different prices for the average low and high cost. For example, this textbook here only was only available in one format. And so only had one price, which means the high, low and average cost was 246.5 in every column. And so even when there's only one price listed, you'll put that price in every column, which will give you a better idea of spending later on. So what does this actually mean at a campus level? Well, here's a crazy graph of what it means at our campus here. I have been tracking for the 2018, 2019 academic year, as well as this current academic year, which is fall 2019, spring 2020. And I want to highlight a few things that I discovered in tracking all of this. First of all, when you're looking at the fall semesters, so from fall 2018 to fall 2019, the average cost went up $11. And I want to highlight to you that this is really just the best case scenario. This is when I'm looking at the low average cost. So this is assuming that students were able to get the absolute lowest price the bookstore listed the book at. And in this scenario, even between fall 2018 and fall 2019, the price went up $11. For spring, from spring 19 to spring 20, we did see an increase. It wasn't as drastic. It was about $3. But in addition to the overall average cost increasing, we also saw an increase in the number of books that were required per course. So it went up about 0.5 from fall 2018 to fall 2019. And as you can imagine, the more books you need to buy, the higher your expenses become. And that's went up about 0.5 between spring 19 and spring 20 as well. When I'm looking at it at a semester level, what I did was I calculated the low average cost of the book times the number of books per course. So this column by this column. And then I assumed that all students are in four courses, which according to our registrar is about the average. So then I multiplied that by four and it gave us the average cost for the semester. From fall 2018 to fall 2019, it went up nearly $150, which is a significant increase in a short amount of time. The increase again for spring 19 to spring 20 wasn't as drastic, but it still did go up about $120. So when you look at the full academic year over in this column here, we saw a total of a $268 increase from the 2018-2019 academic year to the 2019-2020 year. Wow, that's cool. Pretty significant and then that's just one year. Yeah. So that means that students could be spending best case scenario on average $792. That could be rent, that can be gas for their car, that can be a plane ticket home over the holidays. It can go to so many other things. And I wanna remind you that this is the best case scenario. So what about the other students, the textbook broker students? These are the students who were only able to buy books at the average cost. They maybe weren't as quick to get the bookstore, the cheapest ones were gone. What about these students? You'll notice that in these columns, the increases are pretty similar. I just want you to note that we were in the 50s in the best case scenario and now we're about in the 70s. But even here, we saw an increase about $259 per academic year. But so now our current students on average really should be expecting to spend about $1,000 an academic year purely on textbooks, which is significant from last year. And now let's think about our absolutely saddest students, the textbook broker students. We jump up all the way to the 90s for the average cost per book here. The increase overall in the academic year is pretty similar at $262. But these students are our worst case scenario. These are the students that could not find the book at any other price. They had to buy it at the absolutely highest price on average. These students can expect to pay around $1350. That's pretty significant. So what does this actually mean overall? Let's kind of look at the overview of yearly increases. You can see the low average, the overall average and the high average increase from last year to this year. It's about $250 in every column, but last year's worst case scenario is actually this year's kind of average scenario. And it's pretty scary to see if this, I'm curious to see if this trend will continue and I'm scared to see that it might. It is also important to note that this is an overall campus average and the actual numbers will vary by student and major. For example, a lot of the students in our humanities won't even hit this 524 mark. They have cheaper books, less books that they might need to buy and they might not actually hit that average. Whereas some of our students in the nursing program, however, might actually be doubling this. We do also track it by course and major, but for the purpose of today's presentation, I just wanted to give you an overall picture of our campus spending care. So to give you some idea of the actual cost for our current year, I went through all of the listed books and wanted to see how many actually were listed at certain prices. And we had 11 books that were listed over 350, 30 over in the 300 to 3049 action, 54 in the 250 to 299, 73 in the 200 to 249 range, 95 in the 150 and to 199 range and 150 in the 100 to 149 range. So ultimately what that means is that 33% of books at Westminster actually cost more than $100. That means that students have a one in three chance of having to buy a textbook that costs more than 100, which if you remember the previous graphs is actually higher than every single average in the low overall average and high average cost per book. In reality, students about have a one in three chance of having to purchase that. So how do students actually cope with these costs? They might buy a purchase an older edition of the textbook that sometimes can throw them off in the semester when they don't have the same page numbers, they're missing certain content. They might delay purchasing the textbook if a student can't afford to pay their tuition and their room and board up front at the start of the semester, they might delay purchasing the textbook by the time they have a new paycheck come in or they actually can afford to buy it. They might already be behind and falling behind in their course. Some students just simply never purchase the textbook. You can imagine how that might affect their grades and some share the textbook with other students. This is actually pretty similar to what might happen with course reserve or they illegally download the textbook from the internet. Obviously we're hoping that students don't choose that option, but we know that's a reality for many. We even see some even more sad things when students have to result to ulterior ways to get the use out of their textbooks. So for some students, when they're crying about how much money they've spent for their textbooks, they might use it as a tissue to get the most out of it. Others, when they can't afford to get a gym pass, we'll use them to lift weights and build up their strength. For some, when their heating gets turned off from all of the money they spent on their textbooks, they'll have to result to burning it or warmth. And others, when they can't afford an umbrella, we'll use it for shelter in the rain. Obviously I'm just joking, but students feel like their textbooks are so much and they better use everything they can out of it. But we want to avoid students doing this and rather we want to teach them how to avoid buying the expensive textbook altogether. And this is where the textbook donation program really comes into play. So to give you a little bit of background, when I was first hired at Westminster, I was hired to promote open educational resources or OER. That's not something that they had on campus before and so they hired me to get the ball rolling. I was also pretty new to the idea of OER, so I spent my time getting more familiar with it, doing my research, getting better educated. And what I discovered is that a lot of schools have a stipend program. So what I did is I created an OER initiative proposal that I proposed to our provost that ultimately was asking for funding to give stipends to a certain number of faculty who would adopt or adapt textbooks, open educational textbooks into their classes to save money for our students. The provost was super supportive, she loved the idea. However, there was no funding. We weren't able to provide those stipends for our faculty, at least not at this time, perhaps later in the future, there was ultimately no funding to encourage this. However, we felt like it was still important, we saw the need, and so we tried to promote it and offer support for faculty to do that without the stipend. And in doing so, we ran into a couple problems. First of all, our faculty have some really unique courses here at Westminster. It's something that we love about Westminster. We have classes that are really tailored to our student population, their interests, their career goals, but because a lot of our courses are so unique, it's really hard for our professors to find an open educational resource that directly fits their class. Similarly, the faculty have a lot of resistance in taking the time it might need to adapt to the textbook to fit their needs, or to even find a textbook that would work, but would take time to rework their syllabus, create new assignments, and so on and so forth. So ultimately, no funding means no interest from our faculty, and so OER kind of hit a stalemate here on our campus. However, as we saw in the previous slides, there was persistent student need. In fact, the student need is increasing. And so ultimately, we got to the point of wanting to create a textbook donation program. So we first learned about this in a listserv. I know we are a listserv and I pitched it to my boss and she decided it was worth a shot. And so let me walk you through how we got here.  You'll wanna create a donation workflow and determine a donation period. So when students can actually come and donate their textbooks. For us, that was the first day of finals to two weeks after finals ends. If we opened up that period any sooner than finals, we weren't gonna get any donations because students still need them for their finals. And we left it up two weeks after finals because students have just spent an entire semester stressing out and it sometimes takes them two weeks to remember that this program exists, should be stressed and have the desire to come and donate. The other thing is we first started this after spring semester, which is right when a lot of people start moving home for the summer. And a lot of students actually were coming and dropping off their textbooks. So they didn't have to pack them up and fly them home or drive them home or anything like that. And we found that it was about two weeks after finals that we continued to get donations. You'll also wanna determine who will monitor the donations to make sure that they're coming in, that students aren't running off with someone else's donated textbook, to just really watch the process. In that case, this was me. You'll also wanna determine where to store donations. Before you actually put them on course reserve. Once they're on course reserve, you'll put them wherever you put your course reserve items. But for us, we put everything in the interim. In my office, I have quite a bit of shelving that we were able to store there. I wouldn't recommend putting your donations in the open stacks. We're really trying to keep track of these books and if we're not adding them to the catalog or anything like that, we put them in the stacks, they might walk off. You'll also wanna determine who will actually add the donations to reserve once they come in. This was not me. This was actually our nighttime circulation manager. She's the one who typically adds new books to our collection, to our catalog and so on and so forth. So she was the one designated to add books to reserve. And then also you wanna determine who will notify professors that their books have been added. I'll talk a little bit more about this later on the presentation and why you wanna do that step. You also wanna create a textbook donation station. So a place where students can actually drop off their textbooks and make sure that it's visible and easy to see. For us, this is at our main circulation desk. We first come in, this is the first thing you see and we had a large purple bin, those are school colors, with a sign marking it. And then of course you wanna plan time to advertise, advertise, advertise the program. If students do not know it exists, they're not gonna donate, it's not gonna build a reserve. So make sure that you adequately plan to advertise. Part of advertising is actually getting students to want to donate and we went about listening two ways. First of all, students will never say no to the chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card. How we did it is for every book a student donated, they could fill out a ticket to be in our giveaway. And so if a student donated four books, they got to fill out four tickets. At the end of the program donation period, we pulled out four names and we gave out four gift cards. We also tried to pitch it as a Pay It Forward program. Have you benefited from your textbook? Did you learn? Was it helpful? Would you like to make it easier for someone else to learn in the future? We had one student in particular who one day I just happened to be at the desk when he was donating eight textbooks. And I said, wow, thank you so much. That's so nice of you. Why did you choose to donate? He told me that he was a scholarship recipient and his scholarship covered all this textbook cost. And he felt so grateful to have that and realized that not all students were that privileged and that he was hoping that by sharing his textbooks, others could benefit from his scholarship. So he really was paying it forward. I know, I was like, I did not cheat, but his name came out when we pulled names at the end probably because he donated so many textbooks, but he was really intrinsically motivated. And so we tried to pitch it as a Pay It Forward program. Yeah, Pay It Forward, good karma. So how does it actually work once the program's created? Well, first a student donates a textbook to the library. They bring it straight to the donation then. We then check to see if it's a required textbook for the following semester. And if it is, simply put, we just add it to course reserve. If it's not a required textbook for the following semester, we'll do one of two things. We'll maybe save it for one academic year. The reason being is if a student's donating something in spring, very good chances is that it might not be required until the following spring. The way our classes work here at Westminster are a lot of fall to fall or spring to spring. We don't have as many classes that carry over between both semesters. So we save it for one academic year to see if it might show up. And sometimes we'll just donate or recycle the textbook to some book donation programs such as Better World Books. But let me give you a better idea of how the kind of deeper look happens. So when a student donates a textbook and we're checking to see if it's a required textbook, we're really looking at a couple things. If it's the right edition. So if it's the wrong edition, we'll check to see if it's more than one edition old. We just quickly learned that if it's more than one edition old, our professors are gonna be worried about it. They don't want it in the classroom. And so if it's more than one edition old, we'll just donate it or cycle it to one of our donation programs. If it's only one edition old, however, we do check with the professor themselves. So we reach out to them by email or by phone. Let them know that we got this donation. We'd like to put it on reserve, but it's not the right edition. How do you feel about it? Sometimes the professor will disapprove for whatever reason that they already have that right. And if that's the case, we donate or recycle the textbook. But if they do approve, we're very happy to go ahead and add it to course reserve. And that happens, we also put a note on the book for students to know that their professor is okay with an older edition. So, but once you have books on reserve, you have these donations, you actually need to get the word out that course reserve exists. And we do this in a couple of ways. So first of all, we really tap into professor support. Earlier I mentioned the importance of letting professors know that we got one of their textbooks and that we've added it to reserve. When we let them know, we ask them to do a couple of things. First of all, we list the library's reserve option as an option for the textbook in their syllabus. We also ask them that if at all possible, they'd be willing to send a message to all the students registered to their course before school actually starts. The reason being is a lot of students can't actually access the syllabus or the online course from their learning system such as Canvas until the first day of the semester. And so if the professors can actually send a message out ahead of time, we're gonna catch the students who are buying their texts before class even starts. And if we wait till the first day of class, sometimes that's too late for some students. So we really rely on professor support to helping their students know that this is an option for them. We also use various forms of campus messaging to get the word out. For example, this is our library newsletter that goes up a note of our bathroom stalls. So we put a note there. You can see it on the bottom there. We also send out an email to our undergraduate and graduate list, letting them know what's on course reserve and as well as all the other campus messaging tools that we have here on campus. We tap into them all, hoping that the word might get out. We also post on our library social media pages. So this is our Twitter and Facebook pages. We have a humble following, but it's a strong following. And we know that if one student is excited about it, there's a high likelihood that they'll share it with their friends. So we try the best we can to get the word out because if students are donating their books, but people don't even know course reserve exists, we're really just collecting books for nothing. So this is what students will see when they look up our list. If you wanna go and check it out yourself as well, this is our fall 2019 list. You can see the Bitly link right here in the bottom right corner. But we share the Bitly link all over all their pages because it's easy for them to access. This is really just a Google sheet. And you can see that they can search by course so they can just find the course they're in by professors, by book title, so on and so forth. And over here on the right, we have a note if there's any note from the professor. So for example, with this Biology 103 textbook, we actually only had the eighth edition when the ninth edition was what required for the course, but the professors gave their approval. And so we just made note of it here so the students know they don't need to worry about having an old edition there. You'll also notice this large yellow note here at the top. And this is really because this list is like constantly getting updated. And if students check on the first day of classes, the odds are that professors are also still adding books to course reserve. So we just want them to know that they can check throughout the first couple of weeks of school to see if one of their books will get donated. We're trying to get professors to add sooner and I'll talk about that a little bit as well, but we're just leaving a few notes for students so they can know what's going on. So that's one way students can see what's available on course reserves. We also have a link to course reserves on our library homepage. Students can click the little course reserves tab and then they can either search by instructor or key words. So if they do know the title of their book or if they don't want to do any of that, they can simply click the search button here, which will take them to our catalog. It's organized a little bit differently, though it's perhaps a little bit cleaner instead of having course name, it just says name and they can see their courses here, professors over here, but they can actually see the title of the book until they click in. However, if they were to click into something, for example, this Biology 204 book, it's gonna give you a little bit more information that students might be interested in. For example, it will give you the current status of the book. The reasons why students might be interested in the status is with course reserves, we have limited checkout periods and students can check out the book anywhere between two hours and seven days, just depending on the book. The majority of our books are checked out on four-hour periods, however, and if multiple students are using the book, you wanna know if you're gonna have to walk up to the desk for nothing or if it's actually available. So it's nice to check the library catalog to see what's available there. But there's multiple ways for students to see what's on reserve and to find the materials for their course. Once you have all this up and running, but this is, by this point, you should be well into the middle of the semester, not having to do much, but towards the end, you really wanna start collecting usage data to get an idea of how your program is actually saving students money. For us, we run usage reports using our integrated library system. For us, that's COHA and we run two reports. First of all, we wanna check the number of checkouts per textbook within a certain timeframe. So for us, that's just the first day of the semester and the last day of the semester. And then also the number of unique borrowers per textbook within the same timeframe. If you can identify the number of unique borrowers, you can actually calculate down to the penny how much money you're saving students. I also wanna make a note that you should make sure to run all your reports before you remove any textbooks from course reserve. If any of you familiar with course reserve, constantly putting things up, taking them down, and if you remove it, it's gonna complicate your data or you might be missing data altogether. So I wanna give you an idea of the impact it actually made here at Westminster after our first semester. So as I stated before, our first semester was spring 2019 and everything that was donated for spring 2019 was looking to be used for this past fall 2019. So after our first attempt, we got 116 textbooks donated to the program and for our small school we were filling and for our first attempt, we felt pretty good about that number. However, only 31 of those textbooks were actually required course material for the following fall and were added to reserve. The rest were put in storage in my office to see if they'd work out for the following spring. But we also had an additional 92 textbooks placed on reserve by faculty for a total of 103 textbooks on reserve for fall 2018. While these numbers might seem low, for us it was a huge increase. The previous semester, we only had 54 books on reserve. So I think that even though 31 of the textbooks came from donations and the majority came from faculty, I think the textbook donation program also brought more awareness to reserve for our faculty who noticeably placed more on reserve for fall. It's also important to note that this excludes all videos put on reserve. We have a film of minor here on campus and they are regularly putting films on reserve for students to check out. Those students are never even expected to buy the film. So we excluded it from the information as it's just a little bit different. But ultimately of the 123 books on reserve, we were sad to find out that only 44 of them were checked out at least once. Not the best numbers, but it is a humble start. But of those 144, we had 104 unique borrowers or students who utilize reserve during the fall 2019 semester. So what does this actually mean cost savings wise? Well, we decided to calculate the number of unique users for the textbook, high average and low cost of the textbook. What this did was help us get an idea of how much students were actually able to save. And there is a range just depending on if students were potentially able to get it at the lowest price or the highest price if they didn't get at the bookstore. But if students could only get the textbook at the highest price, we saved those 104 students combined at nearly $13,000, the average around 10, and at the low average around $7,000. Again, slow start, but when you look at it at an individual level, it actually is making a pretty big difference for these individual students. So students who utilize course reserve those 104 save on average of $69 to $134 per book. Again, that's just because of the high, low and average costs. But 63 of those 104 students save more than the low average of $69. 44 students saved more than $100, 20 of them saved more than 200, and 17 saved $338.25 from China. We're checking out just one book from course reserve. So this is about an equal amount of one class. That's a pretty average class size first here. And so if you look at it that way, we had one class because it was really all the same textbook that saved $5,000, $5,700 really, from just for just one class. So even though the numbers weren't as big as we were hoping they would be, we can recognize the potential. And if we are saving, if we could potentially be saving $5,000 for every class, you can imagine the savings that are possible. And those amounts may seem small, but to a student who's struggling, that's the difference. Absolutely. That being said, we are trying to look for ways to improve checkout data and just course reserve use in general. And so first of all, we're hoping to bring professors in earlier. So right now the donations happen well enough before the end of the semester that we have enough time to promote the donations that get added to reserve. But a lot of our professors don't actually add their books to course reserve until the first week of class. And as noted earlier, if you wait till the first week of class, a lot of students have actually already bought their books by that point. So we're actually this following semester we're gonna send the notice to professors to add books to course reserve a whole month before the semester starts. In the past, we've only done a week before the semester starts, but we're gonna put multiple reminders much earlier to hopefully be getting them to add it to reserve sooner so we can actually make a difference for the students. Again, professors are a big motivator for students even knowing that course reserve exists. So also if we can bring them in earlier, they'll probably promote to their students sooner as well. We're also considering extending our checkout links. I mentioned previously that we spend, the average textbook has about a four hour checkout period, but if we can extend that, that might make students more motivated to use it. If they're worried that they have a lot of competition or four hours isn't enough, if we extend it to eight hours or even 24, we might see some more use. Based off of our data, we think that with certain textbooks, we'd be able to do that. Obviously not all we could, but also for some of the textbooks that got checked out the most, we actually have multiple copies as well. So we could also consider buying more copies to improve checkout. We also need to increase our marketing efforts. I felt like we were already doing a lot, but we can always do better. For example, for some of our classes where the textbook is extremely expensive when we have it on reserve, we might consider coming in on the first day of class to their actual classroom and just spending one, two minutes and make an announcement, you guys don't have to buy the textbook for this class. Here's an option for you. Also letting those students know that we have things like a high speed scanner if they don't have enough time to finish while they have their checkout period, they can scan the rest of the chapter and finish it from home. So we are trying to figure out some ways that we might increase our marketing efforts to better get the word out and also make students more interested in using reserve. We're also trying to be patient. This was really our first semester making a larger push for reserve. And with all things, they take time to grow. So giving ourselves some grace and letting ourselves know it could get better. I also wanna identify some potential barriers that you might face when you are trying to implement a textbook donation program of your own.  A lot of bookstore contracts explicitly state that they cannot have direct competition with the library and they feel that the library adding copies to course reserves themselves is direct competition. That was a previous understanding that we had on campus and we knew that professors could put their copies on reserve but we as a library could not actively seek ways to build up our reserve beyond the professor donations. And this is common for with a lot of campuses. So before you ever start, make sure you check with the agreement of your campus bookstore and make sure that you have the green light there. You also might face some resistance from library personnel. I was really fortunate to not be met with any of that but potentially some issues such as funding, how are we gonna incentivize this prize? You might not have any incentives for your students personnel time. The time it takes to monitor the donations, to find which books are needed on course reserve, to add them to course reserve, to let professors know. It is actually pretty timely, time consuming. And quite frankly, your library might not have the personnel time that you would hope to do something like that. Also space, as I mentioned before, if you don't have somewhere that's not open stacks to store it, you might have some issues there. And those are some ways that your library personnel might show some resistance. You also might see some resistance from students asking like, what's in it for me? Thinking that they'd just rather resell their textbooks. They can get sometimes more cash. Well, definitely more cash. You're not guaranteed a $25 Amazon gift card. So maybe they're more motivated that way. Or some students simply just prefer to keep their textbooks other to refer to in their future career, whatever it might be. But we did see some resistance from students. That being said, we did also get quite a few donations. Despite there being barriers, there are a lot of benefits that come from having the textbook donation program. First and foremost, it reduces the cost of education for our students. That's the biggest motivator in why we created this program. And without a doubt, it was the biggest benefit as well. For those students that we saved 300 bucks from just 10 in textbooks, that was huge. There's also low risk high reward. We had no idea if students would actually donate textbooks. But if they didn't, we was no harm lost. We wouldn't have lost anything, except for maybe a little bit of time. But if students did donate, there was a huge potential for it to impact students. So even though only 31 textbooks actually got put on reserve, we only had to spend $100 to incentivize students for the Amazon giveaways.  So pretty low risk and a high reward. There's also low to no cost for libraries, as I just mentioned. And it allows students to give back and pay it forward. I know for that one student who donated eight, it made him feel really good to actually see other students using it later on. And it gave him a sense of accomplishment. And of course, it built up course reserve. The bigger course reserve is, the more students will think to use it in the future. And it promotes the library. Anytime the students come into the library for the first time, that gives us an opportunity to hook up. And for some students, they may not come until they heard about course reserve. So anything we can do to create goodwill between us and the students, we're pretty happy about. And I think the textbook donation program is a great way to get there. That brings me to the end of the presentation. I always am a quick talker. So I apologize if I talk too fast. But is there any questions? Let's see. All right, anybody, if you have any questions, nothing was typed in while you were talking, but that's okay. If anybody has any questions or comments or thoughts or suggestions for Erin about our presentation, type into the questions section. And I will ask them. I do have one. You mentioned potential barriers. And you mentioned the college bookstore having conflict. Do publishers care that they will not be getting the income from students buying the books? Yeah, so actually our agreement, our bookstores agreement actually comes via the publisher. So they're kind of go hand in hand. And so since the agreement is then navigated by the bookstore and the publishers. And so they're the middle ground between us and the publishers. And since we have the okay from the bookstore, we could assume that we were okay with the publisher ended as well. And it's very similar to like if a student themselves was just to buy the textbook and then share it with all their friends or resell it. Once someone initially has the textbook, they have the right to do what they will. What they want with it, correct? Right? All right, we do have questions coming in. Question one to know, this is from one of our colleges. How do you set the checkout period?  I know you had quite a range of four hours to exit seven days as the longest. Right, so two hours to seven days, that was a previously existing, that's just like always the options that we've had for professors. So when professors could come in, they would give us their preference. So we just decided that for the non-professor added course reserve that we would go ahead and do four hours. That was just the average of our previous experience of what professors wanted from students. So when we let professors know, we said, hey, we're making it, we're gonna make it a four hour checkout period, if you have any concerns or would like it, otherwise just let us know and then we would change it. But four hours is our, it was just our default based off of like previous data. And we also wanna make sure that if multiple students are using the textbook that they can still get it within the same day, which is why we chose four over, because our options go two hours, four hours, eight hours, 24, and then it goes day by day up until seven days. And so the difference between four and eight seemed quite a bit, but two seemed too short. So we settled with four. Yeah. So a little bit based on what the students might need from your knowledge and professors saying, I know they're only gonna need it for this amount of time or they're definitely gonna need it for a longer time because of what I'm making them do. Exactly. And we are thinking, like I mentioned, upping it to 24 hours to see if that's gonna increase it. Our only apprehension is into bumping it to 24 hours is like I mentioned before, if another student needs it and they have class coming up, 24 hours could be actually quite a long period. I think that's another reason though why students don't use Course Reserve. They're worried about the competition for the textbook. But we do also have multiple books on reserve that we have multiple copies of. For example, we have a geology book that we have four copies. And I think since students know there's four copies, that's one of our higher checked out books. So would all four of those have the same period or could some be like two out of the four hours and some be multiple days? Yeah, that's actually a great question. With the multiple copies, we do actually have different checkout periods. So we have a four hour, a 24 hour. Well, I think we have one four hour and then everything else is 24 hours. So that way there's always one that will be guaranteed to come back within the day but there's others that students can take home with them, take the class, those types of things. Oh, okay, great question. That's good. Got a few more comments coming in. Anybody have any questions you wanna ask of Erin? Give them a now. There is her email address right there as well on her final slide there at the bottom. You can always reach out to her later if you don't get your question in or answered right now. See, we do have comments saying great program for college students. Wish it was available when I was in college. I agree. I did a lot of buying news, sharing, selling it all back and hope I get something. The selling back to the bookstore is, I don't know, in my experience, 99% of the time just not worth a couple of dollars. I would have preferred this kind of a program that I could then pass it on to somebody else rather than, yeah. Exactly, and that's kind of how we tried to sell it. I know when I was in college I'd buy a $200 textbook and then take it back to the bookstore and get 15 bucks for it. And that just like made me mad. And so I think there's other students who like that to just have this anger towards the bookstore and try to see it benefit another student. Absolutely. Oh, good question. Are these reserves allowed to leave the library? Do you allow the four hour checkout books to leave the library? Are there any in library only? Yeah, so for anything that's less than 24 hours is technically in in-house use only. We have seen students walk out with them. We have never had a student permanently take the book though. A lot of the times the students might even mention, hey, I just really need to take this to class with me. I'm gonna bring it back. We've been pretty lax with that because we haven't had any issues of students like permanently taking the textbook. And it's really just in desperation that they've left the library and we're just trying to help them, not hurt them. So in those cases we kind of just turned the other way. But for anything less than 24 hours they are technically supposed to stay in the library. Okay. Well, and on another comment, it's quite wonderful to make this gift to the needy students that you have, definitely. Thank you. We hope it grows and that more students will use it in the future. Okay, because I've heard of textbook rental programs before but I have not come across this kind of a donation. And I know some, this kind of a, and I've heard of the libraries sometimes of providing the textbooks I'm reserved that they've either gotten themselves, purchased themselves for the different classes or that the professor has provided for the different classes. And I know that's always sometimes been contentious. I don't know why but the actual donating it to them to the program, that is something I had not heard of before. Well, for us, like the previous semester we identified several courses that have textbooks that are regularly listed. And I knew that from tracking textbook data over semesters. So we purchased several, but we, for like 500 bucks we're only able to buy like three textbooks. And so we just thought, you know what, let's just try the donation program, see what we get. And so for $100, we got six times the amount of books that actually ended up on reserve. But I also think I should have noted that when you were talking about students selling the textbooks back to the bookstore. I think part of the reason why we got a lot of textbooks that were not available weren't needed in future semesters is because the bookstore wouldn't buy them back. And so when the students wouldn't buy them back we almost became like a dumping ground for books that weren't wanted. So that's one thing to watch for. We might change it in the future. We don't know, we're still in the investigation stage of whether or not this is worth it. But it's been a good experiment so far. Yeah, that is hard. And sometimes the bookstore, sometimes they know, yes, this book will be used in a future semester. Like the ones you said, it's every spring semester it's used. So we will be able to sell this in another year. Sometimes they don't know either. And do they want to take the risk of buying it? Yeah, and we actually also got a lot of really good, just like humanities books, like popular literature that maybe was only used in one semester but that we're gonna go ahead and add to our permanent collection. So we're also building up our collection in ways that we didn't necessarily expect, but it's been good. Those are eternally useful. Yeah, some of those, yeah. For some of the ones where you call this, some of the students may be using it as a dumping ground, that sounds terrible. But I wonder for the books that they don't want to keep themselves, they can't get any money back for, that's worth it. The library may have better resources for recycling of the books. Like the books, because you guys are always having to, you're always weeding things and having to get rid of large batches of books. An individual with a couple of textbooks, I don't necessarily know where to officially recycle my hardcover textbook, but the library's got experience in that, that may be just, that's okay. Absolutely, and we have a very eco-conscious student population, they're very concerned about that type of thing. And so for a lot of them, and we're up front when we advertise the textbook donation program, it's not guaranteed it will be at Course Reserve, but if we can't add it and we can't add it to our typical, our normal collections, we will make sure that it appropriately gets recycled or donated. And that was enough for some students. Awesome, it's not just gonna go in the trash. All right. All right, anybody have any desperate last minute questions they want to ask Avera? And give me a couple of seconds to do that. Thanks for sticking around. Yeah, for presenting with it, being here with us, Avera. We still had a good group at the end here. Definitely will always do our West Coast people. Hi, happy to see you on with us today. But it doesn't look like anybody's typing anything in. So I think we will wrap up your session. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, I'm gonna pull back control to my screen again. There we are. All right, everyone. Okay, so that was our last session of the day. That wraps it up for Big Top of Small Libraries 2020. Yay, we made it through.


Ever wonder what it's like to live like a prince and princess? Who are you kidding? Of course you have. Most modern-day royal families still live better than 99.9% of the rest of us. I mean Queen Elizabeth II spends her days at six different properties. Then there's the other members of her family, like the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, perhaps better known as Prince William and Princess Kay Middleton. We were friends for over a year first. We just spent more time with each other, had a good giggle, had lots of fun and realized we shared the same interests and just had a really good time. Also, Michael and I have dropped our own house tour of our new home that we moved into this year so go ahead and subscribe to our personal channel if you want to see where we're living and more of what we're up to. In these videos we don't reveal any addresses and even though I've done a house tour of my own place, please do not show up at any private residences because it's not safe for anyone. These two are lucky enough to own two different properties that they split their time between alongside their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. A few years ago they began growing their family out of Kensington Palace where they live in the flat known as apartment 1A. But world events and the ongoing lockdown have this couple spending the majority of the past year and quite possibly the near future at their second home located at Ann Merhall. How's it going guys and gals? It's Kara back at it again with a brand new house tour, this one taking a look at the two homes of Prince William and Princess Kay Middleton here for you on Famous Entertainment. If you liked this video be sure to check out the one we just did on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's new multi-million dollar home in Monocito, California. As usual, don't forget to follow me on Instagram to chat. Now let's get into this video. We'll kick things off with a look at the family's original starter home located in unit 1A of Kensington Palace. Way back when Kensington Palace was a two-story mansion built in 1605 in the village of, you guessed it, Kensington. The home would later be purchased in 1619 by the first Earl of Nottingham and become known at the time as Nottingham House. After King William and Queen Mary assumed the throne as joint monarchs, in 1689 the home began their residence as the climate there better suited the sickly William. Over the centuries it would house countless members of the royal family including Queen Victoria when she was still only a child. It was while living at this palace that Victoria met Prince Albert and learned of her own takeover of the throne in June of 1837. When she finally left Kensington for Buckingham, Queen Victoria admitted that she would miss the poor old palace that she had spent so much time growing up in. Fast forward a hundred years or so later and Prince William and Princess Kate aren't the only ones living here. The Duke and Duchess of Glauchester, the Duchess and Duke of Kent, as well as Prince and Princess Michael of Kent all call this palace's royal apartment home. This isn't even the first time that Prince William has lived here. Back when he was just a child he stayed here with his brother Harry as well as his mom and dad throughout most of the 80s and 90s. Then when he married Kate this became their starter home and they moved in during 2017. Now calling this an apartment is misleading because they are not what your average North American might think of when they hear the term apartment. Most of Kensington Palace is composed of red brick terrace houses that while connected serve as their own fully functioning homes. Apartment 1A where Kate and William live is a four-story building with 20 rooms including five reception rooms, three main bedrooms, multiple dressing rooms, a night and day nursery as well as its very own staff quarters. Not really the apartment you were thinking of is it. Due to this being primarily a private residence detailed looks at the interior of their home are few and far between. But when President Obama visited their pad in 2016 a number of picks were taken that give us a taste of the Prince and Princess's home life. For example Prince William has a working space with an antique style desk lamp alongside a gorgeous fireplace and mirror combo set into the back of the room. Their drawing room is spacious enough for several guests and sports a sophisticated cream color scheme with gold accents while their living room offers plenty of plush cream soaps with an added splash of color from the floral cushions. Kate even converted one of the rooms into her own personal newsroom for when she worked as a guest editor at Huffington Post and decorated her work space with dark furniture and gorgeous artwork that hangs on the walls. Beyond the private apartments there are some areas of Kensington open for public viewing and three of the most popular areas are undoubtedly the King's staircase which leads up to the King's State Apartments as well as the presence chamber where former monarchs have received critters ministers and foreign ambassadors. But most impressive of all has to be what's referred to as the cupola room which creates a visual style that personifies the Georgian age.  Next let's check out Animal Hall Prince William and Princess Kate's summer home that's currently acting more like their permanent one. After William and Kate tied the knot in 2011 Queen Elizabeth gifted the couple this country a state which is not too far away from where the Queen likes to spend most of her own holidays at Sandringham House. The current building was constructed in the 18th century and features two stories along with an attic. Out front the long exterior of the home comprises 13 bays and was refaced with red bricks in 1815. 13 ground floor windows are set into arches and a semicircular porch can be seen with two Tuscan columns. Further renovations that went down in 1900 added a brick exterior to the north of the building and a projecting entrance porch along with a tower toward the eastern end. Reports suggest that the home features as many as 10 bedrooms on the inside. Prior to recent world events the family would use this property during school breaks and for weekends as well as the holidays. Over the past few years Kate has said that she feels the most at home when living here and the family has had many photo shoots here as well including the portrait for their 2018 Christmas card. When Kate and William inherited the home Kate decided to take on the interior decorating challenge herself. Simon night owner of nearby rug store told People magazine instead of hiring a royal interior designer she wants to furnish in her own style because she wants to be her own family home. A renovation also happened in which the roof was completely retilled and a sunlit garden room was added to one side of the house with a covered patio for extra privacy and protection from the British climate. To increase their privacy even further more trees were planted all around the property and the driveway was moved so that the public entrance was turned into a private one accessible only by the Duke and Duchess. As tennis lovers the duo also upgraded their tennis court as well with all new astro turf and bordered it with a copper beach hedge. Finally this sprawling Georgian estate also contains its very own outdoor swimming pool and is surrounded by acres of parkland which makes it perfect for playtime with the kids. Ever since the UK entered lockdown the Duke and Duchess have chosen to ride out the storm from this lavish property which offers them far more privacy than Kensington does. And you know William and Kate love their privacy but if you're lucky enough you might spot Kate dropping the kids off at nearby Mabel's paint pot or maybe even catch both the prince and princess out for a date night at one of the local pubs. Alright guys that's all I got on our tour of the two different homes of Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. What did you think? Which of the two homes would you rather be living in right now? Do you think it makes sense that the family has chosen to hang out in the countryside during this long pandemic? Be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments down below. Thanks for watching don't forget to follow me over on Instagram and of course I'll see you all in the next video. Bye!


The reaction to President Buol HaExok政策 and this appleema is awakes politics. I missed the Chicago State University certificate saga of President Buol HaExok政策 There has been several reactions from various persons by Kalu and lawyer of former Vice President, Tiku Obubaka pointing out the discrepancies in the certificate, such as a gender mix-up, a difference in signatures, high school graduation date, and supposed first certificate and identity theft. Sinibu submitted to INEC. He denied having dual citizenship, which means it does not belong to him. Then the same document or at the position says that the A. Bola A. Sinibu is Ahmed. And the documents Bola Ahmed Sinibu submitted to INEC. He denied having dual citizenship, which means it does not belong to him. Then the same document or at the position says that the A. Bola A. Sinibu is Ahmed. But the NOS certificate Bola Ahmed Sinibu submitted to INEC. He denied having dual citizenship, which means it does not belong to him. I don't know where the Adekunle and the Ahmed emerge from. So on the second arm of your question of what use will it be in the Supreme Court, it is very very clear that from decided authorities the Supreme Court has held that they can accept a party to reduce fresh evidence as long as certain conditions are met. And from what transpired in the proceedings in US courts, that condition has already been met. So as we speak, our law is very clear that a party at forth cannot be allowed to enjoy the fruit of his illegality. President Inumbu's lawyer Wolia Falabi has explained that the certificate indicating female is as a result of the mix-up on the part of the university. And for the difference in signatures, certificates were not issued at the time of graduation until one applied for them. On the other hand, former chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Monde Ubani, former deputy chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, or second vice chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Monde Ubani has justified why the Supreme Court may not admit fresh evidence, such as this because their job is to review the decision of the court below and not to evaluate any evidence. Joining me to discuss all these reactions among, Otumba Shaygun show me PDP Governorship Esperant Ogun State and Mr. Fairley Smoker, National Publicity Secretary of Progressive Congress. Gentlemen, welcome to plus politics today. Thank you. Let's start with Mr. Fairley Smoker. Mr. Smoker, you have a very acoonian job to hand these days, I would want to suppose. How are you handling it? How are you engaging your public, at least letting them see the facts from your perspective? Well, the problem is not as difficult as you would imagine. Yes, it imposes on our time, but in terms of explaining our side of this matter, it's not that complicated because we are not the ones making the assassinations. We're not the ones making these wild allegations about documents that were forged in the United States and in the country here. So, you know, our job is simply to clarify that the president, Aswajibullah Amethinubu, contested in a prior election and was declared winner. And certain other candidates who contested, you know, being dissatisfied with the declaration of this president as winner of that election, decided to go to the tribunal. And they brought their cases. And on this matter, under discussion, Alajia Chukwabaka contended at the tribunal that this president did not attend the Chicago State University CSU. That was the bone of contention. And the tribunal resolved that matter and put it to rest. But of course, as we all know now, subsequently, Alajia Chukwabaka proceeded to the United States to begin to interrogate the certificates of this president. And we know today for a fact that the CSU has since verified on oath that Bola Amethinubu was their student undertook the program of study and graduated from that university with honors. There's an affidavit to that effect on a provocal unmistakable. Now, those who choose to pick holes and still now raise a new issue, no longer the issue that he didn't go to CSU, but now that he fought the certificate. Look, it is their burden to prove, you know, to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court. You know, it's not my duty to do anything. Okay. Okay, let me quickly just tell my question with this. You may not quite have a lot to prove at the Supreme Court and it be oaths, it be oaths the person who alleges to affirm. But the Court of Public Opinion out there, I would suppose, given your portfolio in the APC, I would suppose, you know, how lacerating that court could be. Sometimes when one perception or misperception are played. What's your take about that? Just briefly before I go to your colleague. I agree, you know, that's why we're having this conversation. That's why in the past few days, since this press conference, you know, to the best of my efforts.  Yes, we know the Nigerian public, you know, if they have questions, they deserve answers. And that's exactly what we're trying to provide. But that's the best you can do because people who are interested in peddling, you know, on truths, they will do so irrespective because their goal is not the Supreme Court. Their goal is to delegitimize this precedent. That's what it's about. Okay. That also came out, you know, from the from the mouth of the candidate of the PDP. But I will stop here so that you can you can ask a lot of questions. Or two by showing me, I guess you must have. Good evening. Good evening. I guess you must have read Mr. Moka's piece yesterday. A kind of rebuttal to the world press conference. But even if you've not read it, you've listened to him, you've heard him. From where you are, what will be your response to his initial remarks? Thank you very much, my dear friend Bola. Thank you. Let me greet my friend Felix Moka too. We know ourselves for many years. I'll start by saying very clearly that the most important I need to answer to is that is there a precedence in the Supreme Court as it concerns taking in evidence. And I think one of the quickest that I could easily bring up is the judgment of retired justice of the Supreme Court, CD Dowder Baggy. And please let me read what he says so that Moka and his friends can just be a little bit guided. The court shall take the lead in writing the wrong in our society if and when the opportunity prevents itself as in this appeal. I like criminality and certificate for you to continue to participate in the stream. Waters are notions of our national policy will only mean our waters are and will remain dangerously contaminated. I repeat, dangerously contaminated. The privilege of the court must start now and be sustained. As you see it as a nation to now change from our old culture of reckless impunity. The Nigerian constitution is supreme. It desires that no one who has ever presented for certificate to INH contest elections in Nigeria. This is clear and cyclical. More comparing as a judicial determination has taken by no less a technical panel sitting and at least a panel of three are the tribunal and constitutional mandate to determine such issues as the related election is outcome eligibility. This has also been affirmed by a lot of trial court. Also I'm sure Moka being a lawyer is aware of section 137 of the Nigerian constitution which says that and I'm trying to go so that I will not be I won't go the judges out of context. It says section 137 1j of the Nigerian constitution. You are not qualified to run for office of precedent if you have prevented for certificate to INH. Now let me now go into some other areas. It is a symbol narrative misdirected to say that the pleadings of and the I want to have to cover the PDP. Let me put it that way. So to call does not include the fact that if for certificate order is not qualified and all of that. I think you will have to go and read what was pleaded out in the issue. In any case, like I keep saying to them, I do not and I believe and I plead with every person around us in the PDP. We have not appropriated the absolute authority and the grandeur of the Supreme Court to ourselves. But let me beg this our friends do not appropriate what the Supreme Court can do or not do to yourself either. What is the issue of state? The issue of state is very clear. I want to put a follow up question that is quite relevant to your submission. I wonder given the copious passages of the constitution and the pronouncement of justice of the Supreme Court that you have just quoted. I wonder if your camp that is excellency vice president. I think what people can scan if you really believe in the proactive value of that evidence that you've just garnered from the United States of America. Why did you people organize that press conference yesterday when in every material particular it could be said to be subjudice and you could be saying to be shooting yourselves in the foot. Well, you recall in one of the codes that one of the American presidents very revered and highly respected said if they had to choose government without newspaper and journalists, he would choose the one that has newspapers. Hello? Hello Otumba? Is Otumba still there? Okay, Mr. Malka? Yes. It does seem that I wouldn't want to describe this to Juju or something from the village.  I guess why was getting more intellectually lacerating. I wouldn't describe it to Juju. But the gentleman just read out some fantastic legalistic passages. One from the constitution and another from a retired justice of the Supreme Court. You admire yourself and what would you take on a submission and reasoning? The nature of zoom meetings to have these fluctuations. But what I was actually trying to say, I mean you don't like zoom meetings, I like to be in studio to avoid all these glitches. But be not as it may. You will notice that what we said was that there are two sides to a conversation of this nature. There is a part that the lawyers will deal with and that's why we are always very reluctant to get into the legal part. And there is a part that obviously is a matter of public interest. And because our friends are quick at trying to throw in materials into public space that seeks to say maybe everybody in the country drinks from their table of influence. And therefore there are no alternative opinions. The only truth was the reason why we had a press conference. And what we said there was very clear. This is why we've gone to America. This we've got, we've got there. But we stopped short of going into the detail. The position is close to 200 pages. Another line of documents were provided. They are picking the ones they like. Maybe if you like you can even say we are picking the ones we like. But the fact of the matter is that you can't have multiple names. They cannot disown your certificate. They can't tell tales as to how you got it. You can't be happy with yourself that just one human being's document has many coloration, many names, many explanations. Some of them extremely absurd to all of us and people all over the world. Every explanation for the real explanation is the one they are taking. And the real deal is that we hold the view that that certificate is not authentic. Okay. About time I went to your colleague. Dr. Moka, sorry. And thank you very much for being polished because you just allowed him to have his flaws straight when he came in. It shows a degree of polish in you. I really appreciate that because he could have been convinced. Please, that's fine. Okay. But having said that, I was asking you. I asked you, he submitted some fantastic legalistic documents. Or he wrote us some fantastic legalistic documents. A justice, a retired justice of the Supreme Court in one of his rulings and the Constitution. And from the two, it does seem that the fallage of the reasoning of the supporters of the precedent may have been somewhat intellectually rubbish. What would be your response to that? No, that's not the case. Let me put both things in perspective. At the first was a court of a judge, a justice of the Supreme Court I imagine. Speaking to the need for the legal system and the judicial system to view more seriously the question of fordries and distortion of documentation. Now, that is a need. He was speaking broadly and generally, you know, speaking to fordries as a crime, not specific to any particular, you know, individual or trend. He was simply framing a legal issue to say that the courts will view that matter with seriousness. What do you know as Carl Ibuka? Completely. It was just him. It was not Sanayana there. The second point that my dear friend raised had to do with the constitution that says that if you forge documents, therefore you are ineligible to context. Look, nobody doubts that if you forge a document that there are consequences for fordry. That's not in dispute. I'm not going to debate that with my dear friend. But the point is that for you to make to apply that provision, there are certain hurdles you must cross. This is a criminal allegation which you must prove beyond reasonable doubt. It's not something you do wishfully. It's not allegation you make and you just make it and it falls in place. No, you do not taint a man with guilt unless he is properly tried and convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction. In this case, I don't know how the PDP or the candidate proposes to convert this to the level of criminal inquiry that is required to prove. But look, all we are saying is that the election petition tribunal that gave verdict in this matter that is not before the Supreme Court is a civil court. It's not a criminal court. Yes, within a civil process, you can also raise issues of crime. But even within that civil process, you are required to prove it beyond reasonable doubt. Again, as I said in the beginning, this is all the burden of the PDP and the candidate to establish. And I don't see anything in the transcript that my friend also refers to. I've read the transcript. It's right here. This is the complete volume. I've read it top to bottom. I've marked every piece of it. And this is an affidavit. Given by the same registrar, Mr. Khalib Westbank, in a two-page affidavit, where he absolutely, without any equivocation, made clear that this president was the student and graduated from the school and was awarded the degree. Mr. Moka. Mr. Moka. So they can go to the Supreme Court and actually make their part. Mr. Moka. That's all there is. Just let me be mischievous. If this is as pedestrian and as mundane as you are making it seem to look like, why did they write that copious piece yesterday? You wrote an intellectual statement. Because I don't know why. You wrote an intellectual statement. And the bottle have the one press conference. If it's not them, if it's not that forceful. But you stated the purpose, the reason at the beginning of this show. You were right on the mark. You said that there is the legal question which the courts must resolve as courts. But there is also the other matter that is within the court of law. Where perceptions sometimes matter more than the facts. If you push this narrative that the president forces certificate, even though that is not true, even though it's not supported by the facts, if you say it long enough as they are doing, somebody at home, someone in Nassan Nigerian, may begin to believe it. And it is imperative upon us to clarify and present the facts as they are.  There's no need to distort the facts of what happened. Tell the facts as they happened. If you must tell the public, tell it as it happened. Thank you very much. The press conference was not truthful. There was a lot of distortion of the facts yesterday. Okay, about time I went to your colleague. Otoma, your colleague is asserting that the Chicago excavations are simply like a mystic vision of the south that even after that, the press conference yesterday could at best be said to be a festival of presumptions. And some people out there are even saying maybe because I think we knew all the so-called evidences. He had gone out from Chicago, would be going nowhere first at the supreme court. He just wanted to further, further, you know, galvanize a kind of reactions in the court of public opinion will be a reaction to these submissions. Gola, thank you. Let me put it on record that this conversation we are having is not the prettiest that I like to have. And it's not something I do with relish or I do with pride. My head is bowed because of the seriousness and implication of the conversation. But I will say that the first thing you must let Felix take back to his friends in the villa is that don't worry about whether what we are saying is right or will be accepted by the court. Don't worry. That decision is that of the supreme court. I only quoted seven sections of the constitution to let you understand that they are just fooling themselves. There is not pathway for the court to take that evidence and will provide it. That's number one. Number two, help me asking the university, either under the position or under when they were being cross-examined or what do you call it, did they ever say one, that they assert that that certificate is from them and that that certificate, they provided it or did they say they could really explain how the secondary school he used as the basis for his entry became a secondary school that did not even exist at that time or did they own the entry requirement from the other Chicago college which had a female which they are calling typographical error. Did they also own the fact that in the deposition some of the materials are flying around that the social security number on that particular thing belongs to another person with a similar name who are supposed to be a female. Did they say that the NYS this certificate presented that has a name which is never called themselves that way is the same. Did they say that the guy that is before us an American citizen and not a Nigerian citizen did they say that the date of birth is the same. Look, I have said it over and over and over let us not take the role of the Supreme Court I do not want to take their role but Felix and his gang should please also not try to take the role of the Supreme Court we were disciplined enough we were statementally enough to say after I come back from the Supreme Court if they give that thing to me okay, if they give that thing to him okay, why don't they wait. The only conversation we can engage in right now is that of the owner of the entire country ask Felix and his friend where does this man come from what promise could he go to which circumstances could it be he didn't want any bad or the one in Lagos that did not exist before him when did he do his national youth service is he an American citizen or a Nigerian citizen does he have how many dates of birth these are the issues that you bring to public opinion and it's on those issues I want us to discuss because to discuss the law we have to wait for the Supreme Court but there seems to be in a hurry to say that everything we are saying and I ask them are you going to be legalized on issues that needs to be morally discussed and flawed when we leave it to the court if they get to the court we will provide the evidence they should not be in a hurry Otumba come as I hope that has been in public for more than 25 years deserves to be respected Otumba I want to ask you a very personal question you may answer or may not answer depending on are you in any way she performing intimidated by anybody from any direction of the state and the reason why I am asking is that a number of persons who ought to have sat where you sit now today one told me Bella I've had enough broke back since yesterday one told me and I respect that Felicity is the equivalent in the PDP he says he is a lawyer and the matter is of UDC and he wouldn't want to do it directly but he suggested you and I really want to thank the gentleman for that but having said that one gave me the impression and I don't want to mention his name he gave me the impression as though he has been intimidated as anybody in any shape or form intimidated you since yesterday that I will press conference took place but what I have said to people who have brought up conversations of this nature is that cowards die many times before their deaths and that it is not enough for you to be brave when there are no strong issues to push what is more important is for you to be brave when bravery is needed it is not for lack of concern what is their attitude and their potential let me put an addendum to it like this and the addendum will be as anybody said what are you doing this that is the most that is correct a lot of people have done that but what I have said to them is that the race of Yoruba people cannot in the seriousness of our preeminence and our history allow the narrative to run in all corners of the world and within all the other ethnic groups that we are a people that have no honor an honor to the world let me go to your colleague others must be our attitude for ourselves let me go to your colleague Felix I don't really envy your job but you are doing it well enough I don't see any other intellectually robust persona doing it better than this but you will agree that the worst especially in the public opinion are somewhat scorching am I right? no, not exactly let me say a few things I am being very measured in this conversation because I am speaking to Mr. Shoe Ume that I have known for many years and I am trying to but I would urge that my friend will refrain from characterizing Felix and the gang and using those kinds of references I take exception because I can also take my gloves off and actually hit back really hard but that is unnecessary I hope that is noted please I don't know how this conversation is as respectively as possible the point here is this I am sitting here just wondering why my friend is making these suggestions about the APC suggesting that this matter should not be discussed or that we are preempting or in some ways trying to prejudge the outcome of the Supreme Court review that is not the case nobody is doing that we did not call the press conference you did we did not make an allegation against you made an allegation against Bola Metsinubu you went to the public space to throw down matters that you barely you are just scratching and being very emotional to drum up just to whip up sentiments and create this public narrative but this president did something that was wrong you did that you took this matter from Nigeria where we have the fullness of the court system to the other states to go there to discuss you did that so why are you acting so sanctimoniously as if you are innocent and APC is merely just saying nobody said you should go to the press conference you called it we only responded to what was said you cannot possibly make these sort of outlandish allegations against the citizen forget that he is president if you do that against me I will come out charging at you because you can do that and then expect that they are not going to give you a response I am going to give you a response you start saying oh they are trying to prejudge nobody is prejudging I said I have said you are welcome you already have an appeal at the supreme court I believe feel free to go there and dump as much material as you wish I have confidence that the judges at the supreme court I have the capacity to review anything you judge and apply the law as they understand it I am not speaking I am not trying to say anything about what they are doing I am only saying that you can present your facts but after you done that you must also pass for the other side to present their own rebuttal and then the judges will make their call that is the way it works gentlemen I have not forgotten anything gentlemen we go on a short break and when we are back we still go ahead pressing the emotional the intonational the moral handles of this issue and more actually thank you


Victories notched up by Democrats in Tuesday's off-year elections show that abortion rights will continue to energize voters ahead of the 2024 presidential race, analysts told Reuters, Democrats and abortion rights advocates recorded a string of electoral victories, including in conservative Ohio and Kentucky. In Ohio, voters approved a constitutional amendment, guaranteeing abortion rights. Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said that abortion would likely be one of the two or three biggest issues of 2024, not just for president, but for governor and state legislators and U.S. Senate and U.S. house races. Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report said that polling shows most Americans want abortion rights to be legal in some form, and that Republicans are now perceived as the party that is more extreme on the issue. Time and again, pollsters and pundits have counted Joe Biden and Democrats out. We have continued to dig deep, fight back, deliver results for the American people, and win. And what we won on last night is exactly what we're going to win on next November. It is a big win for Democrats. In fact, surprisingly so. I don't think anybody in advance expected Democrats to do as well as they did overall. They won everything except for the Mississippi governorship, and even that was closer than it usually is. There were races that haven't been mentioned nationally that favored Democrats. For example, New Jersey, their whole assembly was up, and Democrats were supposed to lose at least a dozen seats. That was the consensus on both sides. They've picked up five or six. It's almost all due to abortion rights and the controversy that has come since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The question going into 2023 was, well, is it still as hot button now that we are over a year away from that Dobs decisions? Now that so many states have already gone and passed laws or passed other ballot initiatives that maybe just doesn't have the same resonance that it did when it was such a shock to the system. And I think the answer is it still does have resonance, and it's likely to continue to have resonance going into 2024. I think it's reasonable to assume that abortion rights will be one of the two or three biggest issues of 2024, not just for president, but for governor and state legislators and U.S. Senate, U.S. House races. We've been seeing polling now for years that tells us that a majority of voters believe that abortion should be legal in some way, shape or form. Now, what the parameters around that look like will be different for different people. But I just keep going back to the takeaways I had from listening to voters in the midterm elections, many of whom were Republican, who defined themselves as pro-life, and they would say, well, you know, I'm pro-life, but I didn't think it meant no one could have access to abortion, am I? And tonight, the people of Kentucky elected me as just the third two consecutive term governor in our history. I wouldn't read a whole lot nationally into it. I think it's really more a matter of Andy Beshear having the kind of personality and record that overcomes the problems that come with being a Democrat in Kentucky, which, after all, Donald Trump won by 26 points. So there's no question Andy Beshear wasn't reelected because he's a Democrat. He was reelected in spite of the fact that he was a Democrat. This was the Glenn Yonkin theory of the case, which is you put out a reasonable, that was his wording on this, this was a reasonable restriction that pulls well. And yet, the challenge that Republicans have is the fact that when you ask voters who they think is going to best protect abortion access, who they think is more extreme on the issue of abortion, voters are pretty locked in on their perceptions of which party is the more extreme, which would be Republicans, and which is the more pro-choice or open to abortion access, and that would be Democrats. So Trump is a double-edged sword. When he is not on the ballot, his voters tend not to show up, which makes it difficult for Republican candidates to succeed when they are running as a similar brand. You know, if you're running as a Trump candidate without Trump on the ticket, you're not able to bring those same voters out that would show up for Donald Trump, but guess who does show up? A lot of the people who don't like Donald Trump, and that's what we saw in the midterm elections, and that's what we saw here in 2023 as well. And so the question going forward in 2024 to me is, does Donald Trump still have the ability to bring out those voters as he did in 2020? Are those voters tired and maybe they aren't as willing to show up even when Trump's on the ballot? I'm not supposed to be talking about things that bad people do.