All right. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today, and it will be posted to our archives for you to watch later at your convenience. And I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries here in Nebraska, so similar to your state library. So we provide services and training consulting to all sorts of libraries in the state, so we will have shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. We also provide public academic K-12 corrections, museums, archives, et cetera, et cetera. Really our only criteria is that something to do with libraries, something that libraries are doing, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, could be anything. Oh, sorry, sound just cut out. Hold on. Hey, what was that again? Yeah, I just noticed that my audio connection cut out for a minute there. It was me. It was us. All right, let me try this again. We have with us today our guest speaker, Brooks Arco. Good morning, Brooke. Good morning. I'm wondering if I should do that again. And she is a library director in here in Nebraska, in Blair, Nebraska at the Blair Public Library and Technology Center. And she's going to share with us wonderful tales from the dark side of library management. And many of us, I'm sure, have experienced this. If you haven't, good for you. And I will just hand it over to you, but to take it away and tell us all what you've dealt with and how we can handle it ourselves. Sure. So, and just to check, you can see my screen, right, my slides. Yes. Yes. Okay. Your slides. Yeah, but your first slide is up there full screen. No problem. I just want to make sure before we get started. So my name is Brooks Arco and and I've, I've not been in library management that that long, which is, which is kind of ironic, I would argue. I've been in libraries for over 10 years in different positions. And then I've been in library management for about the last four years. And then I wanted to explain why I wanted to do this, do this presentation. I did this presentation at NLA and I wanted to do this presentation for other reasons, because, you know, library management is one of those things that how to put this it seems like a lot of people get thrown into and they don't.  There's not a lot of courses that teach management. I think my management education consisted of, I think there was one assignment I did about cutting people and managing a budget and it was mostly focused on X plus Y equals Z in your salary and if you have to get rid of someone. And on paper, that's really easy. But in practice, I mean, that was it for my education. They did not talk about what are the HR issues you're going to deal with what do you do if you have, you know, bad management in place there I mean there was nothing. There was nothing that was given to me or taught to me at any point in my time at school about managing people. Yeah, library school when I was in library school, which was a long time ago but I have this memory of an administrator class administrative class and all I remember from it was having to do a floor plan of how would you rearrange the library to be more like better flow and put things that I'm like, that was fun, you know, little diagram chairs and things, but as far as people I don't remember a thing about that now. I mean that's, that's something and it's not it's not an indictment of education or anything like that it's just, it's hard to teach it's hard to learn it's hard to practice. It's kind of, it's one of those things where it's, it's, how do you teach this. I mean, how do you talk about this without making people mad. You don't want to tell tales on your boss or anything like that and so I am fortunate enough to have a essentially what I term a completely sanitized situation in which I'm able to talk about. I see if you're like me you're part of a lot of groups that talk about library things and I feel like lately, especially in the last couple years, I've seen so many anonymous posts about bad work situations bad bosses and how do you handle that and what do you do and, you know, that's it's such a difficult situation to be in. And it's, it's hard to give advice that fits. And it's, if you're dealing with it you don't know what to do and I mean at the time that I was dealing with a lot of this, I didn't even have groups to go to to like put that question to him so it's kind of one of those things where it's like I had no resource. And I'm not saying this resource and I do want to preface this by saying, just because this presentation doesn't mean I am like the best boss in the world. This is not a humble brag or anything like that it's just, here's my experience with this. I hope it helps in some way. You know, ultimately, we're here to learn, we're here to kind of share knowledge. I, you know, I would argue that's the whole point of this. I'm sure it's, you know, it's a good, a safe space here for people to share if they want to. And I will mention, you know, as I said, there is a place for you to ask questions put in comments. When I read those off of everyone's ever watched the show, I am less in various rare cases I never say oh so and so from so and so library said blah. So, anything you say here will be completely anonymous. And that's, like I said, I'm fortunate to have a sanitized situation but I just feel like I see more and more people who are, who are in bad work situations and they don't know what to do and everyone feels like they're the one experiencing it. So I just wanted to talk about this and kind of, I think it's a conversation that needs to be had. Clearly there's not an epidemic but there's, there's bad managers out there. And there is a conversation that needs to be had about how do you deal with this. And so with that, I'll kick off. So, I was doing this in a, in like a video game theme so you know, boss level one will have the final boss at the end so I was kind of thinking in that regard so my, my first bad boss is what I would call a micro manager so to kind of set the stage here I came in as a part time circulation assistant was what I was called I was working on my MLS I was getting my education so this seemed like a good way to, you know be still be practicing as a librarian and then working on my MLS. So, my CERC supervisor at the time was basically, I mean, you think micro manager, and it's kind of like, Oh yeah no I've had people do that this was to a T. I mean, they, this person managed essentially managed to full time people and four to six part times depending on the number of hires, you know, as hiring ebbs and flows. This was such a bad situation I was kind of joking I looked up traits of a bad micro manager and and this individual checked all those boxes and I thought, Oh, that's, that's pretty bad. And then I was looking up this working on this presentation. This was, this was honestly an environment of fear. You know I put micro manager and and that's kind of a light way of putting it. This was really an environment of fear that this person managed. And then they do it then so when you have someone who's in control of an environment like that, they are going to isolate you from the library at large. And so I put in that third point they they undercut other departments library with gossip. I mean, there was several times I can recall that any other department in the library that was not this person's department. They, their workers were not doing their job or were you know, I mean, taking too many coffee breaks or they just were incompetent, etc, etc, etc. And essentially what was happening is we were being isolated from the library at large we as CERC assistants were essentially isolated in that we know we were built in an environment of mistrust of other departments. You know anyone in not anyone in management but this individual. This was an interesting individual this person I saw them. I think I worked, I worked in this position for about is about a year and three quarters. I saw this person yelling at another manager. What I did not realize at the time was that other manager was this person's boss. This person yelled at their boss and nothing was done about that. I mean, so for me to think, Oh, I can, you know, if I have a problem with this person I can go to that person's boss.  And so it's one of those things where you're like, Oh my gosh, what have I walked into. So, you know, there's there's aspects of that where it was so difficult. And with this I mean there was, there was things like in this environment where we weren't allowed to answer the phones. And basically, you know, this person was the only person to answer the phone. We were not to touch the phone, unless that person even if that person was in the bathroom. We kind of had to hold out for like the third ring. And if the third ring would come and they hadn't gotten out of the bathroom yet then we could answer but I mean it was, you were absolutely not to touch the phone. You had to sit at the desk and this is some people do this. We had to sit at the circulation desk and do nothing.  It was, it was not a good environment. I mean it was, this was micromanager to a T. So, with that I put on here, you know, part time staff, myself included, even though I was working on my MLS, even though I'd been in libraries for years on top of this. We were not to, I mean we weren't just not trusted for anything. So, there were preferable tasks that you could be doing. And those were, I mean, this person had their favorites. And so if it was a preferable task, that went to, that went to this person's favorite. You know, we were considered incompetent. Essentially, we were just not to be trusted. We couldn't, we could not, no decisions could be made. The other thing is we did have in this environment, there was harassing behavior. And this person tormented a fellow staff member. It was bad. I mean this person was all the time. I mean it was probably a couple times a week that this person got yelled at they were yelled at in front of us. And it was essentially kind of like a back away situation, which is bad but you know with when you're in this environment, you don't want to draw attention to yourself. You don't want to be the target of harassment, which is sad. It is upsetting. So not only was this this manager harassing focused in on another staff member to harass all the time constantly.   The problem with that is is you know I got up my gumption. I, so I'd gotten I'd gotten promoted to Children's Librarian, and I'll talk about that a little bit more later but I'd gotten promoted and I thought okay, I got up my gumption. I went to this person supervisor. I was like I'm going to I'm going to do something about this. And I reported it, and it was brushed off. I was excused. It was brushed off. It was ignored. That that was really disheartening, you know, because I had it took a lot for me to kind of get up my gumption to go against this person because this person had a lot of connections and management amongst the staff and, but I was like you know I'm going to do right I'm going to do right. It just it went nowhere. It was brushed off the race related remarks were brushed off the harassing behavior was brushed off it was just not just ignored or excused or whatever.  So here's a perfect example so you'll notice I have a have a crane on there. So we I was sitting, you know, we sit at the front desk and we're not supposed to do anything touch anything, etc. Okay, fine. We're only there to serve the patients. Okay, so one evening or I think it was an afternoon I, I know how to fold a paper crane so I sat there. I took a piece of scrap paper and I folded a paper crane out of scrap paper. Well, there was an empty drawer in the desk and I had I had set it in there. And I, you know, just, it was cute I folded it and I just kind of had something to look at up at the desk and I folded a scrap paper. Well, at one point the director somehow saw those and another think I showed my coworkers because they just thought it was cute so I showed my coworkers my little folded cranes and, and we had it in the desk and somehow the director at the time saw those. And it then turned into a witch hunt. And I wish I was joking about this. I really do. And it turned into a witch hunt for who had, who had folded the cranes. And I think the way my schedule was I worked a week on a week off and they had found them right as my week off and started, and they pulled in every single circus assistant to find out who had misused the scrap paper. And it was, I was like, is this really a good use of your time. I shouldn't say but I mean it was, it was one of those things where I just thought, really, really, and then, and then the order came down, you know, they pulled in all the staff members, and they question them and we're like, who, you know, who folded this. And the funny thing is, is no one gave me up, which I guess speaks to the solidarity of us, which is, you know, from a manager's point of view that's both good and bad. You know I was glad my coworkers were looking out for me, and you do want that in a staff you know you want your coworkers to look out for each other in a situation but ultimately as a manager I look back on that and I do think this was such a bad situation, and we were so mistrustful of our manager. What would have happened if I'd been doing something else, something less fun, something more serious. They wouldn't have, they probably wouldn't have given me up to this person because we were so, I mean she was, this person was so reviled that it was like, we're not telling you anything about our fellow people you know. I don't know what it is they do. The band, yeah, and the band came down you were not allowed to touch scrap paper for anyone but a patron was like, okay, this is excessive. So, I mean that was, it was it was just everything cranked up to 11. You know, and I wish I could joke about that I told that story to someone and they kind of looked at me and said are you serious and I said yes, yes I am. I mean the band came down you do not touch scrap paper unless it's for for a patron. So, you know, that's so I mentioned this earlier about solidarity. You know the team did look at it for each other and that is a good thing you do want co workers sharing and you know working together but there's things like we would, I call it institutional knowledge we would pass down. We would hire someone and we'd immediately pull them in and kind of be like okay, here's the things like don't take off this person don't do these things you know this and that so we would pass on our knowledge to the new person to keep them out of trouble. And there was things like and this is a real story this is what you know we would tell people as a group. We would tell people that you had to be careful about finding messes because if you found a mess. The search supervisor would force you to clean it up. Even though we had a maintenance staff who was on call. The search supervisor would force you to clean things up, even though we had maintenance staff who would do it. No problem. They're like careful finding a mess. They'll force you to clean it up and you got to be careful of that. And it was just those things like that and that's not great, you know, from looking back from that that's not great you don't want that. But, you know, in this in this case there was so much problems with this that we weren't doing more work. We would only do the work that we were assigned. Why would we do more work that that could you could get in trouble for that I'm not kidding. If you were trying to be proactive and find more things. There was a real chance of being in trouble if you acted without this person's knowledge. So, you know, it's ineffective for us we have we had no authority to make decisions we'd have to take notes on the weekends and pass them up and everything. I mean we had no, we had no liberty to make decisions or solve problems. It just created this huge backlog of stuff that had to wait till this person came back. It's not a great situation and you don't want that kind of situation it's bad deal and obviously it's a bad boss. So I mean that was kind of that situation. And there's just so much with that it's just not great. So, these kind of things reflect. I mean, your, your people using your library will notice this too, that how things are at the library it's it's not just. It's not just internal. I mean, yes, people don't understand yeah. Yeah, and people were scared I mean patients were scared of the Cirque supervisor. I mean they'd come in and it drove a lot of people off this person had favorites and they would get preferential treatment it just it was bad the patrons picked up on it everything I mean they would get mad at Cirque staff because everything had to go through this person and we were allowed to make no decisions. This wasn't great, but how does this person who has all these things who has harassment who has the racial comments who has this this bad behavior. How does this person exists. Well, unfortunately, it takes two to tango. So, this is part of a chain here what you're seeing is a chain, and that chain enabled this behavior at multiple levels. So, moving on to level two. Why, why did that person, why was that person able to thrive. Well, because that person's immediate supervisor was also ineffective this was an ineffective boss. They were afraid of confrontation, they would not handle problems they wanted to sit at their desk. They wanted to do stuff at their computer and then that was it. Again, this kind of goes back to we as librarians are not typically taught to lead to to work in a team to manage HR to do things like that where we're not taught that it's and I understand it's hard to teach but this is an effective supervisor like I said earlier, they were yelled at by their immediate report in in the public in front of other staff members. That is stunning to me that that would. It is.   We were not to trust the search supervisors boss. That person was not capable. They were only good for approving time sheets. We are not supposed to trust them. So again, we were this isolated group we were been isolated. We had been, you know, taught to not trust anyone. And it was a classic abuse situation. I mean, we were being held hostage essentially and the search supervisor made sure that we had no one to go to because of the search supervisors immediate boss is being yelled out by them being told, you know, we're being told they're not capable. And we feel like that's the case. How do we go to that person. We can't we don't trust them. Why would we, you know, they're not in the mud with us. So, again, it's like I said, this person was just ineffective.  If you went up the chain, the search supervisor reported to the it was the adult circulation librarian at the time, and the adult circular circulation librarian reported the director will a director at the time, trusted and place the search supervisor over everyone else, they would go out for lunch for things the search supervisor knew the director's parents. Ah, there you go. Yep, yep. So new new their parents and the you know, things like that and so there were there was more at play there and it was, it was very disheartening for us I mean, it was it was just it was hard. So the ineffective supervisor, they were just like I said, I went I got up all my things I got it to report.  You know, I, I thought I just really pat myself on the back when I went in there to report it I really did. And it was just, it was all brushed off it was all dismissed. The harassing behavior but again I guess in reality, if you're being harassed, can you recognize harassing behavior of others who know I mean I couldn't say. And so I don't know if you know that was part of it but this person the ineffective supervisor did not want to engage with with that person, and then my I call I call the director at the time a consummate professional. They just sit in their office and just have things run.  They didn't want to hear about problems. They didn't want to have to step out and solve anything. So, you know, a lot of bad behavior by employees was slipping by. I mean, like I said, we were, you know, we as search staff we're not reporting things we were not doing more work than we needed to. This ineffective supervisor was essentially allowing the search supervisor to just run rampant. I mean, that is that is not a good situation it's, it's bad, and it's just bad service all the way from top to bottom. And I think our patrons could sense that, because basically they wanted to come in check out books and leave. And if there was a problem with their card or with their materials. I'm not engaging with any of that by library by forever. And that's sad, because it's, it's one of those things where your patrons are leaving your patrons are not. They're not happy with their library they don't feel her, you know, it's just a it's a bad situation and this was just a bad chain of management. You know, this creates so many toxic situations and, and like I said, you know, we're, we're wrapped up in this abusive behavior we're not recognizing, perhaps and, but who do we go to, you know, again, we're seeing these problems but the, the, our immediate are technically the search supervisors, boss is complicit, the director is complicit, we have nowhere to go. And we as part timers also, you know, we don't understand the capacity in which a library board governs this was a governing board situation. We don't understand something I was thinking of I'm wondering if you're going to mention that what about the public library the library board. We as part timers don't understand how that works. I mean, realistically, you know, we're kind of just there to come in clock in clock out and kind of just bear the burden of all this. We don't understand that we can go up and you know go to the board or, and we had an HR person at the time but again, you're kind of not seeing, you're not seeing any avenue to which to deal with this. If it's all the way up. What's the point in trying to go to HR. You know, we just we didn't we didn't see a purpose we didn't understand how that governing board functions.  I mean we were part timers what did we know. Yeah, we did not we did not feel like we could do anything with this. It was just kind of a bear it, look out for each other. So we had a really tight knit tight knit circ team. And we protected each other but that was really all we could take care of at the time. And it's, you know, it is depressing. It's, it's a bad situation and it's, you know what what is a good solution to that. I think a lot of it, you just mentioned being part timer that I think is a key to this when you have people who are not full time so they are not. Oh, yeah, they just don't spend as much time there so they don't know what are the ins and outs it's just a part time job I don't know everything that goes on here. So I'm not here often enough. You know, I'm not here, you know, eight hours a day five days a week or you know whatever the schedule is like you said you work every other week. I mean, yeah. I mean, we're not, we're not sat down and explained to have a library governing functions. You know, I like I said I was working on my library degree but I was the only one in that pool of circ assistance and the search supervisor who had any kind of any kind of educational background in libraries. And I'd been in a lot of libraries, but not in a capacity to know how to deal with the board. So at the time even I was kind of like, well, you know, just grin and bear it. And, and there was no, hey guys like if you have a complaint like here's our HR person and this is the complaint process I mean none of that was talked about ever. Why would it be because that just creates that creates an opportunity to file a complaint. And it just it just didn't happen. So I mean this this was not a good situation this was a bad situation. And, but it gets worse is what's even sadder. So, so one thing to be learned from this to take from this is, you know, ultimately, you have to be amongst your staff you need to at least be on a talking basis with them.  And again, like I said, there was these these connections at play that were allowing leverage amongst amongst people that was probably not appropriate. Ultimately, me looking at that situation to myself I said, you know, this may be a cut and run situation. I mean this seems to be a top to bottom problem. And, you know, if I see that chain I say, Oh, I'm out of here. I, you know, I'm not I'm not dealing with this. You know, I have other places to go and some people have that luxury and others don't. No, you may be in a situation where you have to stay at that job and be in that job. And, and if, if, if we had felt like maybe we could have gone to our managers, the different managers at the time maybe we could have pulled them aside or talked to them or made some kind of in way to speak with them in a private manner but, you know, the director never comes out to talk to us director comes out to talk to the supervisor, he flips around and goes back and that's it.  Nobody talks to us nobody you know nobody wants to know it's all the search supervisors supposed to filter all that garbage out. And so we have no again this goes back to where isolated we have no avenue to do anything with this. But, like I said, this situation. It seemed like a top to bottom issue and unfortunately that that was the case at the time, but it gets worse. Yeah, yeah. And this is this is the worst of the worst. So, here I am. This is not a picture of me, but this is me. I'm bright and shiny. I just got my degree. I'm ready. I'm ready to be a librarian. So, I interview at this library and I get I get to be the children's library and so this is me starting out by head of one department a little department you know staff of three at one full time person and two part time people. So, you know, I'm just, I'm just just a good starting point a small staff, we work really closely together, things like that I'm happy. And then, again, that's that is that is me in despair. At the time of my departure, I had somehow acquired four different departments. I had a staff of 14, and I was the only management level person standing left standing in the building, excluding the director. I was the only manager left after after my tenure. And my departments if I tell you my departments that will make no sense to you because I had just been this is it all been piecemeal together. I had I was in charge of maintenance, the Spanish language department or the multilingual department, children's librarian, children's and team librarian, and then, despite not being an adult circulation library and I was in charge of the circulation desk which primarily served the adult collection so I had somehow acquired all these departments, and it was, as people were ticked off, you know, I, I somehow started acquiring things, and it was not, not an occasion for joy. All the other managers just left or had no, they were fired. Okay, I sat in I think I counted it up. It was somewhere between five and seven firings. I sat in on and and most the managers ended up being fired for one reason or the other. Was it legitimate, I'm not sure I could I mean, you know, from the perspective perhaps there was some of it but. So basically, it turned into a dumps library is the first thing when you when you were a circus assistant is a different library. This is the same library. This is how bad it got. Because you know a new director comes in, and I thought okay, things are going to change things could all this stuff is going to all this stuff is going to get sorted out the new director is going to come in and break the chain, and it's going to be great. So I went to the new director's library and and I thought okay, you know, let's go to work. And this, this was not great. Um, so this boss presented themselves as a compassionate boss, oh I'm here to fix the problems. I'm going to listen to you guys I'm going to do all this you know and so we thought oh great a breath of fresh air, it's it's going to be a new era, a new era, and sadly this is all. This is this person's first director position and on paper everything was great they had they worked in libraries for a couple years they had a library. I think they had a, you know, had education and libraries etc. Problems started after about six months. So like I said, there's this disconnect amongst the bosses so so the boss tries to start working on this. Hey, fine, you know, I'm all behind that. Well, this is kind of what sent this person into a tailspin the HR business manager was caught stealing, amongst other fraudulent activities. They were I mean and there's things like they were writing checks to themselves. They were fudging the vacation hours that they had, giving themselves more time. They were selling stuff to the company credit card. I mean there's something let's see this person went to a stay at an HR conference and bought Cirque du Soleil tickets for the company credit card. Yes, that makes sense. Pretty gutsy moves you know it's like oh this is this person is pretty gutsy. Because there was no who knows what they ended up how much money, it took from the library so HR was suspended and then fired and, and that kind of tipped this person over the edge unfortunately. I think the amount of stress and the combination of the situation tip this person into being a bad boss they had good intentions when they started and I really want to be clear about that. They had the best of intentions when they started and then it just, it spiraled out of control. So, in a period of about nine months there were six people fired, and one person demoted. And a lot of that was managers I started out. Let's see. I had started out I was children's librarian so I was considered a manager at the time. And I was part of several other managers, and it was just like watching them fall. I mean tick tick tick and there they went. So and to add to this stress so not only has this person caught somebody you know embezzling and then it kind of turns into a whole bad situation. The library was undergoing a renovation project, like, right as this person was caught embezzling the library is getting ready to start a renovation project. So and that's a whole nother level of stress. So at the time the director says I can't deal with all these managers reporting to me because there was, I think, six to eight people direct reports to this person and so they restructured and there's three managers, myself included and the IT guy and then that the director.  And, and I sat in on them. And that's what was bad. I mean it was, it was kind of like, why am I here. I'm the children's library and I shouldn't be in here. But it was one of those things I think it, it just started. So one, you know one person got fired and what would happen is this person would get it in their mind that somehow, somehow another person was undercutting them and something's wrong and it was, I don't want to say paranoia but it was just one of those situations where someone got the bad eye, and then that person was in for it, and they were, they were hunted down until they had enough to fire them. You know, and this was, it was bad and as people got fired as stuff got restructured I started acquiring departments, because there was nowhere else to go with them. There was nobody else to assign them to. It was just me, you know, and so eventually it was down to me. And the demotion was supposed to be the other manager, but the other manager was somehow this person was the ineffective supervisor and they ended up getting demoted. And another person who, and again this is kind of bad, bad practices all around this person that they promoted to be my co manager. It was someone they knew, it was a friend, it was a son of a friend, and that's not how you hire. No, that's a red flag all over the place, all over that, yes. And honestly this poor person, you know, was this person a bad person? Probably not, but this person was probably set up to fail. They were, they were very quickly, I think they within a month or two of them starting they were promoted to manager of, I think, two departments. And then they were just basically set up to fail, because then stuff started going wrong because this person had no experience. They were, they were kind of, I won't say mismanaging, but they were not good at it and they did not have experience doing it. And so they were kind of things were being mismanaged and the director took after this person and eventually ended up having to fire this person because they'd done some stuff. They'd kind of miss, miss, they'd fudged with time sheets, which is a big no no. They kind of fudged some time sheets. And the funny thing is they had fudged the time sheets under indirect pressure from the director at the time from the director because there was some stuff with time sheets and clocking in and out and so they had fudged time sheets. As a result of the pressure they were under from the director to make sure time in and time out was correct. And so that was kind of like strike, you know, strike one or two and then there were some other things and basically they were set up to fail and they ended up being firing as well. So, ultimately, it was me, the management team consisted of me and the IT guy under the director. And, and this is, this is where it gets, it gets worse, it gets worse. You know, fun fact, Ingram will cut you off from books if you do not pay for I think it was six months. Ingram will stop sending you stuff. And we found that there, I would think. Right. So, so this person because the HR business manager and you know been fired, then they had been fudging stuff. This person basically could not function with bills. They, they could not handle the bills coming in they could not, you know, in a timely manner get things out they could not pay for things they were so paranoid. We went without new items in the library for I think it was six months. No new items, absolutely nothing. And there were complaints from patrons or complaints from staff, somebody wrote a letter to the board, which got put in a like you know we had like a little feedback box and the letter was to the board, and the director read it, and so well they don't know what they're talking about and threw it away. Things were, I mean, on the surface everything looks fine and dandy but there are these severe issues you're having. I mean, well library doesn't have new items for six months because they weren't paying their bills. I mean that that's just crazy. But it was happening. So, again, so the director decided they were going to assume the human resources job. So, like I said they overanalyze this they they weren't trapping people and that's how all these managers got driven out is they were in trapping people.  You know, so that that second department manager there conflict of interest there. And that's the thing is is they thought it would be fine. They thought oh I can assume that you know no big deal it's not it's not going to be a problem. But when you have all these people getting fired. Where do you go with that. I mean when you're seeing these people being driven out when you're seeing this laser focus again. Where do you go to that so again I mentioned that second department manager so they were promoted and then about seven months later they ended up fired. And so that was when it got down to me in the it guy, and then coven happened. And so it gets I mean coven just put the pressure on everything and I know, you know, coven was a time when some people rose to the occasion and did great things and others did not. The week we shut down. The boss was gone that week. They were, they lived where they lived. They lived six hours away from the library. Their husband was employed six hours away from the library, and they were there buying a house that week. And even living in this community in which the library director they live six hours away so the boss was over buying a house that week.  And if you remember this time it was really scary. You know what everything. Yes, it was chaos and yeah, it was chaos. I mean, how's the virus spreading. We're touching things, you know books are coming back patrons are coming in. So we shut down. We don't we shut down on Sunday, and we're just told to go to work. Don't don't serve patients we're going to close the doors just go to work do shifts that it up. That's what we're told. The fear intensifies. So the staff kind of ramp up so staff were obviously concerned scared. I, I as the only manager in the building and hearing this and I said okay, okay, we're going to put together a letter guys, you know I said, I hear this. So let's have a meeting so we gathered up. And we said okay let's let's report concerns what are the concerns we want to you know the board at this time is deciding what to do about coven and and we'd like to have some input on this. Um, so we put together a letter, and I sent it to the director say hey director you know we had a meeting today and we just wanted to pass along our concerns about you know coven and what will you know we're our suggestions for how the board should act. I get in a lot of trouble for that. I get in a lot of trouble for that. The, the boss came back at one point through the letter on the table and said where did this come from. And I got I got in a lot of trouble and after that, after I sent that letter. I was, I was on the hit list. So, I mean, it was a it was a bad deal. It was it was bad. And we were in the process of gathering documentation because this this was again like I said, we have all these abuses going on. We have all these problems these bills not being paid these things happening. The it guy and myself were as the only managers who were aware of the full scope of this we were gathering documentation. We were getting ready to go to the board, you know, and we, we were trying to be nice. And unfortunately, that's what killed us. And we failed. I'll say it. We did not do the right thing in the situation. We, we were gathering all the documentation we were kind of, you know, getting things together. The directors only the directors parent died. And we were trying to be sympathetic.  And, and the director was gone and bills are piling up and things was happening. And the director really never came back after I mean they they were back, but they weren't mentally back and, and what happened is my co my my coworker got cornered. And it got thrown out that we were looking at going to the board, or it got out that we were looking going to the board. The director went to the board and undercut me and said that person's looking to get my job, and they're going to come in here and tell tales. And so the blame was shifted and all the things that had gone wrong. I had somehow had had had a hand in and whatever. What should we have done like I said we failed, we failed this person did end up. So when we were prepared to go to the board we're getting ready to go to the board probably would have been in, you know, early early that year and then you know like I said the bosses parent died and then COVID hit and so, but we're still documenting. And then, and then like I said, I get I get undercut to the board to the degree that I know that none of them believe me. I mean it was bad I things were said and I was like okay, but what should we have done. The second we had the second we had even some of the things a quarter of the stuff that we had. We should have immediately gone to the board. I mean we should not have waited. We were trying to be nice and waiting is what got us. So the library board president was not objective, and they believe the word of the director. And I knew that if I went to the board, I would be seen as going after that person's job I just want to push them out for the glory of that job. You know, I our joke at the time was we're keeping the place together with scotch tape and a toothpick. I mean we're we're the little little Dutch boy the dam. We had our fingers in the hole. I mean that that was us that was our daily credo for keeping things together because we were at the time was with no director we were trying to run things and get stuff done and take care to care bills and when things needed to be called and done we were taking care of it but we're the little Dutch boys in the dam and and and we failed we did.  And in the harassing their passing shifted to me and I had documentation of this purse of my director at the time harassing behavior towards me. And so you know when it when push it come to shove I was ready for that if it, if it came to it. So what had ended up happening and this is director came into inheritance of a sizable estate they're actually no longer a librarian. So they came into the inheritance of a sizable estate, and they got out of libraries and so kind of just, you know translated balloon, but you know what do you take from that I mean this this was high, you know high pressure situation I'd been in for a couple years now and it was kind of like ah, so, you know, transparency when possible. It's so important. I think that's, there was this huge disconnect and again it was between the leadership and the people with the boots on the ground. And then there was some transparency, hey guys, I'm not buying new items because I'm trying to get you know trying to get things squared away after after the HR business person I mean even that would have been enough. But really, what should have happened absolutely was, how do you handle complaint. What is the procedure, nobody knew that I mean, when when your director is the HR. Where does that go, you know, honestly it should have been made out like hey if you have a problem with the directory you need to go to the library board president you know they'll hear you issues, hear your issues and things like that. You know and with that with that procedure you need to know what is an issue. I think it's you have to be brave enough as a manager as a leader of any sort to empower your staff to sit in tell fun doing something shady HR, you know go to HR or go to whoever and this is where you need to go.  This person had not just sat in parallelization of doing anything. And I know they were under a lot of stress and I do I do give them that. Ultimately, do I think this person was a bad person. No. I think I think power got the better of them and kind of went to their heads and they were on and just reacted poorly. So, you know in hearing this you're thinking oh Brooke was on the bandwagon. Well yes and no. You know, I'll admit, when you're in a position where you could be fired, because I watched all my co managers get fired so why was I not on the on the hit list for for quite a while. I probably was on the bandwagon. You know, I was just trying to do my job and honestly internally I was like please leave me alone please stop dragging me into these HR things I just want to be the children's librarian children's have fun. But, but was I I mean, I was probably I was probably essentially kind of on the bandwagon I was just trying to do my job and and all I could offer this person when they would ask my opinion was. This is how I would do my, you know this is how I would do it but, you know, and my staff. I think my staff I kept them from the worst of it for good or for bad. My staff knew that I had worked my way up my staff knew I had done all their jobs and so they could trust me to come in and take care of things. And so in that I was taking care of my departments. And so for the good or the bad I had shielded them from a lot of the issues. And I had probably preserved the reputation of my boss. I don't know if it was to my detriment or not. And I who knows you know ultimately what's the answer so I want to end I've got I've got something here it says the most expensive shelver so in library school I heard something. And it, it kind of stayed with me. So I had my, I had a professor, and they said, you know, your director can go out and shelve books on the shelves but what do you have then you have the most expensive shelver. And I think that's, I understand the point, but on the flip side of that, I think you need to know your library runs from top to bottom, you need to know what the low people on the rung are doing you need to know what their day to day is you need to know what the middle, what the middle level people do you got to know that. And so, I think this idea of, of well you don't need to be out doing stuff like that I'm like, you know, maybe do. You need to learn my my this previous this bad bosses, this last bad boss the time, couldn't even check out books to patrons. They were so isolated from the daily tasks of running the library then couldn't even check out books to a patron. They had no clue how the ILS system run. We had biblionics at the time and it's not, it's not too hard but they had no clue how any of that ran. They just were so separated from from the reality of the day to day of a library it was it was kind of astonishing. And I do want to say this, doing the right things will sometimes cost you. I felt that I was trying to do the right thing I felt that I was gathering evidence and I was going to old Brooks going to step in and you know, I'm going to step in and expose evil doers. It cost me. It cost me a lot. My work environment became very toxic, very bad. I had, you know, I was I was on the I was on the receiving end of harassment and, and I think the only saving grace is is, I was doing my job to a T, and I was documenting everything. And they had nothing they could fire me on. And I think that's probably what kept me I knew that if that director had stayed they would have found something to fire me about. They ended up leaving and so I still had my job. But, but I do want to say that sometimes doing the right things will cost you and that's an ugly harsh truth. But, and it's doing the right thing as far as your job and keeping the library running I mean you do feel I think you know. Not a responsibility but you know, it's your library and you want it to do well. Yeah, you don't want to destroy it because by just letting things happen, although sometimes that might be an answer you know I've let them that the other people. The bad boss fail, you know, don't don't fix things for them or, you know, but that's a hard thing to balance to. And there's also doing the right thing, something that you've kind of alluded to but is self care. You know, how much do I want to get involved in this what can I handle right now. I had a situation in the past where I was, I had an opportunity to ramp up an issue I had with a previous supervisor. And I was asked by their supervisor, do you want to do, you know, this, and there was in it was, it was not a good time for me to have all of that going on is this is a long long time but this has nothing to do with coven. But and I was like, Yes, I want to but I don't think my brain and my emotions and what I'm was happening right now in my own life. It's not the right time. Yeah, and I ended up still being in that horrible situation for a while longer and in hindsight, I'm like, I wish I had had the confidence and the strength at that time to do it. But I just didn't I had to take care of myself, and I let that person stay. I let them affect other people. Multiple people left the on who are supervised by this person because they were such a bad supervisor. And I was like, I wish I could have but at that time it was just not. And that's so hard to it's hard to take that step back and say, you know, I need to do this, and it's going to it's going to hurt it's going to be rough, but I need to do it, and that's hard to and probably yes it, you know, honestly, I think there was a lot of a lot of, and I'm going to say this was you had to weigh the morality, weigh the morality of doing it and you know, at the time I felt like I was a friend with my boss. And so for my friend's sake I was trying to stave off doing this and, and, and yeah same thing like you I there was so much, there was so much mental anguish involved it was it was not great. And I know like I said, people get into these situations and then they don't know what to do and. And if I had gone to the board. I probably would have ended up fired after they had talked to after the boss to talk to the board and it just was, it was a bad situation. And I was going through a lot of I mean there's, I was not taking care of myself in terms of mental health. Absolutely not because I was so keyed up on stress and you know, trying to take it a library and it was like, I, you know, my co workers the people who worked in my departments. I was trying to take care of them too and it just. Yeah, like you said, a lot of a lot of bad stuff continued to happen because I did not pursue this. I did not pursue this issue. The second I had a couple of things and could have done something about it. And then something that happens that's a thing that is a mouse long time ago. It's hard not to feel guilt about it forever. But at that time it was the way had things had to go and hopefully now in the future. I know for myself, I am in a much better situation now. Things did get better. I can say that. It's a lot better quicker, but you can only do what you can do. Don't feel guilty if you can't take on the enormity of something that is happening in that that is. Yeah. And it's it's hard to work up the courage to go, you know, and get your evidence online and start collecting that and that's really hard. And I said, you know, I've seen a lot of questions about this and and I completely understand and commiserate with anyone who's trying to work up the courage. It's very difficult. And if you've done it, I tip my hat to you. We have someone who's coming saying to broke you are very resilient. Thanks. I hope so. I, you know, I, I look back now and I think, well, I learned a lot. It was a good learning situation. I took a lot from that I took a lot. You know, and I do want to say this. Like I said, the ultimate the, the, the Boston eventually ended up leaving. I, they had good idea had some good ideas they had some good things. I think they weren't prepared for that situation and I think that they let it get the better of them. And, and I wish they'd had some own self recognition of like, Hey, this is not good for me or I need to, you know, reach help or get help or whatever. But that was all what I needed to handle this.  And ultimately if that person and, and that was the other thing too is probably if they had had an assistant director or had more managers, the load could have been lightened but because it got rid of all of the managers there was no one to help. That's a lot for them. I mean here in Nebraska we have many small staff libraries but that's not the situation everywhere so elsewhere it could be. Yeah. Yeah, and this is I mean this is, it was unusual for that many people to be fired in such a short time and this was on a staff, the staff. Ultimately automatically replacing that same position. Yeah, no, I mean they paired they did just managers would go and they would get paired it would get paired down to the existing managers and then like I said, ultimately I was the only one standing and I just kind of thought oh no, like where did everyone go. Yeah. So, as, as success here anybody have any questions don't be and said anything during your presentation that's fine. Does anybody have any questions comments thoughts suggestions you want to make go ahead and type into the question section. We do have some thank yous coming on for coming through for this presentation this is great. It's good to hear that we're not alone in these situations if people are having this that this is the kind of thing that can be out there. And, you know, figure out a way to deal with it and I think there's some good tips and good I think you gave a lot of good warning signs, you know, look for these early warning signs of something that might be worse and see if you can't head it off with the people this the bad managers a little better before things get totally off the rails. Well, and it really is one of those things, you know, look, look into your HR manual or your personnel manual know how your complete procedures run.   Yeah, yeah, just you know and educate yourself on you know anytime you have a job, what if something does I'm not saying it will I'm not coming into this position saying okay I'm here to figure out who's doing something bad. Yeah, you should know everything's a bit you know what is there should be an employee handbook or if you are employees of the city, a city employee handbook or documents that you can just get access to without having to like. Like if you do ask a question of HR will I think you're going to be wanting to do something like no I just want to know where I find this info. Just in case before something comes up I don't want to be flailing around and thinking I don't have any. Anything that I can do about it. Yeah. Now it's, it's a tough situation, and this library you wanted it to succeed. And it just, it was kind of just like limping along and you know it's, it takes more than one person to fix something to and let that be said I mean it would have at that, at that point, it would have taken a team and unfortunately that was not the environment under which it was currently in. Well, I'm glad you're here in Blair now in this book. I think things are going there you've been there since 2000 sometime. Yeah, 2020 October of 2020 is so I was like I was I'm apparently I'm known around the city is the coat the covert interviews like thanks. I remember that it was like a new director in the big very beginnings of covenants like oh my gosh, we're getting hired moving jobs cool. Yeah. All right, look like any questions came in any urgent questions right now that's perfectly fine. You all have this recording later to refer to and brook will send me her slides as well. Yes. And if you do want to reach out to her possibly privately to have any sort of conversations. Blair public library and Technology Center. You can find her online there very easily. Oh, we do. Oh, wait a comment coming in. Great. Thank you so much. It says thank you for sharing your story. This is helpful for someone dealing with management. Thanks again. Yeah. Yeah. No, and anyone is dealing with it now. I, you know, I do wish you the best of luck and I do hope things work out for you. It's tough. And I've been there. I mean just know others have been there. It's very frustrating. You've been through as the person you've ever such a, I think a perfect storm of just people who are bad at their job, people were indifferent of their job. Oh, going up the chain. I mean that kind of thing is like a lot. I mean, you know, typically it may be just a single person you're trying to figure out and deal with, but having this whole chain that you did was just like, Yeah. And that was, I think that was hopefully out of the ordinary. I know. And, but good news is I get to share it. I get to share with everybody but it was, it was just kind of like, Oh no, this goes all the way up. Well, I'm glad you came out of it.  I see a lot of libraries. That's the part that I would be most worried about. All right. All right, so I am going to pull presenter control back to my screen to wrap things up for today. Thanks so much. This was great. I was glad I get to have you on the show. As she mentioned at the beginning, this was a session done at our LA conference for you, not Nebraska, the Southern Nebraska Library Association annual conference last month. I think time goes by so weirdly now. Christmas is almost here. And so I asked her to come on and share with more people here on our show so I'm glad you were able to have you and this is great information I think it'll help a lot of people. I hope so. Yeah. So that will wrap it up for our show. As I said we have a recording and our archives are right here. This is our main page. If you just use your search engine of choice and look up and compass live where the only thing called that on the internet moment. Nobody else is allowed to use that name. But right here is our archives right underneath our upcoming shows. Most recent one will be at the top here so by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest recording should be up here. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show even if you weren't able to show up live you'll get an email from me letting you know that it's a bit up. And to our we have a mailing list in Nebraska we have a Facebook page which is linked from everywhere here's our Facebook page if you like to use Facebook give us a like over there. See we have reminders about logging in today's show our presenters and then we do post when the recordings are available as well. You can also on Twitter and I think Instagram is the other thing we're using and come live is the hashtag for the show so you can keep an eye on things we're doing over there. In our archives here while I'm here I'll show you we do a search feature if you want to search for a particular topic to see if you've done something on it you can. You can limit in just the most recent 12 months if you want something just current or our full show archives, and that is because, and I say I'll do this. Close your eyes near this goes back to when encompass live first premiered which was in January 2009. And we do have all of our show archives here, as long as we have a place to host them they'll always be up. But some of our older things, of course, some shows will stand the test of time, some things will become old or outdated, and the information will be no longer good anymore resources and services may have changed drastically or disappeared completely staff may be at different libraries. Now, who presented. So just pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything you watch on our archives and so they're all dated here's you'll know when it actually was originally presented. So, next week, our topic will be our best new children's books of 2022. Sally Snyder who's our library Commission coordinator children and young adult library services will do talk about all the best books for preschool through elementary school that she read this past year. We also have a best new teen reads coming up she does these kind of two companion shows on children's books and then on January 11 already got her 2023 dates coming up. She'll come back to talk about teen reads the best new teen reads that she read in 2022. So if you're looking for those two shows sign up for either of those. So while we're here to I just want to give a plug for something else we do online we do this weekly show and come alive, but we also host the big talk from small libraries online conference, which is where for small libraries to present about things they're doing and for us here in Nebraska and for this conference we consider small libraries as libraries with a population served or FTE of 10,000 or less so all of our presenters are from libraries who have 10,000 or less people they serve. They're from academic school, whatever, and the call for speakers is now open. So please if you are a small librarian you'd like to present this is please submit a proposal if you know any small libraries you think would be good share the news spread, spread the word this is a national conference we do with people attend and present from all over the country. So the deadline to submit proposals to December 16 2022. If you want to know what's been done previously if you're interested we do have all of our previous conferences listed here in our archives on this. Our first one was in 2012. So, please do sign up to do a proposal or spread the word for us. Other than that that wraps up today. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you Brooke for being with us again. And has done a previous show for us. So, and hopefully we'll see you all on future episode of encompass live. Bye bye.


When most people think about advertising, they might picture a scene out of madmen, stuffy business types in suits, cutting big dollar ad deals in dimly lit rooms. But today, advertising hardly looks like that at all. In the US, 85% of display ads are sold on automated exchanges. No suits, no deals, no dim rooms. And those automated exchanges are dominated by a single massive player, Google. The biggest names in tech, and in particular ad tech, have come under scrutiny from governments across the world over the past decade. Primarily, this is centered on the use of consumer data in what is popularly known as the surveillance economy. But increasingly, regulators are looking at the overall health of the advertising market. Digital advertising is set to generate $135 billion in revenue in 2020. And while this may represent a high note in an otherwise grim economy, critics point to the fact that growth in the broader sector is dominated by three household names, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. According to forecasts from eMarketer, these three companies will collectively account for 62% of US digital ad spend. Google alone, the largest of the three in terms of budgets, will pocket 29% of ad spend. Now, regulators in the US would poise to sue Google over its grip on advertising markets. So how did we get here? To get to the core of the criticisms leveled at Google, we need to go back to the early days of the online ad market. We'll draw on an academic paper titled Why Google Dominates Advertising Markets by Dina Srinivasan, a fellow with the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University to explain some of the arguments that Google may soon face in court. First, how online advertising now resembles the stock market. The vast majority of online ad space is now traded automatically in what's called programmatic advertising. These ads are bought and sold in real time using algorithms fed by data. Deals take place on ad exchanges in much the same way that shares of a company are traded on stock markets. According to Srinivasan, electronic ad buying started happening around 2004, the very same year the New York Stock Exchange merged with a major electronic trading platform. Today, the majority of trades for online ad space take place on these centralized electronic exchanges. But to conduct a trade on an ad exchange, you can't just do it directly. Buyers and sellers require middlemen, or brokers, just as they do in stock markets. Both sides of a trade require their own intermediaries, demand side platforms or advertisers, and supply side platforms or ad servers for media owners. This is a lot like how someone buying a share in, say, Tesla would use a brokerage platform like eTrade, Fidelity, or Robinhood, rather than buying directly from Nasdaq. Ad spaces then typically traded using a variety of different algorithmic auction mechanisms to pair up buyers and sellers and set prices. Second, how Google assembled a dominant industry juggernaut. In 2007, Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, a deal that is still the biggest in ad tech history. This deal brought the industry's number one sell side broker, DoubleClick for publishers, under Google's control. This gives Google an essential role in how all ad space is monetized. And this wasn't the end of Google's empire building. In 2009, it launched the DoubleClick ad exchange. In 2010, Google purchased demand side buying tool Invite Media. In 2018, Google retired the DoubleClick branding, but all three offerings, buying, selling, and the exchange in between, still exist, giving Google influence at every level of programmatic advertising. Third, why Google's industry presence is raising concerns. Google's dominance of the three critical parts of the online ad auction market leads some to question whether Google can operate as an honest broker. For instance, can each of these three transaction tools be trusted to represent the interests of advertisers and publishers instead of Google's own interests? Critics claim that Google's system has inherent biases that preference its own properties and tools over competing products. Srinivasan maintains that Google is taking advantage of the growing tide of data privacy laws across the globe to further close off access to important trading information to third parties. That would further cements Google's information advantage in its walled garden of digital advertising. Although this is far from the first time that Google has faced potential scrutiny from antitrust authorities, many believe the mood is different this time. In fact, Google recently opened up about the percentage it charges for online ad trades. About 30% of what advertisers spend end up in Google's pockets. Some believe growing scrutiny will lead Google to enact policy changes in the years ahead. If it wanted to, Google could voluntarily divest certain assets in the ad market to get regulators off its back. But if it doesn't, that raises the prospect of Google changing policy not by choice but by government force.


Igor, over to you. Please. Thank you very much, Stephen. Special thanks to Teri Dimon Brioche, because this is an excellent opportunity for the Russians to pronounce what they think about the global governance, which is an enigmatic thing for most of us. Looking at Trump from this Soviet-Russian retrospective, I would say that there could be two options. First, this is a cyclical Trump. By this, I mean that for the Soviets, the change from Carter to Nixon was the similar thing, even worse, or, for example, from Kennedy to Nixon. So for us, it's sort of a cyclical thing when this great nation changes course because social justice versus economic efficiency wins or loses. And he symbolizes at the moment, as our American colleagues said, this boost for the economic efficiency of the ruling class. So as Paul Kennedy said once in his famous book, The Rise and the Fall of the Superpowers, that could be the rise of the United States or that could be a fall of the United States easily because the United States can overextend itself. And it looks like protectionism, demagoguery, and populism could overextend the United States. We were talking about trade wars. We all know that protectionism has its limits. It will backfire on demand and supply chain sooner or later. This war with China has its limits and so on and so forth. From this point of view, I think that I'm on the side of those who think that American people will give its answers to all these questions by their own history, institutions, tradition, and they will temper the president. This obsession can be, Trump obsession can be cured by American history and institutions. For the Russians, Trump is a great catalyzer of the creation of the bipolar world or the return to the bipolar world, authoritarianism versus liberalism. If at the beginning of this century, we had naive ideas and hopes that Russia will join European family as one of the members, now it's over. We are pushed into the natural, unnatural alliance dash marriage with our great partner China and with other authoritarian regimes like Turkey, like South America, like Vietnam, and so on and so forth. So from this point of view, he catalyzed the creation of bipolar world. But in a way, it's more balanced international system which we know how to handle. We do remember this bipolar world which managed to create Helsinki agreements, which managed to do many other things. Because we are, by definition, cannot be all liberals. By definition, certain nations cannot be the nations of the rule of law, democracy, liberal democracy, open market, and so on and so forth. By definition, through historical stage, at the moment, we are much closer to China than to Europe. And he catalyzed by his behavior this thing. Good question on which side of the equation he is. And this question was raised many times here. And from this point of view, he will, of course, bring some kind of a disbalance. I don't want to deal with the personal questions because so many things were said or rather not said by Mr. Mueller and the whole of the group which explores the possibilities or investigates how Mr. Putin manipulates Mr. Trump. We'll see it soon. They will meet in Paris. And then they will meet next year in Washington. And if Trump is manipulated by Putin, American people will see that. I have my doubts that we are so powerful. Never were. But from the point of view of people gathered here at this room, I think we can go back to the global governance as the question, what to do in this situation of bipolarity, big question marks, a lot of uncertainties, and so on and so forth. So for me, from me to long term, we have different questions and different challenges. We know that 4 billion people very soon will have problems having fresh water. We know that about 11 big cities, megapolices of this world in 10 years time, will run out of this fresh water. We know that around $3 trillion is $30 trillion is hidden in the offshore jurisprudences and is not used for the betterment of where we live, for the commodities and services we need. So we have to talk about very good global governance. And while big people fight at this lunches, Xi Jinping, Putin, poisoning, Trump, and verse of verse, we have to think about what do we do, middle-sized countries, good integrations like European Union, other integrations. What do we do with this global governance? Where do we go forward from here? Because we're extinguishing the civilization we're living in. So from this point of view, I think that new enlightenment, new convergence of religion and science, new recipes for the convergence of this economic efficiency and social justice of communism and socialism, if you want, and capitalism. Those are the questions which the gathering like this has to be much more occupied with than this particular very difficult stage of the existence of Trump as the leader of the free world. I would stop here. Thank you. OK. Thank you. It's a beautiful shine.


About three weeks ago. I decided that I was going to install open Suza and Do a long-term review of it and that was off the heels of not being successful with Artix Linux and I Just wanted something that I knew I could run and that would run well And I chose open Suza as the it was like the second place winner of the poll that I'd done previously And I installed it and it and I've been using it now for about three weeks and I have some thoughts so as as usual with these long-term reviews, which is Odyscasing is I've only done one of them before what you'll be seeing mostly in the background is going to be b-roll of me doing things in open Suza and That's not the way I was originally planning on doing this video I was actually going to go through and you know take you through my setup of open Suza and talk about the stuff That I needed to talk about but for whatever reason I cannot get OBS to actually record Anything you know in open Suza. I just can't do it. There's some kind of dependency that I'm missing and I've looked it up and Maybe I'm the only one that's having the problem, but it's just weird OBS. We'll just will not work So it's the X window capture and the the video camera. We won't even capture the webcam It's very very odd, but simple screen recorder will work. So that's where I'm getting the b-roll from your you're seeing my actual Open Suza setup and I will also try to while I'm recording that b-roll show you some of the things that I'm talking about where I'm Talking about the negative things that I experienced, but I'll also show you some of the cool things that I experienced. So Unfortunately, I'm not talented enough in terms of video production to actually go through and line those things up So I apologize for the way this is shot that just let me say that so but I'm going to try to be at least a little bit Organized in terms of how I go through and talk about open Suza itself So let's go ahead and start off with Installation and I think I will go through and install open Suza again and I get a VM so that you can see some of the installation here while I'm talking So you can see what I'm talking about the installer for open Suza is fine I didn't have any problems with it. It's just different and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not as Finicky I would say it's not as finicky as like something like fedora, but it's not I don't think it's good as something that uses calamaris. So it is a little bit different. I will also say that it is Very slow like the installation process for Open Suza is very slow, especially if you choose the net install and this is going to be a theme throughout this review of Slow mirrors and we're going to I'm going to talk about this much more when we get to zipper But just know that if you choose the net install for open Suza, you're going to be there for a while It's going to take a while for you to install. I would highly recommend Choosing the local ISO Because that does exist that takes a lot less time Other than that the installation was it was just a Linux installation. It was very easy There was no Huge pains of setup setting up and it wasn't a ton of options as far as I remember So it was actually really good. It was it just installed and worked just fine So the next thing I want to talk about is stability. So like I said, I've been using this now for about three weeks and My experience now see I chose the I believe I believe it is the the rolling release version I think it's called tumbleweed for a reason. I can't remember names anymore. I think it's called tumbleweed But I chose the rolling release version and the stability has been meh. I mean, it really has been meh I've had some instances where KDE won't connect to its own servers So like I can't download like themes and stuff like that I've also for whatever reason after an update the startup time on my Opensu is a install on a separate hard drive. It's on a SSD is like Astonishingly slow like it wasn't originally like originally right after the first installation of it. It was just as quick as any other Linux distro, but after a couple updates the startup time Has gone to northwards of a minute and it's like so bad that at points Where I think that the thing is just frozen, but eventually it does come up But I don't know what's going on there now I'm hoping that after like another couple updates or something that it will go back to being quick or something But something there happened after a couple updates They caused it to really slow down in terms of startup time But once she once I got it started up The performance is fairly good. It doesn't take a lot of memory. It uses just the normal monoram I'm using the KDE version obviously and it works. It works fine and As you would expect I didn't notice any problems with things like App crashes or anything like that the only big problems they had once I was into the system was like I said a few times where KDE couldn't connect to their own back end or something like that where you Went into the settings and tried to install new themes or icon themes Something like that and I couldn't actually Connect to those systems, but I think that that might have been a KDE problem Maybe their back end was just down at the time that I was trying it It's perfectly possible that's you know something that's that happened. I will also say That the zipper problems, which I'll talk about here in a couple minutes Also affect things like KDE's discover, which is their app store That is slow on its best day even on other distros and it is Way slower on open SUSE is just I mean sometimes it takes minutes to load and it's just the dumbest thing now I don't use discover anyways. It wasn't a big deal but it is slow and Honestly, why would you use discover on? Open SUSE anyways when there's Yast and I guess Yast kind of brings me to The next point is which is app availability and I will these next couple are actually going to be kind of Cram together because they all kind of affect each other. So I'll start off with the positives Yast is amazing. It is a little bit outdated and clunky, but I love the fact that it's like a one-stop shop for everything and if you were into using a graphical a GUI that application Thing or a GUI Driver manager or something like that and it's all which is what Yast is. It's like a ton of stuff in a GUI form You can't find a better GUI Tool than Yast. I think it's great. I don't think it gets nearly enough credit There's just a ton of stuff you can do you can upgrade your kernel from there You can go through and install applications and other software from there. You can install drivers from there You can manage your repositories from there There's several other things that you can do all inside Yast and like I said, it is clunky So like it will go through as you're installing stuff and open up other windows and you got to go through and It's it's clunky, but it's actually really really good. I do enjoy it. However It is slow and I Don't want to get into the zipper stuff yet, but just keep in mind that it is Slow, I mean it is just really really slow and I'm not sure what the problem is I'm pretty sure that it's a mirror problem and that there might have been ways of fixing this But I looked it up a couple times and pretty much everybody has this problem. It's just the Software installation whether you're using Yast or using zipper is just slow and I'll talk more about it here in a minute But let's go into the positive stuff. So like if you have applications that you need to install which everybody does One of the things I was really worried about was software availability and I didn't have any problems at all Like almost every piece of software that I needed was right in the repost now That was only because I and during installation. I enabled all the repositories that I could Including non-free repositories and that allowed me to go through and pretty much install every piece of software I wanted every like the terminal the alacrity was there You know Firefox was there was like everything that I needed was right in the repose and It's good. It kind of reminds me of The arch repose I wouldn't say it's as good as they you are because it's not Nothing I will ever touch the broad software availability of availability of the a you are But it does have way more software Especially if you've enabled all the repose Then like something like Debian like Debian has a ton of software, but you're gonna find a lot of stuff in Debian At least the more esoteric stuff that is just not there. I didn't have that problem at all on open SUSE So app availability is actually really good maybe in so I'm gonna transfer now into performance now a system-wide Overall the performance was really good I like I talked about earlier the For whatever reason the startup time got way slow after a couple updates I'm not gonna count that against it because I think there's probably something going on with a weird update or something We'll move path it's past that if you're on the stable version open Susie probably won't have any problems at all in terms of performance. It was actually it was it was good the problem with performance comes in when you're trying to use Zipper or yes, and like I've talked about a couple times both of those things are really slow, and I'm gonna focus on zipper here Zipper is the the command line tool for Installing software updating your system and things like that now you can use other tools if you want but zippers the one that you're supposed to use and It's actually really easy to use it's it has basically the same syntax is something like apt-get does It's not obviously all the same, but for the most part, you know zipper install whatever Zipper update whatever is it the Zipper upgrade whatever will work, and it's good The problem is is it's like I said, it's slow and what really There's two areas where it's slow the first time is initial connection So when you do something like zipper install say Firefox or whatever You'll notice that your terminal just freezes like there's nothing like you hit enter after You've gone through and typed in whatever you're installing, and it just stays there There's no output whatsoever for seconds like multiple seconds now Usually when that happens on any other distro it means you typed your password in wrong That's usually what me what that means because you know when you go in your you're in the command line And you have to authenticate with your password, and you've entered the password wrong it takes a Quarter of a second or a little bit longer than that to actually go through and check the passwords list You know and then return the error it takes a little while It's kind of like that only longer like it's weird It's I'm hoping that somewhere along the line in this video You've sexually see me do this and you'll notice that right after I hit the the enter key and whatever I've done There's just lag there's there's this delay and It just hangs there and then once it starts installing when you're installing programs. It's not too bad It does fairly decently in terms of installing software now when you turn that into updating the system however It's just as slow as it is when you've that during that initial startup because it I didn't time it But the last time I updated the system It took probably 10 to 15 minutes to actually update and that was not a ton of Packages that need to be done maybe a little bit over a hundred Packages that needed to be updated and it like I said it took about 10 to 15 minutes and I have I mean I don't have the fastest internet in the world, but I have fairly decent internet So it shouldn't be that much of a problem. I don't have any problems like that on arch I don't have any problems like that on a boom to I've never had that problem really on any other distro they all work fairly decently in terms of speed and What I think it is and what I talked about earlier is that there's something going on with the open Susan mirrors I don't know if they have if they don't have nearly as many mirrors as like something like arch doesn't it's completely possible Maybe they just don't have any mirrors here around me and that's you know fine but it does Reflect on the speed of the system because when you go through an update and well, you can continue to use the System while it updates you do notice that this thing is slower than what you would expect on a different distro and I like I don't want to be too negative about it, but because I did notice it and Because I do use the package manager a lot It does it didn't make open Susa itself feel slower Even though the rest of the system is not actually slower. It's still led to that perceived experience of the whole system being slow just because zipper itself is Slow and it's so slow, especially on updates and on initial connections for installs That I don't think that I could use open Susa day-to-day just because I Would notice it too often like I would like Why are you still hanging there? Why are you still installing stuff? I have that kind of mentality where I kind of have to watch the update happen Even though I know I can go through and do other stuff. I usually when I got update my art system I have my main monitor doing what I'm doing and on the other monitor I have the terminal open doing the update that way I can watch it like out of the corner of my eye and The thing with arch is it just speeds right through right but with open Susa It was really really slow like I kept looking like man, you're still doing that man You're still doing that Wow, it's still going Wow, you know, it's not like I've had a gigabyte to download It was like a hundred packages. I don't know what the size was But it wasn't I mean I've left my arch distro or my arch install for much longer than I'd left the open Susa one and had way more packages like five or six hundred all over a gigabyte and it didn't take that long I mean it was longer than normal, but it wasn't that long This was just really really slow. So I think that's that my biggest takeaway from open Susa Is that the package management while I loved Yast and zipper was just fine and the app available app availability was really good The package manager itself, which is zipper is just too slow to actually be usable Day-to-day, I don't think it would be a as big a problem if you're using open Susa on a server because You're never doing anything other on a server like if you go to a server and do an update You're going there to do the update, you know, it's just it doesn't I mean sure it sucks that it takes a little bit longer But it doesn't I know it doesn't have that perceived like why is it still going and I you know, I want this to be done I need to shut down my computer or whatever Kind of thing so I think for servers Probably open Susa would be much better in terms of not noticing that package manager slowness that I experienced Just moving on to some general annoyances now. I don't actually have that many to be honest. I talked a little bit about the whole startup time not being Good after an update and I don't think that that's a huge deal. I think it has to be do with an update I also talked about how One point or another KDE stuff just wouldn't connect to their online platform Again, I think that probably has more to do with a KDE problem than an open Susa problem My other thing is that even though this is a rolling distribution Some of the software that's pre-installed at least is still Somewhat behind it's not as far behind as something like Debian But some of the KDE stuff was a little bit older at least at the time I Initially installed it was a little bit older. It did get updated. So it's not a huge deal, but I didn't notice it So in conclusion, I Actually really liked open Susa. I I'm happy that I tried it out. I hadn't tried it in quite a while The last time I tried an open Susa based distro was when I reviewed gecko Linux And I really remember enjoying it and I really liked it But I also remember having the same problems with zipper that I'm having this time and that they're it's slow and I Don't think that there's any fix for that. I think that that's just an open Susa thing and as disappointing as that is I There's not much like I said that you can say about or even do about it No, I kind of answered this question earlier. Could I use open Susa as my daily driver? I said no earlier and I think I'd probably stick with that as long as there were other distributions as long as arch exists I don't think that I would ever switch to open Susa as my daily driver not that I couldn't though because Despite how slow zipper is and how annoying some of the performance stuff was I actually did really enjoy my time on open Susa and It was just it was fun like I enjoyed sticking in KDE for a while and you know just playing around in KDE and it's something that I kind of dedicated myself to was sticking Into KDE because I did not want to just install DWM and try to get up my regular setup I wanted to use open Susa the way the open Susa guys kind of want you to use it and it was fun I also enjoyed a lot of the other stuff that you know, I love gas I think yes is great. I think zipper is great. I just wish they were faster and So if if arch disappeared, I think open Susa may be like my second favorite distro but it has flaws that I don't think that would Allow me to be completely happy with it the mostly the performance stuff that I talked about with zipper So I'm not switching to this. This is probably not going to be will probably will not remain installed on my computer but I Did enjoy my time with it I'm glad I checked it out and I will definitely check out open Susa again in the future. Hopefully the zipper thing gets fixed over time But I don't probably think it will Unfortunately, I think it this that has more to do with Infrastructure than it does with actual like software that they can roll out to fix So that those are my thoughts on open Susa I probably could have talked a lot more about this if I had actually been able to show you this stuff Directly for like I said that OPS problem is just stupid. I'm not blaming Opens the open Susa for that I think that there's just a missing dependency somewhere and I couldn't find out what it what it was So I apologize again for the way that this video was shot. I I hope that I did an okay job with the b-roll. I'm not really used to shooting b-roll. So You know, but still I'll try to do better in the in the future If you have an idea for my next long-term review leave that in the comments below You can follow me on Twitter at Linux cast before I go. I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons Devon Chris East Coast Web Gentoo is fun to Patrick L. Marcus make Lynn Jackson I can tool Steve a Mitchell art center Merrick camp Joshua Lee J. Doug and the BSTs rock. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time