WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.770 --> 00:00:02.090 Institute of Museum and Library Services 2020 Grants to States All States Conference May 2 00:00:02.090 --> 00:00:03.090 13, 2020 Virtual Proceedings by: CASET Associates, Ltd. caset@caset.net 3 00:00:03.090 --> 00:00:04.090 P R O C E E D I N G S (1:00 p.m.) MS. DEVOE: This is Teri from IMLS. It is my 4 00:00:04.090 --> 00:00:05.090 great pleasure to introduce our speaker for today, Matt Birnbaum supervising social scientist 5 00:00:05.090 --> 00:00:09.750 at IMLS and is also the first brave soul on our virtual conference to use his webcam, 6 00:00:09.750 --> 00:00:16.540 so kudos to Matt for that. We want you to know that the slides, which we posted on our 7 00:00:16.540 --> 00:00:21.920 website and sent out the link to the agenda where you could get slides, we did not have 8 00:00:21.920 --> 00:00:27.860 Matt’s slides in the very initial notification we sent you, but they are there now. If you 9 00:00:27.860 --> 00:00:35.730 would like to grab a couple of his slides, we have them on our website. Once we get Matt 10 00:00:35.730 --> 00:00:42.010 back with his video – and I think we will still be able to hear his voice, but we are 11 00:00:42.010 --> 00:00:47.280 going to the brave land of webcams today. With that, I will turn it over to Matt. 12 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:50.010 Agenda Item: Promising Practices from the SPR 13 00:00:50.010 --> 00:01:01.830 MR. BIRNBAUM: Thank you, Teri, and I got my camera working again. It is great to talk 14 00:01:01.830 --> 00:01:08.609 to everyone. I am always thankful to Teri and her team for allowing us to be part of 15 00:01:08.609 --> 00:01:13.521 your community. I have been really proud to be part of this community for ten years. 16 00:01:13.521 --> 00:01:20.210 Ten years ago, almost to this day, we were meeting in Baltimore and we were talking about 17 00:01:20.210 --> 00:01:28.929 gee, it would be somehow better for us to be able to compare a summer reading project 18 00:01:28.929 --> 00:01:34.539 in Michigan to one in Mississippi. That was the stories that we told. From that, we went 19 00:01:34.539 --> 00:01:41.709 into a whole planning process of creating what today is the SPR. Today the apples and 20 00:01:41.709 --> 00:01:51.689 oranges that I would like to talk about involve digital literacy and broadband projects. 21 00:01:51.689 --> 00:02:00.869 A little bit about the overview for today. I want to give a little bit of snippets about 22 00:02:00.869 --> 00:02:06.030 how we did the analysis of the digital literacy and broadband projects and then I am going 23 00:02:06.030 --> 00:02:11.470 to present the findings. I will do it first for those projects related to digital literacy 24 00:02:11.470 --> 00:02:16.630 and I will do it second afterwards for emerging impressions. 25 00:02:16.630 --> 00:02:25.420 It looks like my brave new world of seeing my cam has been replaced with a photo. I hope 26 00:02:25.420 --> 00:02:35.900 that is okay with everybody. A little bit about the analytical protocols. 27 00:02:35.900 --> 00:02:43.500 There were about almost 1400 projects this year that were funded across all the SLAAs. 28 00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:49.370 We wanted to start to figure out which of those relate to digital literacy and broadband. 29 00:02:49.370 --> 00:02:54.220 We did those. We met with the first piece that we did as we tried to identify what those 30 00:02:54.220 --> 00:03:02.280 projects were. From those, we did some statistical analysis to describe what they looked like. 31 00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:07.570 In doing so, we started to bin some of the projects that were closer to each other together. 32 00:03:07.570 --> 00:03:13.040 And then once we had them in their buckets, we then tried to assess each of them particularly 33 00:03:13.040 --> 00:03:21.600 looking for successes based on either their innovativeness, their adaptability, or their 34 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:25.510 promising practices. For those that we found that seemed to be 35 00:03:25.510 --> 00:03:30.680 very successful, we tried to get some illustrations of some of those projects and what they would 36 00:03:30.680 --> 00:03:41.290 look like. When we did the initial looking at the 1400 37 00:03:41.290 --> 00:03:47.170 projects that were funded in 2018, which of those might be related to broadband digital 38 00:03:47.170 --> 00:03:55.290 literacy, we identified 84 – 70 with digital literacy, 15 were broadband. You might do 39 00:03:55.290 --> 00:04:02.920 the math initially and go hey, 70 plus 15 equals 85. That is correct. We had one project 40 00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:09.760 that we had identified as both digital literacy and broadband. How did we identify these projects? 41 00:04:09.760 --> 00:04:14.270 Three ways. Every project, as you all know, you have a 42 00:04:14.270 --> 00:04:21.199 couple of subject fields that you can tag it to. The second, you have your own choice 43 00:04:21.199 --> 00:04:27.710 to add some additional tags to those and then third, the program officers were giving their 44 00:04:27.710 --> 00:04:35.509 assessments as well. From those, we ended up with a list of about 84 projects. 45 00:04:35.509 --> 00:04:40.210 Once we got those 84 projects, we started binning them, putting them into buckets. The 46 00:04:40.210 --> 00:04:47.189 first bin was to separate the 70 that were digital literacy and the 15 that were broadband. 47 00:04:47.189 --> 00:04:51.680 The next twist was to look at their focal area to see what they were principally intending 48 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:57.970 to do. And the third one was looking at the narrative data, trying to identify what their 49 00:04:57.970 --> 00:05:03.029 emphasis was. This could be something about the audience, the beneficiary. It could be 50 00:05:03.029 --> 00:05:09.460 something specific about the types of product or activity that they were delivering. 51 00:05:09.460 --> 00:05:17.990 In looking at the narrative data, we were principally looking at seven fields and specifically 52 00:05:17.990 --> 00:05:24.919 the – five fields, the title, the abstract, and them some information that people wrote 53 00:05:24.919 --> 00:05:29.819 about some of the outcomes that the project was doing, its importance, and thinking about 54 00:05:29.819 --> 00:05:37.480 some of the important lessons learned. In trying to look at that narrative data, 55 00:05:37.480 --> 00:05:43.279 trying to think about how do we know if it is innovative, adoptable or a promising practice, 56 00:05:43.279 --> 00:05:48.099 we asked the set of questions for innovative. We looked at is there something noteworthy 57 00:05:48.099 --> 00:05:52.901 about the audience that is being reached. Is there something notable about the type 58 00:05:52.901 --> 00:05:56.699 of project activity that the project was involved with? 59 00:05:56.699 --> 00:06:02.939 For adaptability, is there any evidence that we can find the replicability? Is there any 60 00:06:02.939 --> 00:06:08.250 evidence that is being scaled up? Is there any evidence at all about this influencing 61 00:06:08.250 --> 00:06:14.470 the future direction of this investment? Promising practices. We asked two questions. 62 00:06:14.470 --> 00:06:20.270 One, we asked what lessons would others really want to know about this project? And second, 63 00:06:20.270 --> 00:06:26.860 we looked at the partnerships and trying to assess how strategic they might be. 64 00:06:26.860 --> 00:06:32.341 Let us now move to the findings and the first thing will be digital literacy. Let us look 65 00:06:32.341 --> 00:06:40.379 at the where. We have 23 states plus Northern Marianas, who invested in at least one digital 66 00:06:40.379 --> 00:06:48.960 literacy project. The 70 projects span 175 activities, a little over $5 million total 67 00:06:48.960 --> 00:06:57.050 with a median project a little over $31,000 and about 21 percent of those exemplary. 68 00:06:57.050 --> 00:07:04.449 When we looked at the how much of these projects cost, as I just mentioned, overall, the 70 69 00:07:04.449 --> 00:07:09.900 projects, they account for more than $5 million per year. If you look at the share of this 70 00:07:09.900 --> 00:07:15.979 that was supported by LSTA funds, it is steadily increasing from over the years from 51 percent 71 00:07:15.979 --> 00:07:26.280 in 2015 up to 70 percent in 2018. How. How were these projects – how were 72 00:07:26.280 --> 00:07:31.680 they trying to be administered? When we looked at most of these projects, about almost two-thirds 73 00:07:31.680 --> 00:07:38.050 of them were simply one or two activities. At the opposite extreme, we had 10 percent 74 00:07:38.050 --> 00:07:44.689 of them were involved with five or more activities. If you look at the table on the right, if 75 00:07:44.689 --> 00:07:49.840 we look at what types of activities these were involved with, overwhelming majority, 76 00:07:49.840 --> 00:07:54.840 more than eight in ten were instruction and about half of them involved content. 77 00:07:54.840 --> 00:08:00.020 Just a quick note if you are getting confused, if you start doing the math using the right 78 00:08:00.020 --> 00:08:05.720 hand table, you start saying that if I had up 83 percent plus 54 percent, that adds over 79 00:08:05.720 --> 00:08:11.970 100 percent. Why is that going on? And that is because if you look back again at the left-hand 80 00:08:11.970 --> 00:08:17.029 table, a table can have more than one activity. We are just trying to look at how many of 81 00:08:17.029 --> 00:08:22.779 these projects did at least one of these activities involve and instruction content, finding an 82 00:08:22.779 --> 00:08:31.379 evaluation or procurement. Who were these grantees? The overwhelming 83 00:08:31.379 --> 00:08:38.010 majority were public libraries. The next way to share were the state library administrative 84 00:08:38.010 --> 00:08:43.520 agencies. And then we had a smaller share of academic libraries, school libraries, special 85 00:08:43.520 --> 00:08:49.230 libraries, other types of libraries, and one that involved a consortium. 86 00:08:49.230 --> 00:08:55.220 If you looked with whom, who were doing the implementation and who were the partners, 87 00:08:55.220 --> 00:09:01.680 in looking at the implementing sites, again, the overwhelming majority are in public libraries. 88 00:09:01.680 --> 00:09:07.660 A smaller share is in state libraries. And then you can see a smaller share of other 89 00:09:07.660 --> 00:09:12.100 types of libraries as well. As you look at the partners, an overwhelming 90 00:09:12.100 --> 00:09:17.070 share of this is it is still happening at the local level with local government, and 91 00:09:17.070 --> 00:09:21.720 then you have some other actors involved. The school district and nonprofit, we assume 92 00:09:21.720 --> 00:09:26.910 are also operating principally at a local level as well. 93 00:09:26.910 --> 00:09:36.350 Whom? Whom were being served? We look at the beneficiaries. And this one we could see that 94 00:09:36.350 --> 00:09:44.520 is a relatively even mix. Most were being targeted to a general public. About three 95 00:09:44.520 --> 00:09:49.710 in ten – to the targeted public, excuse me, about three in ten to the general public, 96 00:09:49.710 --> 00:09:55.750 and almost three in ten to the library workforce. If you look at the right for those that were 97 00:09:55.750 --> 00:10:01.080 targeted, this was an optional question so not everybody answered it. But of those who 98 00:10:01.080 --> 00:10:06.490 target it and trying to get a sense of who were they targeting it to and about a half 99 00:10:06.490 --> 00:10:14.910 of them were targeted by age group. Why were they doing this digital literacy? 100 00:10:14.910 --> 00:10:20.940 What were they trying to achieve? Overwhelming majority, 54 percent was for – more than 101 00:10:20.940 --> 00:10:26.530 half was for lifelong learning in contrast to just 32 percent for all of the projects 102 00:10:26.530 --> 00:10:32.400 in 2018. Also, when we think about the digital literacy projects, they were more likely to 103 00:10:32.400 --> 00:10:38.660 involve economic development, 10 percent then for the entire portfolio, which is just 2 104 00:10:38.660 --> 00:10:47.930 out of 100, 2 percent. I am going to now start looking at trying 105 00:10:47.930 --> 00:10:52.960 to pull in these descriptions and try to pull a little more into the weeds in terms of when 106 00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:57.191 we looked at the narrative data, what did we start seeing as we looked at these digital 107 00:10:57.191 --> 00:11:01.810 literacy projects. The first thing we are going to do is we are 108 00:11:01.810 --> 00:11:09.110 going to look at the focal area that involved lifelong learning. The lifelong learning involved 109 00:11:09.110 --> 00:11:14.320 principally general knowledge and skills. They were about 34 of the 38 projects. Another 110 00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:20.500 four of the projects involved another intent of lifelong learning. That was formal education. 111 00:11:20.500 --> 00:11:27.720 Of these 38 projects, they comprised about $2.4 million, a little more than two-thirds 112 00:11:27.720 --> 00:11:36.010 supported for the LSTA funds. Some of the defining characteristics. In addition 113 00:11:36.010 --> 00:11:42.610 to four of these projects, focused on formal education. Six were principally had a planning 114 00:11:42.610 --> 00:11:49.400 focus either to expand digital inclusion or to expand the mobility of the library’s 115 00:11:49.400 --> 00:11:54.370 technology. Eighteen were focused on youth, and these were principally STEM, STEAM, and 116 00:11:54.370 --> 00:12:00.240 STREAM projects. And seven were focused on employment and these were either related to 117 00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:07.800 employment or related to the senior population of the country. 118 00:12:07.800 --> 00:12:16.120 Let us now start looking at some of the highlights. The first project that we would like to highlight 119 00:12:16.120 --> 00:12:22.810 is a project that came out of California, the Pacific Partnership Cooperative, the “Cybersecurity 120 00:12:22.810 --> 00:12:29.060 Training for Teens Using Minecraft”. As an anecdote, I talked to my teenage stepson 121 00:12:29.060 --> 00:12:35.280 over the weekend about this project and I said, do these teen gamers really play Minecraft. 122 00:12:35.280 --> 00:12:46.250 He said well, it is kind of cringy, but yes, we do use them. Even the girl gamers use them. 123 00:12:46.250 --> 00:12:53.180 My English vocabulary expanded with boy gamers and girl gamers. As we looked at this project, 124 00:12:53.180 --> 00:12:59.910 it was a really cool project. They are using this popular video game of Minecraft to teach 125 00:12:59.910 --> 00:13:08.140 teenagers about cybersecurity practices. In doing so, they developed toolkits and blog 126 00:13:08.140 --> 00:13:13.450 posts and they started working through trying to develop some guiding practices, using surveying 127 00:13:13.450 --> 00:13:17.530 of the patrons to figure out some great guiding practices. 128 00:13:17.530 --> 00:13:24.000 The second project I would like to highlight comes out of Texas, the El Paso Public Library. 129 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:28.280 And before I even knew that we had a superhero theme for this year, we had already pulled 130 00:13:28.280 --> 00:13:34.290 this project. This project is titled “Become A Digital Superhero”. This was a really 131 00:13:34.290 --> 00:13:38.760 neat innovative project that the public library was working with the schools in which they 132 00:13:38.760 --> 00:13:43.720 were taking a number of the teens and having them create their own video games and telling 133 00:13:43.720 --> 00:13:49.990 them stories about citizenship. In doing so, they were using this in a very active, engaging 134 00:13:49.990 --> 00:13:59.860 way, in which the students were collaborating with each other and with the instructors. 135 00:13:59.860 --> 00:14:06.810 The next two projects from the lifelong learning bucket dealt with examples of adaptability. 136 00:14:06.810 --> 00:14:12.940 The first one comes from Florida from the Putnam Public Library, the Levy Public Library, 137 00:14:12.940 --> 00:14:17.661 which is part of the PAL Cooperative, and this was in the rural part of the state. They 138 00:14:17.661 --> 00:14:24.420 gave us a project called “Bringing the 21st Century to Rural Libraries: Inspiring the 139 00:14:24.420 --> 00:14:34.430 Next Generation of Makers and Inventors”. As you can see, this project involved a maker 140 00:14:34.430 --> 00:14:40.960 space that was a technological overhaul of the STEAM initiative with 228 new pieces of 141 00:14:40.960 --> 00:14:46.000 equipment targeting over 200 classes, serving nearly 4000 children. 142 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:51.540 One of the interesting things about it that they noticed is suddenly by doing this, they 143 00:14:51.540 --> 00:14:57.300 were noticing an increase in the participation of dads. In addition to the dads, they were 144 00:14:57.300 --> 00:15:03.601 noticing there was an increase niche of those families that were homeschooling. And as part 145 00:15:03.601 --> 00:15:09.370 of that assessment, they are looking about ways to better serve that community and in 146 00:15:09.370 --> 00:15:14.650 general, better be able to serve the families working in the homes including by expanding 147 00:15:14.650 --> 00:15:22.130 access with mobile Wi-Fi hotspots. The second project we would like to highlight 148 00:15:22.130 --> 00:15:28.190 today comes from Indiana. It is from the School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the 149 00:15:28.190 --> 00:15:34.279 title of this project is “Expanding ISBVI’s Makerspace”. Here is another makerspace 150 00:15:34.279 --> 00:15:40.050 project and it is using the makerspace as traditionally done for helping all types of 151 00:15:40.050 --> 00:15:45.430 folks, but also expanding it to those who are blind and visually impaired. 152 00:15:45.430 --> 00:15:52.100 In doing so, their curriculum particularly links these expanded makerspace efforts to 153 00:15:52.100 --> 00:15:59.360 their ECC, Expanded Core Curriculum. In doing so, particularly teaching skills that for 154 00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:06.550 those of us who can see, these come fairly intuitive, but for those who have some disadvantages, 155 00:16:06.550 --> 00:16:11.860 it is more difficult and they are using these skills, the makerspace to try to overcome 156 00:16:11.860 --> 00:16:18.290 that. The last set of projects from this bucket 157 00:16:18.290 --> 00:16:27.730 that I would like to talk about. The first one comes from Arizona from the Senior Tech 158 00:16:27.730 --> 00:16:34.660 Academy in Glendale, Arizona. This was a very innovative partnership between the local public 159 00:16:34.660 --> 00:16:41.540 library and community college, using digital literacy to target a population. We might 160 00:16:41.540 --> 00:16:50.480 not always think about. This is our senior population. In doing so, they began to have 161 00:16:50.480 --> 00:16:59.320 conversations and looking at ways in which they can do the interactive technology and 162 00:16:59.320 --> 00:17:05.530 social services to basically expand the retiree’s ability to go online to connect socially and 163 00:17:05.530 --> 00:17:12.140 gain access to unlimited lifelong learning. One of their practices that they came up with 164 00:17:12.140 --> 00:17:17.860 is thinking about the ways you want to mesh the latest technology in supporting the social 165 00:17:17.860 --> 00:17:22.780 needs of this population. The last project from this focal area that 166 00:17:22.780 --> 00:17:28.660 we would like to highlight comes from Minnesota from the St. Cloud Public Library. It is called 167 00:17:28.660 --> 00:17:33.870 “Breaking Down Barriers to Family Literacy”. This project was one of the few that we noticed 168 00:17:33.870 --> 00:17:39.181 that were using the NorthStar Digital Literacy Assessment tool to assess folks’ digital 169 00:17:39.181 --> 00:17:43.370 literacy. In this case, there was a conscientious effort 170 00:17:43.370 --> 00:17:50.690 to target those who are more vulnerable, be they dislocated workers, multi-lingual adult 171 00:17:50.690 --> 00:17:57.740 learners, new Americans and families in poverty. The work involved some very creative extensive 172 00:17:57.740 --> 00:18:04.390 partnerships in the public, nonprofit and private organizations with happenings in libraries 173 00:18:04.390 --> 00:18:11.480 around conversation centers, outside of the libraries, in apartment complexes, a factory, 174 00:18:11.480 --> 00:18:19.610 daycare centers, and elsewhere. The work is helping them strengthen this project, 175 00:18:19.610 --> 00:18:25.160 but in general, strengthening their relationship with other key partners to be able to expand 176 00:18:25.160 --> 00:18:31.460 their capacity for community engagement. I am just going to stop now and see if maybe 177 00:18:31.460 --> 00:18:44.559 we have one comment or two questions. MS. GONSALVES: We do not have any additional 178 00:18:44.559 --> 00:18:49.270 questions right now, Matt. MR. BIRNBAUM: Okay, I will continue then. 179 00:18:49.270 --> 00:18:53.200 I have everybody spellbound. That is what I like. 180 00:18:53.200 --> 00:18:57.730 For the next set of the portfolio, we are going to look at for those projects where 181 00:18:57.730 --> 00:19:05.830 the intentionality involves expanding information access. There are 18 projects in this portfolio. 182 00:19:05.830 --> 00:19:13.860 It is about 21 percent of the portfolio or about 10 SLAAs. Cumulatively, they represent 183 00:19:13.860 --> 00:19:21.330 about $2 million and about 65 percent of this was supported with LSTA funds. 184 00:19:21.330 --> 00:19:29.140 When we look at these 18 projects, 14 involved activities that involve content, and 12 involve 185 00:19:29.140 --> 00:19:35.380 an instructional activity. Regardless of the type of activity that may have been coded, 186 00:19:35.380 --> 00:19:40.980 10 of these focus specifically on planning and a large share of these also had an audience 187 00:19:40.980 --> 00:19:47.350 focus be they adult, blind and visually impaired individuals, college students, or youth. 188 00:19:47.350 --> 00:19:54.020 I would like to highlight three projects at this point. The first project comes from us 189 00:19:54.020 --> 00:19:59.900 from the State of North Carolina, and it is called the ”Refreshable Braille Display 190 00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:08.390 Project”. And this was a really interesting and exciting project where they piloted the 191 00:20:08.390 --> 00:20:14.700 concept of a library providing refreshable braille displays for blind or physically handicapped 192 00:20:14.700 --> 00:20:22.940 patrons. By doing so, they are allowing the use, the access of braille in a formal digital 193 00:20:22.940 --> 00:20:31.600 format in the way that would not be accessible to many people who need it. 194 00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:38.020 The second project here comes right here in my backyard in Washington, DC. This was a 195 00:20:38.020 --> 00:20:43.270 project called the “Digital Literacy Initiative”. And this was another project that used the 196 00:20:43.270 --> 00:20:48.940 NorthStar Digital Literacy Assessment to do their needs assessments. In doing so, they 197 00:20:48.940 --> 00:20:55.320 were able to identify 12 distinct areas of digital literacy and from that using design 198 00:20:55.320 --> 00:21:03.561 planning, they designed and built visualizations of how to best assess the patron’s digital 199 00:21:03.561 --> 00:21:09.300 literacy levels and then be able to apply that to serve their needs – particular sensitivity 200 00:21:09.300 --> 00:21:19.030 to disadvantaged groups in this area. In terms of a promising practice, we would 201 00:21:19.030 --> 00:21:25.630 like to highlight a project that came out of Indiana, Clinton County called “Fun in 202 00:21:25.630 --> 00:21:33.270 the 50s”. This project focused on reaching out to the senior population again. They in 203 00:21:33.270 --> 00:21:38.480 particular, if I remember correctly, were looking at those men who may have been scouts 204 00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:45.480 early in their youth and they took their photos, digitized them and in the process, created 205 00:21:45.480 --> 00:21:51.130 a memory for the community of this generation. Doing so, they were an active partnership 206 00:21:51.130 --> 00:21:57.150 with the library, with community clubs and senior centers. 207 00:21:57.150 --> 00:22:07.440 The next part of the portfolio were eight projects. These span six states. About $450,000 208 00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:13.870 almost entirely funded with LSTA dollars. These projects were focused on institutional 209 00:22:13.870 --> 00:22:20.950 capacity, principally building up the library workforce or the library’s physical and 210 00:22:20.950 --> 00:22:31.300 technological infrastructure. Of these eight projects, five involved SLAAs 211 00:22:31.300 --> 00:22:36.980 and three involved public libraries. All of them were involved in planning and infrastructure 212 00:22:36.980 --> 00:22:45.200 support. Three had a specific training of librarians. While all of these involved digital 213 00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:51.090 technologies, it was not narrowly focused on digital literacies. Sometimes you could 214 00:22:51.090 --> 00:22:57.290 see the connection, sometimes you could not. And one project itself was focused on school 215 00:22:57.290 --> 00:23:06.040 library professional development. One project we like to highlight from this 216 00:23:06.040 --> 00:23:12.310 bundle came from the State of Washington, its “K-12 Project”. This is a multi-year 217 00:23:12.310 --> 00:23:20.309 initiative by the SLAA that focuses on training support to those librarians in states that 218 00:23:20.309 --> 00:23:25.210 had teachers working in the school libraries. This has been a multi-year grant and when 219 00:23:25.210 --> 00:23:31.510 they got to the FY18 grant period, they decided this would be a great time to develop some 220 00:23:31.510 --> 00:23:36.680 curriculum on digital citizenship. What was very interesting was to see their 221 00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:43.610 attempt at diffusion working with a few, empowering them and trying to expand it out to others. 222 00:23:43.610 --> 00:23:48.890 In this case, they took a group of teacher librarians for their peers. They worked together 223 00:23:48.890 --> 00:23:54.170 in developing a curriculum that is linked to six hours of training that can now be adopted 224 00:23:54.170 --> 00:24:03.620 by others in their state. The last part of the Digital Literacy Portfolio 225 00:24:03.620 --> 00:24:09.930 that we would like to talk about are those six projects in three states that had a specific 226 00:24:09.930 --> 00:24:18.061 employment focus. These six projects comprised of about $183,000 in the portfolio and about 227 00:24:18.061 --> 00:24:23.390 93 percent of this was supported with the LSTA grant. 228 00:24:23.390 --> 00:24:30.520 When we look at these six projects, even though the focal area was economic development, so 229 00:24:30.520 --> 00:24:36.440 it could have potentially been helping small business or just regional economic development, 230 00:24:36.440 --> 00:24:42.309 in this instance, it was all focused on the employment grantees. Half of them were public 231 00:24:42.309 --> 00:24:48.990 libraries and half were another type of library. We generally saw a very strong evidence of 232 00:24:48.990 --> 00:24:54.441 a partnership in all these projects, be it with the SLAA and its public libraries, or 233 00:24:54.441 --> 00:24:59.820 with the public libraries working with their schools and institutions of higher learning. 234 00:24:59.820 --> 00:25:05.400 One project that was interesting in that is focused principally on the prison population 235 00:25:05.400 --> 00:25:11.520 and the expanding rehabilitation efforts. And the types of activities themselves varied 236 00:25:11.520 --> 00:25:20.309 from planning, equipment acquisitions, consultations, presentations, and training. 237 00:25:20.309 --> 00:25:25.540 The one project we would like to highlight in this portfolio is an example of adaptability. 238 00:25:25.540 --> 00:25:32.210 It comes from the State of Vermont. It is a project of “Digital Literacy for Job Seekers”. 239 00:25:32.210 --> 00:25:38.530 In this instance, the SLAA purchased Ebsco’s Learning Express Library. In doing so, the 240 00:25:38.530 --> 00:25:45.080 accessibility of public libraries participating and academic libraries participating in this 241 00:25:45.080 --> 00:25:52.760 went up from 12 to 541 in that year. The future right now, now that they have the 242 00:25:52.760 --> 00:25:58.530 product up and going is to increase its usefulness. They are looking at ways to do better direct 243 00:25:58.530 --> 00:26:03.980 outreach to library directors to understand their needs and interests, doing more extensive 244 00:26:03.980 --> 00:26:11.350 and multi-faceted training on how to use the product and working to develop and distribute 245 00:26:11.350 --> 00:26:17.380 publicity materials. Let us stop again and see if there are any 246 00:26:17.380 --> 00:26:21.080 questions at all that might be surfacing with folks. 247 00:26:21.080 --> 00:26:30.940 MS. GONSALVES: David would like to know who is this information shared with, i.e. is there 248 00:26:30.940 --> 00:26:39.010 a review or analysis shared with legislators? MR. BIRNBAUM: I am trying to think about by 249 00:26:39.010 --> 00:26:46.370 information shared. I am losing the context. Is the information shared was about the work 250 00:26:46.370 --> 00:26:52.790 that we are presenting today? I am going to interpret that as such, and then you help 251 00:26:52.790 --> 00:26:58.540 me out if you want me to re-interpret it otherwise. Right now, we are sharing it with this group. 252 00:26:58.540 --> 00:27:03.481 We will be sharing it with the rest of IMLS. We will probably also share it with the Library 253 00:27:03.481 --> 00:27:11.049 Statistics Working Group. We will certainly open conversations with those of our colleagues 254 00:27:11.049 --> 00:27:16.929 who are on the Hill as well as any of you who work on the Hill, maybe the best thing 255 00:27:16.929 --> 00:27:23.650 would be to talk to Teri and me about that and we can keep the conversations going. 256 00:27:23.650 --> 00:27:29.880 MS. GONSALVES: David says you are right on target. It is the analysis of this data. 257 00:27:29.880 --> 00:27:34.590 MR. BIRNBAUM: You are the first audience that we are presenting it to and this is the second 258 00:27:34.590 --> 00:27:39.340 year we have done this. Last year was early literacy. And we are all open for ways to 259 00:27:39.340 --> 00:27:46.160 make this most useful. MS. GONSALVES: Okay. And there are no additional 260 00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:51.640 questions at this time. MR. BIRNBAUM: Okay. I am going to then move 261 00:27:51.640 --> 00:28:10.640 to the broadband projects. There were 15 of these. There are 14 states, 30 activities, 262 00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:21.630 about $3 million, nearly $118,000 median projects. So more expensive than the digital literacy 263 00:28:21.630 --> 00:28:30.600 projects, and about 7 percent of the grantees had self-identified these projects as exemplary. 264 00:28:30.600 --> 00:28:39.070 When we look at the how - how are these projects being done? The table on the left shows that 265 00:28:39.070 --> 00:28:45.840 a little more than eight in 10 were simply one or two activities. On the right when we 266 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:53.580 look at what types of activities, these were principally and predominantly instruction. 267 00:28:53.580 --> 00:29:00.350 When we look at the instruction, these principally involve consultations, not necessarily programs 268 00:29:00.350 --> 00:29:08.080 or presentations. When we look at the how much, you can see 269 00:29:08.080 --> 00:29:15.309 that these projects are steadily growing over the four years from $2.2 million up to $3.2 270 00:29:15.309 --> 00:29:23.660 million, about a 46 percent increase. By contrast, these projects are less dependent on LSTA 271 00:29:23.660 --> 00:29:35.870 funds with a share of LSTA funding, declining from 53 percent in 2015 to 41 percent in 2018. 272 00:29:35.870 --> 00:29:45.870 We looked at who the grantees were. These were almost inevitably SLAAs. We looked at 273 00:29:45.870 --> 00:29:52.090 with whom, where were the partnering going on. Even though these were principally grantees 274 00:29:52.090 --> 00:29:58.140 or the SLAAs were the grantees, public libraries were disproportionately the place where these 275 00:29:58.140 --> 00:30:03.010 projects were being implemented. Sixty-seven percent compared to just three in 10. Thirty 276 00:30:03.010 --> 00:30:07.960 percent for SLAAs and a much smaller sprinkling of over types of libraries. 277 00:30:07.960 --> 00:30:13.950 If we looked at what type of partners, again, these tend to have a dominant local focus 278 00:30:13.950 --> 00:30:21.220 with 40 percent by local government, 27 percent by state government, 20 percent with a nonprofit, 279 00:30:21.220 --> 00:30:30.330 and 20 percent with federal government. If we looked at who the beneficiaries were, 280 00:30:30.330 --> 00:30:38.900 51 percent were the general population, 43 population was the library workforce and only 281 00:30:38.900 --> 00:30:48.220 six percent had a targeted population. If we looked at why were these projects happening, 282 00:30:48.220 --> 00:30:56.600 not surprisingly, almost over nine out of ten of these broadband projects involved intentionality 283 00:30:56.600 --> 00:31:02.610 to improve library’s institutional capacity compared to just 32 percent for the entire 284 00:31:02.610 --> 00:31:10.590 portfolio in 2018. If we look at these 15 projects that span 285 00:31:10.590 --> 00:31:17.380 the 14 states, we tried to develop some defining characteristics about these. We note again 286 00:31:17.380 --> 00:31:25.410 that they totaled nearly $3.2 million with 41 percent funded through LSTA grant money. 287 00:31:25.410 --> 00:31:32.850 Of the 14 of these 15 projects that focused on library institutional capacity, nine specifically 288 00:31:32.850 --> 00:31:40.850 involved efforts around E-Rate. Another six involved training consultation or assessments 289 00:31:40.850 --> 00:31:48.500 in improving the public library’s IT infrastructure, and three of the 15 projects explicitly had 290 00:31:48.500 --> 00:31:53.539 evidence of making an effort to improve digital inclusion. 291 00:31:53.539 --> 00:32:03.410 An example of innovation comes from the State of Arizona and its “Digital Inclusion” 292 00:32:03.410 --> 00:32:11.480 project that was targeting rural tribal libraries. They particularly had 12 of them where they 293 00:32:11.480 --> 00:32:19.299 were starting or maintaining Wi-Fi hotspot lending programs. These equated to 262 hotspots 294 00:32:19.299 --> 00:32:31.610 in total being used almost 2,446 times during the grant period – interesting use of the 295 00:32:31.610 --> 00:32:37.350 surveying to assess what the patrons were perceiving after they returned the hotspots. 296 00:32:37.350 --> 00:32:43.630 You can see that 79 percent of these patrons lived in a household that did not pay for 297 00:32:43.630 --> 00:32:50.309 internet service. Seventy percent were using the hotspot for several hours a day, and almost 298 00:32:50.309 --> 00:33:00.820 all of them planned to use that hotspot again. The second project that we would like to highlight 299 00:33:00.820 --> 00:33:08.530 comes from the State of Oklahoma. This is its “Edge” project. There were several 300 00:33:08.530 --> 00:33:17.180 grants of using Edge. In this case, we wanted to highlight that from Oklahoma. In this case, 301 00:33:17.180 --> 00:33:23.400 the SLAA was providing its public libraries with access to the toolkit for being able 302 00:33:23.400 --> 00:33:29.750 to assess the digital inclusion needs and based on that assessment, be able to target 303 00:33:29.750 --> 00:33:34.790 grants to those libraries to offset those identified needs. 304 00:33:34.790 --> 00:33:40.500 Many of these were serving rural areas where information technology is a challenge. Many 305 00:33:40.500 --> 00:33:47.760 of these public libraries had little experience as grantees. So in response, the Edge consultant 306 00:33:47.760 --> 00:33:55.330 was helping the libraries use the Edge toolkit, creating instruction classes and documents 307 00:33:55.330 --> 00:34:00.440 to help them better meet the Edge benchmarks and coordinating the state’s Edge Technology 308 00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:05.410 grant program. Many of the libraries reported that Edge helped 309 00:34:05.410 --> 00:34:10.919 them create better services, but a large number of them did not use the Edge and did not use 310 00:34:10.919 --> 00:34:18.831 it fully because they did not have enough time or staffing. In response, the SLAA in 311 00:34:18.831 --> 00:34:23.710 Oklahoma, in thinking of its future steps, it wants to work more to provide better grant 312 00:34:23.710 --> 00:34:31.300 writing resources to the public libraries and in these grant applications, to make sure 313 00:34:31.300 --> 00:34:38.200 that there is more planning going on around the infrastructure needs and what it all entails. 314 00:34:38.200 --> 00:34:49.300 As an example of a promising practice, comes from the State of Georgia and its “IT Broadband 315 00:34:49.300 --> 00:34:55.810 Upgrade and Ongoing Support” project. Here, the SLAA has a three-person team working around 316 00:34:55.810 --> 00:35:02.970 E-Rate in all of the state’s library system, 62 library systems with 35 different internet 317 00:35:02.970 --> 00:35:10.250 service providers. The work involved anything from filling out the RFP, performing vendor 318 00:35:10.250 --> 00:35:15.650 assessment, identifying and negotiating the local broadband vendors, and providing general 319 00:35:15.650 --> 00:35:21.200 technical support. We have seen this in other SLAAs as well who 320 00:35:21.200 --> 00:35:25.770 are involved with E-Rates. What we want to highlight now is that we saw strong evidence 321 00:35:25.770 --> 00:35:34.620 of the SLAAs being able to provide centralized resource for network management, allowing 322 00:35:34.620 --> 00:35:40.200 the local libraries to congregate together and consort together and to be able to leverage 323 00:35:40.200 --> 00:35:45.349 positive outputs from the vendors and to be able to consolidate the billing data. The 324 00:35:45.349 --> 00:35:52.670 SLAA is doing ongoing assessment and evolving its business models to be able to secure the 325 00:35:52.670 --> 00:36:02.070 highest possible speed for its public libraries. Let me stop again and see if we have any questions. 326 00:36:02.070 --> 00:36:12.310 MS. GONSALVES: Hi, Matt. There is a question from Claudia. This is a fairly targeted question. 327 00:36:12.310 --> 00:36:18.270 How did the SLAA handle the licensing component for the hotspots? Would it be only good for 328 00:36:18.270 --> 00:36:24.560 two years and who pays afterwards? I recognize that we may not have that answer, but perhaps 329 00:36:24.560 --> 00:36:30.590 someone in the audience, Arizona maybe, could write in the Q&A and address that, Matt, if 330 00:36:30.590 --> 00:36:34.290 you have any additional information. MR. BIRNBAUM: No, I do not, but I would say 331 00:36:34.290 --> 00:36:38.520 that might be something – this is a great use of this type of study. This might be something 332 00:36:38.520 --> 00:36:43.599 where we might want to think about expanding the conversation a little bit further to get 333 00:36:43.599 --> 00:36:51.410 more of that information. MS. GONSALVES: Okay. As soon as the response 334 00:36:51.410 --> 00:37:02.280 comes in through the Q&A, I will let you know. MR. BIRNBAUM: I am moving now towards the 335 00:37:02.280 --> 00:37:09.710 end of this initial presentation. I want to share some of the findings and impressions. 336 00:37:09.710 --> 00:37:16.609 I want to contextualize this portfolio. These 87 projects, they comprised about only six 337 00:37:16.609 --> 00:37:24.280 percent of the entire portfolio. If you look at it in dollar value, it is less than two 338 00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:45.260 percent for those 70 digital literacy projects, and two percent of 339 00:37:45.260 --> 00:37:56.109 the – the left hand – bars – they basically tell us that the digital literacy projects 340 00:37:56.109 --> 00:38:05.560 comprised a little more than one percent of all project dollars used in 2018, and the 341 00:38:05.560 --> 00:38:16.820 broadband about that much. If you just look at LSTA grant money, the digital broadband 342 00:38:16.820 --> 00:38:23.010 is comprising about two percent and the broadband about one percent of all LSTA grants. There 343 00:38:23.010 --> 00:38:28.830 is a bottom-line message here. Essentially these are important projects, but we recognize 344 00:38:28.830 --> 00:38:33.210 these comprise of relatively small share of the portfolio. 345 00:38:33.210 --> 00:38:41.580 As we start thinking about further exploration with these projects and other projects using 346 00:38:41.580 --> 00:38:46.440 the methodology that we presented today, there are some issues that we want to explore a 347 00:38:46.440 --> 00:38:52.070 little bit further. One is just the use of this methodology. We hope, and you can tell 348 00:38:52.070 --> 00:38:58.120 us if it is not true, that when we use the narrative data to supplement some of the statistics 349 00:38:58.120 --> 00:39:03.260 or bringing more life to the projects and we can better describe the nuance of what 350 00:39:03.260 --> 00:39:09.440 these projects entail. Second, we are noticing a lot more evidence 351 00:39:09.440 --> 00:39:15.221 of a lot of the grantees in these projects doing surveying of the beneficiaries and that 352 00:39:15.221 --> 00:39:20.770 is really exciting because that is helping us to see how these projects are moving and 353 00:39:20.770 --> 00:39:24.860 evolving. And the third piece here on the coding. Last 354 00:39:24.860 --> 00:39:31.420 year was the first time we introduced the coding. This is the second year. We are getting 355 00:39:31.420 --> 00:39:35.920 pretty close, but we are continuing to fine tune it. 356 00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:41.349 The second bullet I just want to highlight here, which is specific to digital literacy. 357 00:39:41.349 --> 00:39:48.600 It is really hard to get a good meaning of when does a project involve digital literacy, 358 00:39:48.600 --> 00:39:56.211 when does it not, and what does digital literacy mean. It is something where if we are in the 359 00:39:56.211 --> 00:40:01.280 elevator and we give the 30-second pitch, we think everybody will know what each other 360 00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:06.520 is talking about. But when you start really delving into details, looking at the projects 361 00:40:06.520 --> 00:40:16.460 more closely, a lot more ambiguity surfaces. A lot of these digital literacy and broadband 362 00:40:16.460 --> 00:40:22.180 projects did not necessarily involve directly digital literacy or broadband, but involved 363 00:40:22.180 --> 00:40:31.450 ways to expand the infrastructure to make either digital literacy a broadband more versatile. 364 00:40:31.450 --> 00:40:40.470 This includes the use of Wi-Fi hotspots. It includes the use of laptops and other acquisitions 365 00:40:40.470 --> 00:40:46.800 of personal computing. It involves the efforts of expanding attempts at digital inclusion 366 00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:53.930 across the country’s communities. The next piece that we saw is that trying 367 00:40:53.930 --> 00:41:01.030 to get a better sense of what these projects were intending to do. We saw a number of projects 368 00:41:01.030 --> 00:41:08.119 that were coded, that the intentionality was related to institutional capacity. But in 369 00:41:08.119 --> 00:41:15.599 a lot of cases, it seemed that improving the library’s capacity was secondary to improving 370 00:41:15.599 --> 00:41:22.970 some outcomes for a patron, be it their lifelong learning or the employment. 371 00:41:22.970 --> 00:41:27.770 That leads to that second bullet that a lot of the projects that were related to lifelong 372 00:41:27.770 --> 00:41:34.830 learning had a very strong employment content so trying to think about the share of the 373 00:41:34.830 --> 00:41:40.320 grants, the state projects that are trying to support workforce efforts, it is much greater 374 00:41:40.320 --> 00:41:46.310 than just those that were labeled strictly as having their intentionality of employment 375 00:41:46.310 --> 00:41:51.350 support. The last bullet is to start looking at where 376 00:41:51.350 --> 00:41:56.369 we are in the current five-year planning cycle and next year five-year evaluation cycle. 377 00:41:56.369 --> 00:42:01.770 I know we are going to have more information about this next year, but we wanted to just 378 00:42:01.770 --> 00:42:06.840 highlight a couple of points now about it. One is we will be working a little bit more 379 00:42:06.840 --> 00:42:12.099 closely to try to start seeing how well all of you are mapping your state goals to the 380 00:42:12.099 --> 00:42:21.140 intents and within the focal areas. We are trying to better track the life cycle of projects 381 00:42:21.140 --> 00:42:27.980 as they get repeated over multiple years, trying to get a better sense of any project 382 00:42:27.980 --> 00:42:32.609 that began with a planning effort. What does it look like when it is being implemented 383 00:42:32.609 --> 00:42:38.390 to benefit some specific audience? And the last, similarly, is to try to get 384 00:42:38.390 --> 00:42:43.440 a better sense of these projects that are spreading over time and space, trying to get 385 00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:51.870 a sense of how that spread looks like. Let us stop again and see if we have any questions. 386 00:42:51.870 --> 00:43:00.430 MS. GONSALVES: Hi, Matt. We do not have new questions, but I think we have a bit of an 387 00:43:00.430 --> 00:43:05.670 answer to Claudia’s earlier question about specifically how did SLAA handle the licensing 388 00:43:05.670 --> 00:43:13.930 component for hotspots, who pays? Jaime responded that local libraries accept the cost of the 389 00:43:13.930 --> 00:43:23.340 data plans after the grant cycle. MR. BIRNBAUM: Thank you. Lisa, are you on 390 00:43:23.340 --> 00:43:30.580 the phone? MS. FREHILL: I am, but I think we are out 391 00:43:30.580 --> 00:43:35.349 of time, Matt. MR. BIRNBAUM: Okay. We will just let everybody 392 00:43:35.349 --> 00:43:46.619 know that we have this new IMLS data product out there for folks and it will help you particularly 393 00:43:46.619 --> 00:43:56.530 with your CARES grants, and your slides have more information about this. I see we have 394 00:43:56.530 --> 00:44:03.350 one minute left. If there are any questions, we will take it; otherwise, thank you, everybody, 395 00:44:03.350 --> 00:44:10.640 for your time and attention. MS. DEVOE: Matt, thank you. This is Teri. 396 00:44:10.640 --> 00:44:17.050 We can put the chat box back open if people have questions they want to chat during the 397 00:44:17.050 --> 00:44:18.310 break.