Director of the Coalition for Networked Information. And I'll be introducing this session and I'd like to welcome all of our attendees to it. You have reached a session, a project briefing that is part of the final day of week four of the fall 2020 CNI virtual member meeting. Week four, just to remind you, deals with aspects of the current crisis and emerging issues. And certainly this will be a very relevant presentation that's part of those themes. I also wanna note that we have made available some prerecorded videos to complement the synchronous sessions that are part of week four and please avail yourself of those as your time permits. We are recording the session. It will be publicly available subsequently. There is closed captioning available. Please use that if it's helpful. We have a chat box and I'd encourage you to use that as we go along during the session. There's also a Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen. You can use that to queue up questions at any point. We will address the questions after we've heard both presenters speak. Diane Goldenberg Hart from CNI will be moderating that Q&A discussion. And with that, let me turn to the presentation itself. Presentation itself. We have with us today Brad Warren and Laurie Harris both from the University of Cincinnati Libraries. They are going to talk about how to develop a genuinely resilient culture of collaboration when facing the kinds of global challenges that our institutions are facing today. And I think that word resilient is enormously relevant here because I think we're gonna need resilient cultures not just in the current emergency but going forward for quite a long time to come. So with that, let me welcome Laurie and Brad and I'll turn it over to Brad to start the presentation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much Cliff. And as part of resilience, it's banned within a house of six people using the internet at the same time. So I'm going to not have live video which is why you'll see me go dark here. So we're going to use our experience with the COVID crisis to sort of illustrate how to build resiliency into sort of collaborative decision making especially as we're looking to facing other challenges into the future. I think that was a very astute observation from Cliff. And in particular, we do want to spend some time on what our approach was like as it's illustrating these concepts but also to really talk about how that applies to the future and hopefully generate some conversation. A lot of this are things that we all need to remind ourselves that are part of just normal planning that helps wrap your head around what appears to be a really complex process. Just in relation to our own libraries very quickly, the University of Cincinnati libraries has a history of autonomy and decentralization with 10 locations. And I would just say the hallmark of most multi-branch ARL libraries. This does also extend to the college governance structure as well. Within that our complexity is that we're also part of a multi-jurisdictional system which means that there's three other libraries that we share some things in common with but report to other deans. And we also have three bargaining units with AAUP tenure track library faculty, SEIU and AFSCME staff, non-represented staff and also student workers. So to be honest, nothing is simple. Previous to the pandemic, most large projects about the library strategic directions and big problems were done collaboratively through representation, but often with the understanding that the dean decides. And while everybody shares a lot in common across the locations, there is a reason why there are 13 libraries with their various constituencies. And if you weren't aware, also University of Cincinnati is an old institution celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2019. Now on to the problem. So hi, good afternoon everyone and thank you for having us participate here today at CNI this year. So Brad shared with you a little bit of our history, some of the complexities inherent in a multi-jurisdictional system and some of the UCL's practices pre-pandemic as it relates to the way matters were decided. So today I'm going to highlight some of our practices that shifted throughout the pandemic period beginning in mid-March. So one of our primary things for us as we move forward was we wanted to focus on our people. So people as they were migrating into their homes, we wanted to ensure that everyone was up to speed in terms of the technology. Yes, we had some of our faculty and staff who really weren't connected. And so that was a primary focus to bring everyone up to speed. We developed a consistent message that I believe was organic and Brad and I just sort of carried this through which was health and safety of our UCL staff, our faculty and our students was the guiding principle in our decision-making. The further we moved into working from home, this message became not only pervasive throughout our different libraries but throughout the university department. So we even during this paradigm shift, we were really mindful that we wanted to locate and provide opportunities for people within our organization who up to that point didn't necessarily, they weren't involved in decision-making or they may have had a seat at the table but they were very quiet at that table. So we encouraged people to step up in leadership roles. We supported them to grow and develop in ways that would enable them to participate and really just sort of shine as these new sort of voices and new decision-makers. We were also able to really rethink and retool rules that previously had slowed or prevented movement within our organization. So a prime example of that is, we decided very quickly that we wanted our student workers to be paid in the spring during the shutdown and Brad had a discussion with our dean. The dean moved very quickly and I wanna say that was implemented within a 24-hour period. And so just an example of how things moved very quickly in this paradigm, but it allowed us to really make some quick and important decisions. One of the areas power in the hands of the new decision-makers. So our primary group was the RTC group, returned to campus group and Brad is gonna talk about that later. This group had a direct pipeline to our UCL senior leadership and departments heads and that made it so much easier for the group to make recommendations in real time and implement changes immediately. There wasn't a hierarchy when we received information that needed to be shared whether up or down, we shared it immediately. I thought that as an organization we did a really good job listening and taking into consideration concerns from all members of our organization. That took a lot of time. It took a lot of patience, a lot of patience and a lot of listening skills. So not only did we develop policies and procedures to shift staff and faculty spaces while again focusing on everyone's health as a priority, we also work to align and adhere to the state of Ohio's and the university's policies and procedures as well. So juggling simultaneously. Last but not least, there were as you can imagine different perspectives and needs that were put on the table. So we had to balance the safety and needs again. I can't say this enough of our faculty, staff and students, that was just a consistent message. We had to balance the wishes and needs of the president and provost. And as you can imagine, sometimes there was a little conflict because what the president and provost sort of wanted at times didn't necessarily align with where we were. We had to balance the wishes and needs of a faculty. Initially many of UC faculty, they were not open to returning to in-person teaching. And so we had to negotiate those nuances. And then lastly, again, each library because we have a variety of libraries with their own culture had different perspectives and needs and I'll turn it over to Brad. Thank you, Laurie. So all of this was turning into a balancing act. And once again, I still want to harken that these issues I think transcend this particular crisis but they're important to keep in mind when looking at our future crises. So we're balancing this personal safety and the business needs of whatever it is that we're doing. So the work needed to be intentional but it had a level of importance that felt different from other discussions that may have had sort of academic or philosophical importance. The task at hand felt monumental and in order to deal with that, we had to break things down into pieces and chunks which is essentially project management, something I think many of us have experienced with but it's important to realize that when faced with something in which there are no answers and you're coming up with solutions in parallel to an organization that you're a part of or an industry, you need to break it down into smaller pieces so that it's digestible and you can actually move forward. And also the process was extraordinarily slow initially because it was an important aspect of building trust, collaboration and teamwork in an organization that was not, it was drawing upon some of the strengths of how we went about decision-making but doing it in a new way. And within that resilience, it really was emotional intelligence, putting yourself in others people's shoes over and over again. And this is not only the coworkers but the community that you're serving, the administrators that you're having to answer questions to and guide and then also obviously the public. It's okay not to know the answers but also have to have faith in the people's ability to figure out these answers as time goes on. And I can't stress enough that taking the time to build trust is a key component to creating a resilient group. So within the decision-making structure which I think was also unique in something I can't say enough in favor of a strategy for dealing with large problems. This task force is made up of 12 faculty and staff and only one of those people was a department head. Everybody else were more on the ground and not in roles of normally having to make decisions but the group had the authority to make decisions and recommendations directly to the dean, is it related to the approach, policy and process for how we handled all sort of operations and facility reopenings. The managers were then interested with implementing within this structure. So in a sense it was sort of flipping the decision-making on its head and putting the powers to speak to the people and then managers were working within that. And everything that we decided to change was discussed with the group no matter what it was. And that had some pretty difficult conversations in which you're expressed, I can't believe X, Y or Z is thinking this and that person could be anybody within the government within the university structure or even just within the library. It also required getting buy-in from various stakeholders. Library administration was the conduit between these internal groups and the external stakeholders such as the provost, public safety, the president's office, student government, faculty, Senate and also had to then communicate to these external stakeholders whenever we had to deal with pressure that was being placed. Because there was this normalization and health and safety as a way of approaching our process it enabled us to handle external pressures especially as the semester was approaching and we were definitely getting some concerns from upper administration in relation to just their own concerns about a fall semester that was looking extraordinarily different than anybody wanted. And so this happened to critical moments over and over again during the semester and I think it helped with being able to answer questions concretely because of the thought that had been put into the process. On the safety issue, by approaching it from personal safety approach that normalized responses across an extraordinarily diverse workforce and library system where I had personal conversations that range from people who were afraid to leave the house to thinking that COVID was a hoax. So having a process that works through something that's so politicized and also feels so overwhelming was extraordinarily important in being able to work through tackling big problems that were larger than just a difference of opinion. It also, as I mentioned, handled external stressors from our community. On to you, Lori. Hey, thanks, Brett. And so the question is, how did we work and thrive in sort of this pandemic paradigm? Well, one of the things that we did early and often is that we borrowed from our colleagues. So we have partnered in the past with other libraries in the city of Cincinnati but primarily Cincinnati Public Library. Cincinnati Public, I have to tell you they were on point from day one. And I don't know if I'm gonna get this correct but I think they, Brad, did they open back up in April or May? They began their curbside services pretty quickly and then had a sort of phased approach to opening up their facilities but their documentation for that for 40 different branches was produced by mid-April. It was quite phenomenal. It was phenomenal. I wanna say it was maybe in a hard copy. Their master plan was like 60 pages. They focused on sustainability and resiliency which we've heard a lot of. And so we really, we talked with them. We had conversations with them. We didn't model 100% but it really helped us to look to and reach out to our colleagues that were sort of in front of us and doing that thing already. We also became leaders as it relates to change externally. Part of the colleagues that we contacted were from ARL, OSL, NIH NLM, Library of Congress. And so when you're working at this level and you're so everything is just so high level and intense, you tend not to recognize like all that you're doing, all the work that you're doing but reaching out to our colleagues and all of these organizations and they reached out to us to say, hey, what are you all doing at UCL?  We're just kind of shutting down and we're not doing anything. So people were moving at a different pace. Some had just shut down and were barely managing to maintain operations online. Others were in sort of this hybrid mode but it was really enlightening and positive reinforcement that other colleagues were sort of reaching out to us to get our input to share ideals and et cetera. So that was just a lot of collaboration that I thought was really important. Lastly, I think one of the ways in which we were able to thrive and be progressive was to come up with methods to respond to real-time challenges. So for example, when we were asked to implement changes on matters that weren't under our umbrella, we were very comfortable saying, no, we wanna sort of bounce that back to the department that you should talk to. I have an instance if we have time, I'll share with you about the College of Medicine but I won't go into it now. How to negotiate and work collaboratively with the president and provost. I said that earlier, they saw our libraries opening at a different time in a different way and so having that sort of discussion. And lastly, we were mindful of leading from a place of compassion, honesty and safety but also balancing that with the economic realities of our university, working to accommodate returning students, students working from home. I'm over at the College of Medicine so our M3s and M4 medical students, they were doing research and needed to do in-person rounds at the hospital. So trying to balance everything required developing these comprehensive strategies to address a diversity of issues and concerns but also working in tandem with our director of communication, Melissa Norris. I can't say enough about her. She was on point. She pushed out appropriate messaging. We were in front of the eight fall so I'm gonna turn it over to Brad. Okay, so we've given examples from our experience through the COVID crisis and that's something all of us have done. And so I think really the thought now is how do you take some of the successes and also learning from some things that didn't go as well and then apply them to a similar kind of big problems into the future? And so some concrete things, at least I would think of that we've been learning from the pandemic, how we've been working from home, we cannot go back to the way it was before no matter what. I spent especially as it relates to climate change and sustainability, we've demonstrated quite easily that we can be productive in many ways. But I also have to recognize that there's a huge amount of fatigue with the current situation. So I think there's gotta be something that sits in between doing all your work at a location that is an office and a library and all of it at home. There's gotta be something that sits in between but it cannot be going back to before. I also think the rules of effective group size are gone. I used to always joke about the pizza rule that no committee should be any bigger than you can feed with two pizzas, which I think came from Jeff Bezos. Throw that out the window. I've been sort of shocked with our ability to have 50 people on a call and to work through big problems quickly and make decisions. That's been kind of a shock. And so I think that the way in which we've worked with each other and the nuance of this online world has I think thrown some of the ways in which we do work effectively out the window or have given us new ways of doing it. Offering such as the internet archives, emergency library and the HathiTrust emergency access, I think there needs to be some real work and to find a way to make these a more permanent thing. So to speak rather than something that's just in relation to the pandemic but I also recognize that is a huge issue but providing access, removing barriers to access I think is a hallmark of what we really need to be focusing on into the future and it's more than based on loan periods and fines for physical items that really has to do with removing those barriers for electronic materials. And then I love the idea that crowd sourcing information, discovery, access and delivery to our collective faculty, staff and students. We've all been talking to each other a lot, sharing information, learning from each other. We have essentially been crowdsourcing quite a bit and doing it virtually. And so I just wonder how in the world as we as collectors, purveyors, disseminators of information can do, what can we do to help sort of enable this type of activity? I will admit I don't know what that looks like but it is something I found really interesting that's come out of this as a positive. Something especially when it comes to global challenges is that we have to change our practices with an eye for sustainability. And Lori mentioned the public library and I think that I continue to look at the public library as inspirational for how to do things and to do them differently and to really be looking towards the future. And so strangely enough, the American library's issue for September, October had article on public libraries participating in citywide climate action plans. And as we've learned from bringing up university campuses, we are a city within a city or a town. And I think that we need to be actively taking the lead and are partnering with existing efforts within our academic institutions with that type of sustainability and plans and reducing our impact. This is the timeframe in which I think that we can really begin to take a giant leap forward in relation to climate change and sustainability because we have already had to make huge changes to the way we do things. If we can do this, we can do more. In all cases, however, we really need to be able to work with partners that have to take these principles into account for how we approach these big problems for ensuring sustainability and built-in resiliency. And I really think that key piece is the workforce and the decision-making and how you communicate and deal with these changes that happen quickly. And so I think that whether it's happening at a local level within your campus or partnering at the state, national or international levels requires this empowerment. And it's a different kind of empowerment. You're empowering, it's not a grassroots kind of empowerment. It's actually empowering people who are on the front lines in one example who can help influence the system in which you are implementing your solutions. And I think that concept is a really interesting one. It's a different type of collaboration and one that I hope that our own library can continue into the future. And something that I think is much more in the immediacy and not to end on a down note, but I've been thinking about this is that if you thought that the shutdown in the planning for the fall semester was tough, you've got nothing on fall 21. Right now, I think we'd have to have an expectation that there is a desire for it to look like fall 19 and that we're, quote, back to normal for fall of 21. And I think that the work that is necessary in order to navigate through that successfully is entirely dependent on this resilient culture and decision-making and empowerment. It's the only way in which we're going to do it successfully, but it is going to be tough and it is gonna happen in the next few months. Thanks, we have some time for questions. Thank you, Brad. Thank you, Laurie, was a really interesting presentation. Lots of food for thought, very inspiring and thought-provoking, particularly with your comments there at the end, Brad. So the floor is now open for questions and I know Laurie and Brad would love to have a conversation with our attendees here today. So if you have comments or personal experiences with your own organization, questions about their process, please type it into the Q&A or raise your hand. I can turn on your microphone and you can join the conversation with us here. We really would be interested in hearing your perspective about this. I personally, as we wait for folks to think about what you've just shared with us, personally, I really appreciated your talking about all the different communities that you brought into your process and it made me wonder if one of the big things that folks have talked about throughout the last nine months is the big hit that morale has taken for our staff. It strikes me that the kind of process that you shifted to might help mitigate some of that and I wondered if it's not the kind of thing you could necessarily measure, but can you speak to that at all? Do you have any comments about general morale and how your process might have impacted that? I know for me personally, all you had to do was look at the, what is it, the library think tank on Facebook and all of the horror stories and my thought was, I was very much driven by it. I don't want that to be our experience. So, but I'm not going to claim that we don't have a morale issue at our library because we're tired. And I think that, you know, coupling this with this over boiling of systemic racism in the country in the summer, facing severe budget cuts as well. You know, you feel that you're just, you know, everything is just sliding out from under your feet left and right. I would like to think that as it comes to the work that this group did and that for a very long period of time, I can't claim the entire semester, but I mean, the fact that we didn't have a single person in our library staff or faculty test positive for COVID and that we didn't have any kind of infection issues was something that we're really, really proud of.  I think that I would hope at least when it came to how we're doing our work within this, the pandemic crisis that people felt as confident as they could be that this was being done the best that it possibly could. And I'll just add a little bit and sort of piggyback the other confluences of different things happening at once was really a lot. But I think one of the things that I was appreciative of is that, you know, Brad, because he sort of sits next to the dean in terms of hierarchy, he really advocated strongly that for the rest of this year that our library faculty and staff not be tasked with other big, large projects that we really needed this space and time, you know, just to breathe, just to kind of get back to normal or return phone calls and whatever. Because, you know, of course every library has like, okay, and this is next and this is next, but he really advocated strongly and said, listen, you know, and I think that's important to, when you're listening to your people, they're telling you exactly what it is that they need and what they want. And so I was really appreciative that he was able to advocate for that. I think everybody now can take a breath and be ready again to start again in the new year. Empowering and allowing people to be heard. Well, thank you both so much. I appreciate your response to my question about that. And I see that we're a couple of minutes past time here, so I wanna be respectful of your time, of our attendees' time. So I'll go ahead and shut down the public portion and close down the recording and just invite any attendees if they wanna stick around and ask some questions. Please feel free to do so. But thank you so much, Laurie and Brad, for being here and hope to see you back at CNI soon. Take care, bye-bye. Thanks a lot, Diane. Thanks, Cliff, so much. Thank you.


Mae'r next item we're going to consider is the use of dictionaries and here perhaps the first thing we should do is to make a distinction between the two main types of dictionary and that distinction is between the monolingual and the bilingual dictionary. In a monolingual dictionary you have a word and its associated meaning and those two are both described for example in English so the word and the description of that word are both given in English whereas a bilingual dictionary that word meaning could often be for example the word given in English and the explanation given in Thai and vice versa. So what can we use a dictionary for? Well within the dictionary itself obviously we can get things like how words are spelled so the spelling of the word we can also get the pronunciation of that word because most dictionaries will involve the phonemic symbols that go along with that word and it's very helpful for the students to be able to pronounce it correctly. It could also give us ideas on what part of speech that that particular word can be used for so quite often after the word in the dictionary there'll be letters like N or ADV for noun and adverb and so on and so forth. Another thing that it can do is to sometimes show you a typical context of that word so within some dictionaries they actually give example sentences showing how that word can fit into context. It's quite important that we don't allow students to overuse the dictionary within the classroom itself but having said that there are some very useful homework activities that we can get the students to do by using their dictionary which is much more suitable.


Now for Brando, Brando has little footsies. They're very delicate. So you would want one small perch. This looks like, and how they weren't professionals, like something eight, seven inches. Vinnie? Vinnie, what's going on? Did you make this mess? See, let me drink a Brando. It sounds like Vinnie's having fun. That's what it sounds like to me. You know what Auntie Nora says? She said, you're naughty. My fellow Snippers, Flaters, and Hatchlings. My name is Marlene McCohen. Welcome to my channel. This right here is Tracy, and this right here is Brando. If you have been following my cage setup series, and you're just generally wondering how to set up a cage, there is something in each one of these episodes. But today, we're going to set up Brando's cage.  And also, today, Brando is getting a cage upgrade. So, let's check it out. I already know which toys he picked out. You know how I know? Let me show you how I know. This one is eaten. Oh, you like it. Cookie, you were trying to get to the toy store. I know you like this one. Oh, yeah. I want one. What? You want this?  Okay, so. I thought we had a moment. Bye. Bye.  Oh, sorry. She's gonna yell at you now. I'm sorry, listen. Move it. Sorry. You want one? Which one? I offered you one earlier. So first of all, before we go on, the first setup that we did was Leo, my Amazon. And what's special about his cage setup is that he's very timid, and he doesn't really like to play with toys. So if you're looking for a simple setup, I would go check out that video, or just watch it at the end of this video. All of these cage setup videos have completely different elements. There will be some things that might be the same, but a lot of little things will be different. So I get this question a lot, and we went over it already in Leo's video, but the answer is different here. What is the right size cage for my bird? So the first answer to that is obviously the biggest cage that you could probably afford. And hopefully you'll also have a tree stand where your bird can hang out all day. But thank you, Tracy. This is going very well with my assistant here. And best friend. Vanna White, that's right. Also Vanna White. We're gonna measure the bars to be very precise so that I can show you what the bars are in this cage. So this is seven eighths of an inch. And again, we went over this before. You wanna make sure that the bars are not big enough for the bird's head to go through. Now, let's move on. We're gonna quickly graze over. Glaze over? Graze? Glaze. Glaze, right? This is like a fascinating thing. This is like, we're just not smart together. Cirque birds to lay. First things first. What do I use for the bottom of the cage? Because before you put the bird in, you definitely want to make sure that you have a proper bottom setup. Okay, Tracy, that's perfect. So as I was explaining in the previous video, this is paper. We happen to get a lot of this donated to us from Parrots First, which just has been amazing because I haven't had to buy anything for the bottom of their cages. It was donated to them by a paper company, so it's recyclable. But I'm not gonna use this now because this is the frame for another cage. So for the purpose of this video, we're gonna use incontinence pads. It's a little easier. These are the things that you can buy in CVS. You can buy them in Sam's Club. I don't think Costco has them. They are not doggy pee pads. Doggy pee pads are treated with chemicals that you do not want your bird to be around. If you get them in Amazon, you could also check my Amazon store online of recommended items. I'll put that below. And again, you guys can cut them to size. Depending on the size that you get, sometimes cutting one and a half can be perfect for two different bird cages because there are really extra large ones of these. Now, as you'll notice, Tracy put it on top of the bars. I like to put them on top of the bars, but if your bird chews stuff that's at the bottom, don't even bother. Just put it on the bottom tray, which is right here. And we do have one in there. If you're cleaning the cage, I recommend cleaning both. Vinnie? Vinnie? What are you doing? Vinnie? This is a new cage for Brando. Brando's getting an upgrade. It's not a brand new cage. It's a cage we had. It took me a minute to figure out who was in it because when all these cages got switched around and we brought in new ones and all this stuff, I was like, who's cage is this? I soon discovered that it was Nellie's cage. Nellie's sort of getting a downgrade, but Monty's getting an upgrade and now they have the same cage. So it's kind of cool for them to have twin cages, but also they are out all day long and never in the cage, so that's good. And then one can't be jealous of the other because they have a bigger house than them. Exactly, you can see. Level the playing field. The first thing I notice about these bars is some things that I do not like. One, this bar is overlapping this one, which leaves a lot of room for a mess, right? As you could see here, this was missed in the pressure washing. This is not a recommended position. Now, although this bar is a very nice bar, it also leaves some room depending on how the bar bird likes to sit for droppings on the bar. So what we're gonna do is take out all the bars and reposition them. All right, just clean this bar.  Try it off. Always want to clean things with non-toxic. You wanna clean these bars and anything in the cage with items that are not toxic. You can use baking soda, lemon, pressure washing, simple water, or a very gentle dish soap is okay as well. Tracy's gonna put this in the cage. This is gonna be utilized for the bird to step from here to the other side. So Tracy had it far away. So that's good though that you guys are learning what to do. So the reason we wanna keep this close is so that the bird can step down and eat from here. This cage also has these locks so that the bird can't pull the bowl out. Some of you with angry birds that like to stand their own nose. This kind of cage might be beneficial for. Look at Auntie spoiling this bird right here. Now mustache parakeets guys are very strong. This is yucca, so it's not a very hard piece of wood, but these kind of birds, they can fly with pieces like this. It's pretty impressive. We were gonna wait and put all the toys in here, but our auntie is spoiling her granddaughter, so. Yeah, did you just throw this down here? Now let's get into some other perches and some other perch sizes. For smaller birds, it's okay to use a perch that is a little bit bigger than their feet because you want to use a lot of different sizes. As you could see, we had this perch in the cage. I feel like this double perch where it was is not the best option to keep the cage clean. The way it's spread out, it kind of went over the other perch and we want to keep things as clean as possible. So let's look at some other options for perches. Again, these are ribbonwood perches that you could get at. Where could you get these Tracy? Parentstation.com. That's right Tracy. We do offer these perches on our website if you guys are interested. We also have packs of perches that we put together. Now for Brando, Brando has little footsies. They're very delicate, so you would want one small perch. This looks like, now that we're professionals, like something eighths of an inch. I want to give you guys an idea. I'm proud to be a perch expert as far as the sizes after this. We're literally looking at half an inch. It looks so small, but there are parts of this that are larger than half an inch, which is what's great. And this is also why we utilize real wood that comes from trees and just to really simulate and make sure they have healthy feet. So Tracy's going to help us put that on. Brando loves these kind of toys. The toy that Brando's playing with right now is called Beach Bag. Oh, Jesus, this guy is. Came in the last feather fun box. Yes, I did. This came in the last feather fun box. The anniversary box. It was an anniversary box. You guys don't even know how hard my friends work as volunteers to help us pack these boxes. Is that getting paid for this? Brando loved this box. It was all about a pool party, so obviously you take your bag to your pool party and there was also a hat. Is this the right branch? Well, it kind of is a little too long to go this way because as you could see, there would be droppings right there. Why don't you put it like long ways so then we can paint toys for Brando? Exactly, but- But that one should fall down. Why is that not a good spot? It's like points down. Well, you could point it anyway, but why is because, how tall is Brando? You want to make sure the bird has enough space that his head is not bent down. This is another thing that I want you to look to when you're setting up the cage that the bird isn't bent a little bit when they're utilizing all the- But Brando stands tall or something. On a proud day. You want to make sure that the bird is not crouching or slouching in any way on their tallest moment. So that's very important. A lot of birds I find like to sleep up in that smaller perch in the corner. Brando does and Vinny does and Jersey does. Some birds, as we're going to get into their cage setups, like to have like a storefront where they like to sit in the front of their cage and look at everything. So some things that we see about this perch right now, it's not overlapping this. Is it too flimsy for Brando's? Wait, let's tighten it. Let's just check it out and see how it bounces. We want to make sure like the way this is right now, is the bird going to be comfortable or is it too easy for the bird to, you know, push it down? Do you mind Brando? We're just testing something. We'll get your toys in a second. That is nothing for Brando. The height of the head is perfect and Brando is happy and Brando could reach a toy that's right about here. So that's a good perch. I think it might be really nice to put something a little shorter over here. So let's explore that, Brando. Thank you. You can come out and play with your toy right now. Okay, let's see what Tracy is doing. So hold this. Brando can go from this perch to this perch. And this is a little bit thicker, which is great. And then down here with ease. So Brando can make a circle. This is the fun part. Tracy's excited. Brando. Brando, you're going to like to dine on this. Brando's so busy with this toy. Brando's the type of bird that loves these kind of toys with like these bells and jewels. Now, odd thing.  She's not supposed to be, but she is also like those kind of little toys and she does. Let me just show you what Brando's done in the time that we've set this up. All of this, all of that, all of that. Brando's been able to go for toys that are all over the place. Brando likes almost everything. How are you, baby? Look at the beautiful eyes on this bird. It's insane. You're beautiful. What's good about this toy for Brando? This thing. What is that? Yucca wood. Good job, yucca. Brando doesn't think it's yucca. We're faced with a little bit of a dilemma, but that's good because I can show you guys something. So we didn't have a big enough D-ring. You can totally use this knot and hang it on the cage. That's a little too much for me right now. I don't wanna break a nail and with this piece up, try not to use things like this. This is a big D-ring, but with birds like these that get into everything, there's a chance they could try to open it and get their foot or something stuck in here. That's why it's always better to use these safer D-rings that if they open, they're just open and they do come larger. So just keep that in mind. I think that's a good lesson. You always gotta be aware of what they could get stuck in or closed on and things like that. So we're not gonna use this toy right now, but that's okay because we have an array of toys that Brando is obsessed with. So the thing about Brando is Brando is not into swings. I can tell you that right now. Maybe one day I'll find the right swing for Brando. We have a lot of variations of swings. Since I know Brando and you guys are following the setup for each bird, we're not gonna try to put a swing in, but I do have birds that love swings, so I want you to stay tuned for those setups and check out those other videos. So first thing we're gonna do is we know that Brando loves this toy. Oh, you're really excited. I'm gonna have Tracy do this such a nice stuff and I'll tell you why, because she doesn't really set up bird cages often. Guys, this whole time we've been filming, Brando has been so busy with this. Oh yeah, you're good for you. There's an example of a bigger D-ring. Oh. Can you see that? Bigger ring. Okay, so. I call them D-rings, but I don't even know if that's what they're called. Daring. But let's look at what Tracy did here and why it's good or not. I like when they're hooked here on in between the bars where they can't go anywhere.  Some breaking news just into the Fox 4 newsroom. A 4.2 magnitude earthquake struck in California. Rocky, okay? Is everybody okay? Okay, baby. Ooh, sturdy stand, huh? Now, as you guys will notice, this toy is in the middle of the bar. A lot of times it's good to put them kind of at the end of the bar so that the bird doesn't have to walk past it, but absolutely, and Brando has no fear and no problem walking past the toy. She can get to it from both purchase. Exactly. Double the fun. Oh, can I see that? How cool is this toy? This is called fish pond. I am, is Brando coming to play with it? I have never- This one, put this one in. Oh my God, I haven't gotten to see Brando with this toy ever. What's that fish doing? This is such, this is a novelty toy. I thought it was just a novelty toy, like in terms of like I'm obsessed, but Brando really loves it. And Megan told me that her friend gave it to his finches and the finches loved it, which is very interesting to me. Brando shares the sentiment. Like, who wouldn't want this toy? You like it, then we put it in the cage for you. We're gonna get this toy off of this thing. Oh! Has all these toys you'll ever need, could dream of or may not know you need until you see. Those of you that have mustache parakeets and are ever wondering about our feathery fun box, you could go either way, you could go the large box or you could go the small box. This is a toy from our small box. That's a toy from our small box. This, when it's a little bigger, is from the large box, but also we've had a smaller version in the small box. So they could go either way. They're strong, they're great at chewing wood. That goes for ring necks as well. I am so excited that she loves that toy. If you guys have a bird that like clings to get out of the cage, Brando hates being in the cage. It's a really good idea to have a lot of toys in there. I love testing toys on Brando. We also test the toys for our small box on Iluca, the cockatiel, I love to see what she loves. Brando, do you like this toy? Should we go be entertained on this perch? And it's more than just a dining perch? Yeah, a dining perch. Absolutely Tracy, I think that's a wonderful idea. And another thing you can do sometimes is attach a toy like this to the wall. If it's here, then she can turn here. No, I like that. And it won't be over what you said about the water and stuff. Absolutely learning. For those of you guys not part of the last video, you always wanna make sure toys are not over the water where they're getting little pieces into the food or water. You gotta be strategic with that kind of stuff. Now there are some birds that you don't wanna overload them with toys too much. Like for example, when Brando was a baby, you don't overload them with toys during the first few days for bonding with you. Wanna yell at it? Brando has another toy there. How many toys do we have in here? One, two, three, four, five. What is a foraging toy, Tracy? Like if she's going camping? Forage, her nuts and berries, like a bear. Right, so what kind of toys would make you search for things within them? This thing. You could, you could totally put. Cause I don't even know what's in here. Yeah, you can put things in there for the bird to find. That's why I love this toy. On our site, this is called Small Fry and has a totally different box. And if you wanna share toys with your bird, it makes an excellent ring. They gave my ring, Brando, do you like? No, Brando likes almonds, so show us how to put an almond in there for them. And nuts with shells are really good for foraging because they also have to utilize their beak to open it. You found it, good work, Sluice. I love to have at least one toy for foraging in there. And also the thing about certain nuts that are in their shell, it also sharpens their beak. So sometimes a lot of you will be like, hey, Leo's beak is long, but when he's busy eating his nuts and stuff, they just naturally kind of shave down the beak. So that's always very helpful. Brando can't get to this part though, right? I think. You have to hang it upside down. I think this toy is nice against this wall because it's not gonna fall in any food or water. And when Brando's over there, maybe in the back wall, yeah, that's cool, and a little lower so that if, yeah, I like that. Here, you would wanna do it here because this is where it can stay on the level you want. And now we can put things in there. I just love where it goes, guys. Brando's gonna be so excited about this. I wanna show you guys some other examples of foraging toys which we do have in our store. This is called Cheers. And what you do with cheers is you hide in here, whatever it is you want your birds to find. If you put anything that, you know, rods or anything like that, you gotta make sure to clean these things out. That's why it's a little bit better. And these kind of things maybe to put certain nuts that your bird will like. This is pretty strong. Brando's gonna go through this stuff and find it. No, I want you to experience the joy we've displayed for you. I know. You wanna see if you can find it? Yeah, go in there. Sometimes it's getting them to step back as easier when they're feisty. Look at this. What do you think, Brando? So it looks like Brando's overloaded, but I can assure you Brando is not. I think what's gonna happen is, Brando, besides for yelling at her toys, that's normal, is going to sleep over here. That's what I think is gonna happen. I wanna show you one of Brando's favorite toys, which you guys might think is very large for a mustache parakeet, but it's not because she likes wood and she can chew wood, is this? Brando loves this toy and she stands on top of it and chews it. So the more she chews down, the just different layer she stands on. So some birds can stand on top of their larger toys. It looks like Brando's very busy. She didn't even come out of the cage.  Looks like she's very happy. If you guys are concerned about birds that don't play with toys, Yucca mixed with wood is a very good start. We have this toy on our site. It's called Sidewinder. It's the season for Yucca, so I would suggest checking it out. Everything you've seen in the cage today, we do have on the site from the purchase to the Sidewinder to beach bag, to small fry and this toy, we had it in our circus box. And then if you guys want to add some toys on top, Trance is getting the balls out. Of course, that's another great spot to keep them busy and happy in their area. For those of you that are new to birds, I would always recommend you having a stand, any kind of stand for your birds to play on. We have some larger stands like this that are made out of manzanita. We have a smaller stand here. I wonder, should we put this toy for Brando? Because Brando is obsessed with this toy. It's my favorite toy. This one is called Water Drop. I have to put this in because it's my favorite toy. See, I told you guys Brando climbed the toys. Oh, look, she's going for something new now. She's really into toys. What's going on out here? What are you doing? Oh, you're behaving. So the great thing about that toy, I know we're talking a lot about toys, is that Jersey likes this toy not even hung. For her, this could be a foot toy. It's called Water Drop.  You would, she's large in terms of, she's not big for a cockatoo bird, that you would imagine this is for smaller birds. Brando is still busy. Brando has turned over the fry and Brando is in a very happy position. If you see your bird is going through toys very fast, maybe you want to upgrade maybe these toys that are considered like, for example, part of our small bird box, they're really kind of for meeting on small birds. Maybe you'd want to upgrade a little bit to some bigger toys to see what they can handle. Some of these more sturdy toys that are plastic foraging or some thicker wood because Brando is able to get through this as well. So that concludes our cage setup for Brando, who is now on the bag. When I got Brando, I was so in love with Brando because you guys know my heart was broken from losing my previous mustache parakeet. I was scared that I was gonna make Brando dependent on my love, but I really worked hard to create an independent bird that loves toys. It's healthier for them, it's better for them. Keeps them more occupied and keeps them busy. It's better for foraging. It's better on so many levels. If you guys want to know how to create an independent bird, I did make a video on that. You can go look for it or I'll put the link right here. But if you want an updated video on how to create maybe a bird that loves to play with toys, whether it is a rescue or a baby, let me know if it's a rescue bird. Check out my Amazon video on setting up Leo the Amazon's cage. I really appreciate you guys being here and staying through the whole video. Thank you guys so much. Don't forget to subscribe, show me love in that way. I love you guys so much. Show Tracy some love, follow her on Instagram. That results with Tracy. She's helped me tremendously and hopefully she can help you. Bye. Do you guys see how I have my hand over her beak and then I'm petting her? It's just a little bit of a technique to prevent her from being nippy. I see they're all having fun. Hey, what are you doing? All right, this is like, my birds just clearly know how to forage because somebody got a cracker out of the Mary's cracker herself.


Howdy-de-de-de-do ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another YouTube video. This is Booptum Root CTF 2019. This challenge is called Tony Stank. It's the second challenge in the Linux category. I saw the last one in the last video, if you want to go check that out, and this challenge continues off of that previous one. I want to give a special shout out, and I neglected to in the last video, to Raj, or R4J in the Discord, who was willing to take this on with me. He was pretty active in tackling the CTF with me in the Discord server. He found initially that, hey, that PSTACF would find that flag in the previous video, and I knew, oh, we can just check that out in the Ford slash Proc ID command line file. Then he actually found the breakthrough with this, which was very, very clever. I'm kicking myself. I wish I thought of it myself. Tony Stank, Professor Hulk requires a flag hidden in Tony's account to wield the Infinity Gauntlet, retrieved for him by any means necessary. This connect.sh is the exact same syntax as the last one. A lot of people were curious about that. They were checking the slack, asking around, like, is that actually supposed to be the right thing? Was that a mistake? It is, in fact, so I will go ahead and just copy and paste this here just to make sure we've got it working, and that way we can connect just again. I could have copied the older one, but whatever. All right, so we're Steve still. We know that Tony exists. We've checked out his home director. We've seen him in, et cetera, password. So we know that Tony exists. He's got that interesting file dot flag, and that's probably what we're looking for. We need to be able to become Tony somehow. So I banged my head against this for a while, and you could run Linenum to see if there's any vulnerabilities. You could check out what group he is in, or check out if there's a way you can change group, pseudo, et cetera, et cetera. I won't run through those commands right now, because initially I was like, dude, I don't know, man. I guess I wouldn't have a good idea. So Tony, I'm sorry, R4J Raj was poking around in here, and again, props to him. He realized and noticed that I can do interesting things. What the heck? Four? Did the challenges die? Whoa, yeah, challenge totally died. Let's go whine about that in the Slack channel. BTR, Linux, Tony Stank. It's broken, bro. It's broke. That's a positive video. Okay, challenge looks like it's back. Sorry for that delay. So in Tony's home directory, what you might find is that you can actually create files. You can write in Tony's home directory. So originally, maybe if you're not thinking or remembering everything that happened in the background, you might say, well, that's great. What does that have to do with anything? Why would that help me? SSH is still running. So let's do some clever thing, right? Where if we were to go ahead and create an SSH key and add it to Tony's authorized keys, we could then sign in authenticate as Tony because he's going to accept that key, right? So since we can control his home directory, we can control his SSH configuration. Let's make a .ssh directory and let's go ahead and create an authorized keys file. You might have done this in Pico CTF. If you've ran some of those keys challenges, you've added your SSH key on the server. I know I've done this in some Vulner Hub boxes. I think there might be something in Hack that Box. I've done this before and I was mad at myself like, man, why didn't I realize that? But R4J totally thought of it. It's awesome. It's clever. Very, very smart. So okay, what you want to do now is go ahead and write SSH key gen because it will go ahead and create it. We can put it in our configuration as the Steve user. That's fine. I don't need a passphrase, so we can go ahead and hit enter a few times. So now we've got in our home directory, in our SSH directory, configuration directory, we have IDRSA, which is our private key, our private key. We want to put our public key on the server, right? So .pub is our public key. So we can go ahead and redirect that to home Tony.ssh authorized keys. And now, if we were to move into there and show that it's actually there, correct. Now we can go ahead and SSH to ourself, right? So I tried this outside the box originally. I know they tell you to think outside the box a lot, and that's what I thought, oh, maybe that's what I'm doing. I'll add my John public key in there, but that didn't work. SSH wasn't accessible. So running it locally, though, does get you in. So that's an interesting thing. You should poke at and keep that in mind. Always try and do the loop back. Okay. So SSH tag I with now our SSH IDRSA, and we'll specify Tony as the user that we want and local host. Yes, we want to connect, and now we're Tony. So cool. We have done our privsk, right? And we left out some of our enumeration because I've been trying to showcase some of this stuff because we still can't cat our .flag. Now why is that LS Tech L? Even the user Tony cannot use this. That's annoying, right? That's peculiar and silly. But I did not do you justice in our enumeration. How do we actually check out the Got Milk? I've got their slack open. I was trying to see if people like, hey, everything broke. You can check that out there. Got Milk, basic privilege escalation. What we want to do is find set UID binaries, and we should have done this all along or sued binaries. We should have actually determined, okay, whatever. Other things will actually run as maybe an advanced elevated user. So this, again, probably should have happened in lin enum. Had we ran it, if you copy and pasted all the lin enum script, and if you don't know what I'm referring to when I say lin enum, that's lin enum.sh by reboot user. That's an automated way of checking a lot of this for basic enumeration, right? Linux enumeration. So let's get this line. Let's check out what actually has set UID binary. Maybe this will work for me. Fingers crossed. Okay. So bin said, bin mount, U mount to bin, G pasted, et cetera, et cetera. Interesting to note, had you had ran this as Steve, now we know bin said has a set UID binary on it. So we would have the privileges of the root user if we were to run this. However, it is not executable by everyone.  And we're like, well, we wouldn't have that privest even as Steve. So backtrack to the last video, sorry, justice that I, disjustice that I didn't explain that to you then. But now you know, and keep note that that is in the root user and root group. Now Tony, on the other hand, sorry, not if but ID, ID is in the root group. So very interesting. That means that he can run said. So if you were to check out the GTFO bins, so I don't know why I just open a file explorer. GTFO bins will tell you some cool things and cool stuff and how to do stuff with things, especially with the said binary. How can you get a shell? Yes, how can you command, run command, so I can write files, you can actually just said, we'll read files. If you do not replace said is supposed to do regular expressions, find and replace or in other very, very cool things. But if you don't give it the first argument to the file, like the regular expression processing that you want to do and just give it the second file, the file that you want to read, second argument, the file you want to read, it'll just go ahead and read it. So since we're root, we can go ahead and do said, empty string, it's that repassword. Everyone would be able to read that. It's that rachado, only root users will be able to read that. So we have a privisk. Go ahead and said that empty string with what we want here. Let's read our.flag, boot to root, I hope SSH is the only way. So that is our privisk, that is how we have read. Now even as root files, root can read files and that's it man, that's the flag. Boot to root, I hope SSH is the only way. I hope that made sense, I hope that was kind of cool, I hope that was neat. I know a lot of people kind of struggled with that and R4J props to him and found it, got his first blood on this and that was very, very cool. And I'm glad that like that made sense with me. I don't know why I did the crazy thing when I was saying that, but I knew it was like, oh, I could have done that too. Like I knew that, I knew, I know why that makes sense and I understand it. So I hope that's the same way for you. We can go ahead and submit that and we'll move in to the final challenge to the Linux category, hit up root in the next video. Thanks for watching everybody. If you like this video, please do like, comment and subscribe. Join our Discord server, link in the description and I will see you in the next video.