good morning everyone welcome back great to see a lot of the tables
filled out with people and you don't have to do it now but if you're sitting
in the exact same place as yesterday I would challenge you to make some new
friends and switch yourselves around you can do it
now you can do it at the break I just think there's so many
people here to meet wow restrict yourselves I want to uh remind everyone
that we still have an appreciation wall that you can add Post-its to at the end
of the day we will visit that I have taken the parking lot question oh I
missed one um maybe one of my helper program officers Dennis or Madison could
grab the last of the parking lot yellow stickies and bring it on up here we're
going to cover those in a moment uh we will have a longer break this
morning from 10: to 10:30 that's for checkout because we know that takes some
time sometimes if you have a a bag um most of the bags have found their way to
the back of the room but if you're sitting with yours for some reason feel
free to take a load off and put it in the
back uh we are going to start by revisiting some of the parking lot
questions that have come in and I don't think our colleague Emily is in the room
we were told our o colleagues are going to do some other activities this morning
but the first question that came in was um additional examples of physical
infrastructure and I'm I'm just going to look around the room I want to see is
this in relation to Emily's presentation yes okay um I am not the
greatest translator of their work but my understanding is you know they would be
looking at physical building they would also be looking at um things
that we cannot fund currently like fi laying of fiber the in Cindy landram is
nodding I feel like I'm in good good grace is here um so like the trenching
and the digging to get the fiber into the ground that kind of stuff um I do
not know if there's more but we can certainly get some better answers and um
get back to you on that there's another question that came
in about um are there templates for the new certification requirements which I
believe are in relation to yesterday's uh uniform guidance
presentations if this is in relation to the new language that you saw on the
slide yesterday um I don't know that we're going to have templates for that
but the language is there and certainly as you all are resources to each other
and develop templates that you're using we have seen
Myriad examples of people asking the list serve if they could send their
templates and people saying sure here's mine so we would encourage that kind of
resource sharing as you get your materials up to
date uh does the change in the uniform guidance oh this one we clarified
yesterday but we'll say it for the good of the room um so the change for the
uniform guidance for subrecipients to certify does that apply to applying for
funds through a letter of intent um we clarified this kind of in a conversation
yesterday this would not be necessarily needed because there's an additional
process that these subrecipients go through when applying for funds like
actually applying for funds the letter of intent is sort of a pre um cursor to
that and so we said no you don't have to get this certification statement then
just go with the application of funds the application
or the application for the award the application for the funds that they want
to receive from you and the reports that they submit to you those would be the
three times to get that
certification all right next question um I was going to maybe toss this to
Madison or Dennis if they have a microphone nearby but I don't know if
you are in microphone distance what is the best way to get feedback on the spr
specifically how well we're filling them out
out did
you emails
um and we always
suggestion
a you don't feel you're filling it out the best of your abili
similarly if you're Wan Fe before final submission you know wanted to a project
dra and ask us to look
at thank you all right great the here's another question about
the RS um and I'm not sure I can answer it but we can park it for the November
open forum for the new whistleblower regs is that specifically related to
federal funds or if our agency already has a
statement um or training is that enough and does it apply to the whole slaa or
just the office dealing with lsta so again I might have our legal
folks back us up on this I do think um a training might not
be enough because it sounds like there needs to be a a certific something in
writing a statement in writing and does it apply to the whole
slaa or just the office dealing with lsta um we can get some clarification on
that um it is about your larger internal controls as a state but some of you are
units within very large uh organizations so maybe we don't need to have you have
everybody sign those statements we'll find out great
question okay now we've got oh man they're like multiplying there's another
little new question up there so uh we can get it but thank you I would love to
see 1our sessions online dedicated to both match and M Moe and then there's an
agreed on here in another handwriting so we hear you and today you're going to
get a early one of those and it will be online and it will be recorded and if
it's not enough we can do more okay summer reading incentives and
giveaways child reading if motivators are
essential and incentives are motivators then incentives are essential and
allowable wow great job Sherlock um you know I will say this and we can
ask our legal team a little bit more about incentives in the November Forum
there was some new OMB language about prizes you can you can read it in the
30-page handout that they put together they do have to be supportable like you
have to prove that they are necessary and reasonable for the purpose of
fulfilling the award so read it and see if it passes muster for you and then we
can ask our legal folks about it how about that
okay next year's question could we have next year's conference in Puerto
[Applause] Rico it is on the East Coast it is it is
also in the Hurricane High season of when we are now having our conference so
we will take that under
advisement yes Puerto Rico very popular yeah
okay can the room be a tad less cold today um here's what we've learned about
the the heating system in this historic beautiful old building it's all or none
people it's like it's either on and you're cold or it's going to be off and
you're going to be a little warm so they're going to try to um do a little
bit of on and off and on and off throughout the day but if as you feel
yourself getting too cold or too hot um you know Matt berety is willing to hear
your plights and will try to make adjustments as needed he is he is the
the man of all um abilities including keeping our temperature the way we want
it okay last question the people deserve to know is this hotel
haunted is this hotel haunted ooh so I actually have a little fun fact
today um so the Hilton walk C Center originally known as the hotel Schroeder
opened in 1928 and it's rumored to be haunted by its founder Walter Schroeder
guest report Eerie feelings malfunctioning and malfunctioning
electronics and objects moving on their own despite officials denial stories of
shers sko sightings
persist um thank you Tech team that was amazing
I I want to point out I want to call out Catherine from North Carolina who's had
an
experience fix it he left and then the channel started
[Music] Al
night wow I think we have our answer thanks
Catherine okay great um engagement with the parking lot and if you have other
questions that arise throughout today's presentations you can still put them
there and we'll we'll take them back and um get you answers but now it's time to
reveal the Prize winners of the bingo card we had four
entrance and I am going to oh five oh well bring it up now is the time
okay do we have do we have any others okay I'm gonna call this number
five because it's okay it's okay um okay so
in sorry to bring you back up here Wendy in fifth in fifth time order place Wendy
[Music] copin you get a cheese cuz we had a few
more of
them for more stress stress um more stress more cheese okay in fourth time
order place Jessica AO get your cheese
[Applause] in third time order place Laurel
[Applause]
sen and second time order place Danny kapple North Carol North
[Applause] Dakota and in first place
fastest bingo in the land Christy weer [Applause]
woohoo we had so much fun with the Bingo good job another
cheese oh yeah do we have a speech is that what's happening here
okay uh we have a few questions from Bingo that I was just going to start off
the day were very close to our uh time to bring Cindy Lander up but I thought I
take three of the Bingo questions and if they apply to you you just stand up we
could see like who actually can answer these questions so who has actually
traveled to every state please stand up wow Ray Walling from
Kansas that's
cool uh who would travel to Mars if given the opportunity oh we got a a
table of Mars of martians over here okay good
job and who lives within walking distance from their
work [Music]
wow yes we got more takers on that one that is very cool all right so travel
theme um just to start the day all right well we will do more of these kinds of
things at the end of the day but right now I'm so honored to have our acting
Imes director address us she was coming to us virtually last year on a screen uh
which she did great at but said it was not her favorite experience so we're
going to try to make it better this year by having her look you in the
eyes um this is her first grant Estates conference in person we've not been able
to do this before uh since March of this year she has been our acting agency
director and we at the office of Library services from which she was promoted are
so proud we could not be prouder to have our leader in the leader seat for the
whole agency and she is crushing it uh these are roller coaster times for our
profession and our political just America so Cindy is navigating all of it
with an evenness and um just a Grace that is unmatched by anyone we could
imagine taking her seat so she's here to help connect the dots with the grants to
States work and some of the larger agency work she's going to talk to us
for about 45 minutes and there's time in there for questions so please be
thinking of things your burning questions everything you wanted to know
about imls she's here to give you the the most uh diplomatic answers to so
here here she is Cindy [Applause]
Landrum hello everyone and thank you Terry uh I may be crushing it but I just
need to let everyone know that thanks to Terry and Anthony Smith they are holding
down the port and Library services and you know it makes my life a lot easier
and we just have a wonderful team and so I am happy to be here live and not on
Memorex this time um and I'd like to welcome you today too uh and once again
welcome you to the mighty Midwest because yes yet again I am a less
Midwest Roots Run Deep I am not from Wisconsin however I am from the neighbor
State of Illinois uh and I do have a Wisconsin
Story how ever that involves a 20s something year old Cindy a personal ad
the Milwaukee Bucks and a pathology resident who thought a good first date
might involve showing me his tissue samples but that is for the Afterparty
conversation so as Terry said last year I joined you all virtually for the
future session and I shared with her that it was quite disconcerting and kind
of surreal watching you all watch me it was like the Talking Heads video I was
the head um so I'm really glad to be here with you in real life and hello to
our virtual colleagues and I just want to plus a thousand all of the
appreciations and gratitudes that have been shared by carry and the grants the
States team um and I also want to give the grants the States team and the O
team a round of
applause yet again they have designed another engaging and impactful
Conference so kudos to them this is the conference to be at and I know we all
have a lot of conferences the LA's are just they just go wild but this is the
one to be at um and I just want to say that on day two I am encouraged that our
new colleagues in this work uh were not scared off and they have voluntarily
stayed after learning all the things they needed to learn and hearing all
those acronyms spr PLS you you get it um and then I am super grateful for our
tried and true State colleagues who are yet hanging on with us uh with for many
years and through our various iterations of this foundational work and I call it
foundational because the work that you all do that you sustain and
nurture uh in your States is really core to the agency um grants to States is
universally beloved across the aisles of Congress in in the White House and in
the field and I like to think of it as the pillar of our agency and of course
you may know or heard that you know there are a lot of places a lot of
colleagues out there that want to imitate what you all do you know from
our colleagues on the museum side and some of our peer agencies but as the
saying goes often imitated but can't be duplicated and that is because because
the State library administrative agencies are really a key lever in the
funding mechanism that advances the work of our field and you do it in such a way
that uniquely meets the needs of your communities and I would say that as
someone who's been involved in my career in a lot of collective impact work this
is probably one of the truest and best examples
of collective impact that I have been involved in and that impact is felt
Across the Nation and of course across the agency so um you have heard from our
colleagues in O about the agency learning plan and the infrastructure
study and the ways that imls is using and trying to make uh impactful research
investments in some critical areas that can help and and inform how we make
additional investments in Grant making and policy and so this morning I'd like
to share with you some of our agency-wide initiatives and business
that you probably have heard about I know when Crosby was here he's proud he
shared a lot about some of these initiatives and in this transition I'm
sure people may be wondering like okay so what happens with those when the
director changes and so I kind of wanted to give you some updates about some of
those things and sort of tie them into the work that you were doing and kind of
maybe talk to you about how you see them tying in if you see them tying in maybe
they don't tie in maybe there's some challenges that we should be aware of uh
when you think of some of this work so um after sitting through all of the
yesterday's Wisconsin theme sessions I went back to my home room this actually
had a title then I went back and I was like okay maybe I need to get the
program and come up with a theme and so I started with have you curd cuz you
know I love a good cheese Curt it's my favorite Wisconsin delicacy and then I
thought about looking a cheese head but then I am originally from Chicago and I
would be this owned by my Bears loving F family uh and then of course we saw a
lot out of the fs love the fs we all had the fs Crush when I was a kid but you
know there is another important piece of Television that was uh that was rooted
in Milwaukee that we have not talked about the whole time and so you know I
played with L and surely you want to know um but in the end in the end I knew
that I was no match for Emily and her sweet baby uh and so I decided we're
just going to go with uh the road to
2026 keep it simple uh so I wanted to really talk about the road to 2026 many
of you know that 2026 is a seminal year it marks the
250th uh birth of our nation uh also known as the
semiquincentennial and since we've been talking about the semiquincentennial I
will say that in 24 I finally can spell it without having to look it up I'm
still working on the saying it about five times fast that we we haven't
gotten there but it also marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of
imls and so between now and then a lot has been going on and happening and that
will inform 2026 and beyond for our agency also for you so let's we're going
to do a little going back Back to the Future and we're kind of start with the
semiquincentennial and weave through some of our initiatives and what I will
call momentary indefinite uh that you probably heard about maybe you're
thinking about them and for which I have some really good updates and some for
which I will be honest I probably don't have good clear answers but we should
all be thinking about them so I'm going to start with some of our agency-wide
initiatives that you probably heard about you quite a bit one of those being
the I am Lessa semiquincentennial work or what they call out in the world
America 250 what we have called at I am aess I Am aess 250 so for those who are
not aware little context um back in 2016 a bipartisan
committee was formed to start to think about how the nation was celebrate its
250th birthday and probably sometime around
2019 2020 there was this I'll call it a call to action if you will to for all
federal agencies to really think about how they might recognize the nation's
250th birthday um so under Crosby's Direction
because you know Crosby was a historian uh many of you heard him talk about the
semi Quin Centennial and its importance uh was really inspiring and and
directing the agency to think about how we might begin to
support the field support uh our internal work in terms of how we wanted
to acknowledge the 250th uh birthday of the nation with all
of its celebration and complexity so uh we gathered and he came
up with with some input from some of us uh I am less 250 all people all stories
all places and the idea of this is to
support a more full telling of the nation's history and ensuring that we
are not only celebrating and acknowledging the things that we know
about but recognizing that in local communities there are important stories
and narratives that are either Untold need to be uncovered or maybe have
remained unseen so uh and that that really shapes our full American story
but that it also is a way to Spur Civic engagement in community civil debate but
also celebration of the nation's birthday so if you have and if you
didn't know we really have changed our name we are no longer just Imes We Are
The awardwinning Institute of Museum and Library Services
now because in uh the last two years we have partnered with PBS books and one of
the initiatives that grows out of this semiquincentennial work is the web
series uh visions of America all people all stories all places in which we
partner with our friends at PBS books and this series the first season
if you watch it it's on YouTube you will see Crosby traveling the country
visiting places and working with Scholars and talking to Scholars about
stories that maybe you kind of know about maybe you heard about them maybe
you didn't know for example we all know about Ellis Island
we know that is the the welcoming of people to America to our immigrant
communities but what many people do not realize is that there are Ellis islands
all over the country you know there's the Ellis Island of the South the
Freedom Tower in Florida there's Angel Island and so Crosby went to Miami and
the Freedom Tower is on the campus of the Miami day college and he met with
the president and he talked with immigrant families and people who have
significant history in that community that is related to Freedom Tower and he
went to a variety of different places uh talked to a lot of different people it
was very exciting and then um the Michigan broadcasting Association said
Kudos you all did a great job and they sent us a fancy shiny award so um to
which we were very very excited and I we still haven't changed the business cards
but the award looks really great um but one of the things that I will say that
we I'm very proud of is that uh our decision to begin to think about this
work not as a destination so many agencies are thinking about what they're
going to do in 2026 or what they're going to do on July 4th uh one the
things we've sort of built a body of work and Frameworks and that really
think about uh preparing us and seeding this work along the way and it really
has deepened our connection with uh the larger America 250 effort so um we are
ex official on the commission and as you may or may not
know know the chair of the commission is the past us Treasurer Rosie R and we've
been able to have some conversations with her to make sure that when they are
thinking about America 250 that they are thinking about libraries and museums
they have lots of really interesting ideas and I often sit there and go yeah
but we already do that uh we we we we've been doing that for years hey chair Ros
I think you need to go talk talk to our library friends um we also know have
learned that for many of you all in the states that this whole 250 thing is uh
Bowl of Cherries and some of the cherries are super delicious and some
are like at the bottom because some State libraries are part of their a250
commissions and some are not and so we re recognize that that is an opportunity
to amplify and Elevate the libraries State libraries in particular but
libraries in general as a critical part of the America 250 effort in communities
and in the nation now while I say all that and it's
raiseed the profile what has not happened yet is dedicated funding
opportunity right so you know I think Matt talked about about unfunded
mandates our least favorite thing in the whole wide world is an unfunded mandate
however what we have been able to do is fund a few pilot projects to sort of get
the motors going um we definitely have elevated the
semiquincentennial and our discretionary funding notice a funding opportunities
and we are starting to see some proposals that Center the semi Quin
Centennial and are intended to uh amplify and elevate it and sometimes we
just see good proposals that people may not realize that they match up with the
semiquincentennial and so we're able to um sort of elevate those and say this is
this is we're telling a new story or here's a story that needs to be told and
so we're going to elevate that in the 250 I will say Congress has taken note
um in the last budget um proposal coming out of the house they were very happy
they just oh 250 keep doing that keep doing that yes we' love to keep doing
that we also love for you to make sure that there's money for us to keep doing
that um because there also was not that in there keep doing that and so um but
it does it does in elevating the profile of the agency allows us to have those
critical convers ation to say we' love to keep doing that and we'd love to keep
supporting our museums and libraries to do that but we also can't do that if you
uh want to uh not fund that or not fund uh fund Us in any way so or cut funding
so it it's kind of a nice thing in that way but I'm really curious uh from all
of you because I don't want this to just be me blasting you with stuff uh to to
find out if any of you in your states are working on
anything at the state level around 250 if it's a conversation if it's not in
the conversation if it's maybe a little bit more challenging to think about
working on things like the 250 and the semi Quin Centennial so I'd be loved to
hear what you all are up to around the semiquincentennial
excuse me morning South Dakota is going to be State CH start January
awesome do is trying to within psylvia that
really Elevate stories that are not and
also
stories hi um my understanding is that New Jersey
had a state constitution that was kind of used as a model for the national
Constitution at least that's what we
claim and we developed a program that's not funded yet but we have um proposals
out and we're going to work with State archives in the State library and
there's no one that we know of right now who ever
remembers State archives and State Library working together so we're really
excited about
it so North Carolina um the State library is with the Department of
Natural cultural resources which is heading the americ in our state and so
um they've already done some programing around it and are past and future re
revolutionary North Carol and that been the historical events in
the r reevolution in North Carolina and also when are we us us
capitalized which is an exploration the ideas of Freedom responsibility
challenges and changes into democracy
also first rounds
opportunity second
I was able tot DC about people sharing their
stories and I've been able to do some work
with Department
and I was able to partner with someone from ariv a couple of weeks ago we've
been asked to use the Centennial events as kind of model and
looking back it's
very focused on history and I tried to really advocate for
um just kind of getting persp Al talking about what is life like now at 250
rather than looking backwards only so yeah that's been kind of
a an interesting Journey but I'm hoping that it's going to end up
somewhere
isw thanks so in Vermont we have a Statewide
Commission with a budget small budget but yeah you like a budget the our our
commissioner the chief uh of the Department of libraries is a participant
in that and right now we're at the um curating a book list phase and and we're
making the books available through the department and um speaking of the
challenge of finding New Perspectives so um the commission gave us a book list
that was very Antiquated and we are right now trying to freshen up that list
and try to find different perspectives on the
theme I think we have time for one
more when I liary super
popular liary
citizenship you done
thank you all for sharing see I told them I told the 250 Co talked to the
state libraries they are doing things that you should know about so thank you
for sharing all of that and um I will be looking forward to seeing how it
manifests I will say that it made my heart all tingly when I heard a lot
about the archives and uh State Library collaborations that is so awesome
and to my colleague from New Jersey who said that's what they say that we're the
model this leads us right into my our other uh big initiative which is
information literacy so you know you just tell them prove they you know if
they don't believe you tell them prove it you know go find some
resources um so as you may or may not know the other sort of big uh ask from
Congress to imls was to to work on information
literacy and I believe that that ask comes from all the great work that you
all do in your libraries and have done we as a as a collective profession have
done to really address uh information literacy not just now where we believe
that it is a challenge but I will am going to age myself but I can remember
when the internet was being rolled out to the publ
and of being made accessible to everyone and some of us were teaching information
literacy classes and we were using excuse my French crap as an
acronym to help people understand how to engage with and think critically about
the information that they were engaging with on the internet interestingly
enough that was a very long time ago and guess what we are still trying to figure
out how to help people do that except now there is so much more information
that people are confronted with when they are using the internet and we all
know as professionals that it is a challenge when you just have so much and
trying to make sense of it all so this is also a concern uh from Congress and
they task imls with figuring out how we might
address this they did give us some real clear guidelines about some things they
would like to see so one of the things they would like to see bare minimum was
some type of website or other resource portal that people can access to support
information literacy the other thing was a task force and so to that end imls
gathered its Federal colleagues about 15 agencies that have made an investment in
information literacy so CDC and ni and uh Federal Reserve and FDIC and all
these organ uh federal agencies who are working in this space in their very sort
of discreet areas um as you can imagine information literacy is a huge pie to
bake and it has a lot of different flavors and so initially we really
looked at where could we be most effective and there were kind of like a
couple of areas one was financial literacy the other was health literacy
and then digital literacy which is necessary for all the literacies today
um so gather those folks together but then
also talk to our colleagues in the field who are actually on the ground doing the
work every day who are incorporating information literacy strategies and the
programs they design because we know that information literacy is very much a
local issue it looks different it has to look different the challenges are
different uh depending on your community it could be Health it could be Finance
it could be digital literacy in general it could be a lot of literacies and so
we couldn't be super prescriptive with whatever we came up with um so last week
we launched the information literacy. goov uh it is a website that has access
to a number of these resources from federal agencies as well as some
Community oriented organizations that are doing this work there is a wonderful
or two two webinars uh that will guide you through the site tell you what's on
the site tell you how to access this information we
also um invested in several pilot projects across the museum and Library
field to support information literacy efforts I do see again our colleagues
from New Jersey uh have a project related to some legislation that
codifies information Literacy for them and so they are working with the State
Library the department of Ed as well as public libraries to sort of fill in the
information literacy ecosystem and I believe they're going to be doing some
convening producing some products that all of us can use and I know that there
are some state who may already have this legislation or who are hearing the buzz
around their states that there's a desire to codify information literacy uh
in the legislation so what we hope will emerge from that particular project are
some nice toolkits we love a good toolkit um and other resources that can
help you sort of navigate like okay we've got legislation now what how do we
make it real how do we work with all of the people that are part of this
ecosystem so that we can have a more information literate Community more
information literate population um so I would Advance ask you
to go check out the website uh look at what's there but I'm
also really curious about like what is sort of how is information literacy uh
showing up for all of you in your states is it something that you all are seeing
show up at the state level and are public libraries engaging in information
literacy work is it sort of like you know we're not really talking about it
in my state or it's a you know it's a challenging topic to talk about because
you know it can be seen in certain ways depend you know is dictating how people
engage with information so I'm just curious about uh is there any
information literacy work happening in your state or what there is there some
that you would like to make happen um so yeah what's the information literacy
landscape look like on the ground for you
all hi good morning um in Hawaii we just got funding through the state
legislature to start a digital literacy program that is administered by the
state librarian um so in the last couple of months we you know put out an RFP and
we're engaged with um an organization called munai in Hawaii to teach digital
literacy classes um super basic we're back we're down to like this is how you
turn it on and I've been at a lot of these classes and it's full of a lot of
the kapuna uh the elderly um but also those for it it's like related to
Workforce Development so you have other people too who have historically worked
in the trades or things like that and have really never touched a computer
like everybody knows how to navigate their phone but how do you stay safe
excuse me how do you stay safe online navigating your email website and
everything like that so it's really um and I attend some of these classes and
it's really been awesome to see that there's a huge need for that still so
thank
you thank you for sharing oh I've got Cindy Georgia is working on digital
connectivity and digital literacy receiving funding from the
governor's office for connectivity devices Wii as well asaly on nice thank
you thanks for sharing and of like again please use those resources connect with
information literacy. goov there's a lot there that can support any work that you
are doing but also that you can share in your community with libraries that you
know that might be doing that work a final big thing I want to share is you
probably heard of this maybe you haven't heard about it uh but there's this thing
called the president's committee on the Arts and Humanities also known as
PCA and um if you're not familiar with it it is a long established Committee of
the president and it brings together a lot of luminaries I'll call them
luminaries AKA celebrities um and to advise the and
academics so not not not all celebrities but sometimes celebrity academics too um
but they are the intention is for them to advise the president and the cultural
agencies of which in this context I am a less as one along with our friends at
Nea and neh um to advise us on matters of uh and activities in the United
States related to culture and the art uh so in previous iterations that's how I'm
going to frame this uh the committee was under the opes of the Nea and neh well
there was a brief Hiatus back in 2017 and President Biden reconstituted
the committee and it was reconstituted under
imls and some people may be wondering why would arts and Humanities Committee
of the president be reconstituted under the Institute of Museum and Library
services and I would say that museums and libraries are what harness and
catalyze arts and humanities in community we make them accessible to the
people so it makes all the sense in the world that we would be the ones driving
uh the ship so to speak in collaboration with our colleages colleages but since
that reconstitution of the committee uh pcah has met a number of times some of
us have gotten to see Lady Gaga like I have a picture in the back of her head
um she had her hair was real cute uh I got to see Stephanie um but uh and a few
other really cool people have great interest in the work of the humanities
but also libraries so in case you didn't know but you probably should know a real
big Library Champion is our friend Jen Garner uh woo yes uh and she is a big
champion of libraries and as are many people on the president's committee and
so uh but they have taken up some really interesting work uh over the last year
that will emerge and you will hear about it and two things in particular are of
interest to us but one of the things they're looking at is AI and its impact
on the Arts and Humanities so in fact next week they will be
holding uh a meeting convening of really important people and they're going to
let me sit in and listen so I'm really excited about that about AI in the Arts
and Humanities um arts in the public
infrastructure and the things that are most important to imls and live
libraries and museums are Disaster Response so you know what are what are
we doing when we have a Disaster Response and recovery and the role uh in
its impact on Arts and Humanities and of course specifically museums and
libraries from us from our perspective repatriation so very interesting we put
that in the context of 250 you know archives museums even libraries have
artifacts that actually we do not know the province of or we do and maybe we
need to there's some negotiation to uh get them back to those to whom they
belong and then the one that's my favorite uh is libraries and creative
placemaking we know libraries are really essential to placemaking in community
but Ro what role can they play the variety of different roles in driving
plac making and partnership with particularly with entities that they
might not ordinarily partner with for example I'm thinking about
archaeologist and and uh Anthropologist and people of that type uh AR you know
Architects and things and those individuals so um the result of all this
work will be some convenings pilot projects other activities and some
products again I'm going to use our favorite word guess what it is toolkits
um that we can all use as we're thinking about some of these things in our own
Community um I don't have a ton of time left but I did want to feel some
questions because I feel like there's probably a lot of
questions uh related to IM am Le so I'm going to answer one right off the bat
that I know is is swirling and all of our heads because it's really swirling
in mind and when are you going to get a new
director and the answer
is uh we have yet to hear much on that front you know it's like everything else
there's whizzing and buzzing and then sometimes nothing and I don't know
they're just the White House is a little busy right now with some things and so
uh at this moment you all are stuck with me for just a wee bit
[Applause] longer I have no how idea how much
longer that is I'm thankful that you all clap because you could have
gone um so I have no definitive information to offer and but as soon as
we know something and we think and there's a name floating around that we
can announce we will be happy to let you know and just because this comes up all
the time if you're not familiar with how all that process works the President
appoints the director the legislation says that we have to switch back and
forth so we were lucky to have Crosby for four years he's from our world and
now it is the Museum's turn so no they will not they cannot appoint me uh so
the museum will turn to have their director and so that is sort of the pool
of people that the White House and the president will be looking at when they
decide to fill this role um but I'm happy to take a whole bunch of other
questions if you have
them and I'll do my best to answer what I
can well I'll close out with this and just say a few things uh the other
things people might be wondering about budget um another I'm not sure I you
know I think we anticipate given an election year will be on a CR I just
want to say thank you for your patience over the last few years because things
haven't always gone the way we would like them to um and so your patience
with us sort of having to get money to you in fits and spurts is not optimal
for us and we know it's not optimal for you but we are grateful that you are
patient when we are in the sort of uh sort of in between times the other big
piece of things that'll be happening are reauthor ation you heard Matt talk about
infrastructure and I know someone asked what happens after the infrastructure
study well a lot of things could happen and you know
maybe just being doing some expectations setting here Congress could in a few
years because you know it is Congress they could say yes we see this as an
issue we might want to fund this but right now even if they came tomorrow and
said yes we want to fund Library construction or whatever we have to be
authorized to do it so over the next year we'll be working on our
reauthorization which gives us the um parameters in which we can work and what
we can do and that is a process that happens internally but also externally
with the field and so you know that is sort of forthcoming but that is a
2025 inp ever and so we will look forward to moving forward on that and
hearing from the field through the associations about the things that you
think are important I think you talked about a few of them today so uh that is
what is on our Horizon and if if that is no one has any
questions I think I have for the good of the order closed out what I need to say
and uh hopefully it wasn't too cheesy all right
how a classic Wisconsin supper club offers a wide variety of culinary
culinary Delights do not forget the pickled
radishes at least Ben will get all these jokes thank you for being so close to
me we're going to start with the admin
costs we talked about indirect costs and administrative costs yesterday and we're
going to revisit them today one of the basic financial principles that comes
out of the lsda legislation is the 4% administrative cap these administrative
C costs are associated with the sla's overall management oversight
administration of plans programs and activities funded under the imls lsda
program they must still be necessary reasonable allocable and allowable
costs slas are allowed to use up to 4% of their federal funds from the grants
to States program to cover administrative costs but you're not
required to do so you can cover these costs with State
funds if you choose to do so per the statute some types of admin costs could
be any of the following Personnel costs within the
lsta program typically it's the lsta coordinator position or the state
librarian or the Consultants or the associate state
librarian pro-rated staff time for personnel not working full-time to LSA
management and administration travel expenses to carry
out the management oversight administrative activities of the lsda
program thank you for coming financial management costs including audit costs
for the lsta program all indirect or facilities related costs such as rent
maintenance utilities and security incurred at the state level
State advisory Council on libraries other advisory councils or committee
expenses Grant selection and award activities and Reporting we have an
administrative cost memo in the grants to States manual which I know all of you
have memorized that goes into Fuller
detail so as far as the 4% administrative costs and the spr are
concerned the state library-wide expenses for admin administering the
lsta programs should be reported in the administrative project other operational
expenses in the project budget should only be used for indirect costs
incurred do not report the same costs in both
places indirect costs from nons laas do not count against your 4% c
cap state level specific questions should be directed to your program
officers and remember ad isn't a catchall for all types of costs the
costs still need to be allowable no advocacy construction food booze bourbon
taste testing those kinds of
things these are some procedural tips when working within the
spr we know having to con Stave cons consistently may seem as stinky as ludic
dis at first but we hope that over time it will become a natural habit of
working in the
spr and this is how an administrative project Financial should look or could
look in the FSR within the spr be sure to make to save after making any of
those changes because we all know what happens when you don't say frequently
stinky ludifisk
and within the FSR admin costs are included as part of the federal share of
net outlays or the total amount of lsta funds spent by the State library or
slaa this is a way to cross check final numbers within the spr prior to final
submission to imls and now I'm going to pass it over
to Dennis
what I get to talk about I'm going to talk about match ande
um hooray yay uh and I believe we oh
Applause um and we do have some time we've baked in some time for um
questions and any need for clarification so we welcome those this can be quite
thorny um some of them might be great general questions for everybody and some
of them might be State specific but just keep that in mind as you we're going
through some of these um match ande Concepts so let's start with match first
um match is also called depending on kind of the realm that you're in it's
also called cost sharing or non-federal uh share and it's the portion of the
project costs that are not paid by federal funds um and they support the
lsta priorities that are in your 5year plan um from and like it's as
non-federal state or local sources um and in in the match realm the
requirement is 34% of your total program costs so um unlike Moe where there is
more of a kind of ongoing average that's contingent on what you report year after
year the match requirement is like a flat 34% off of the award um so if I say
all that because if you happen to report above and beyond 34% match in one year
it doesn't affect what's required in the subsequent year it's still 34% of what
you've been given but if for if there any reason you cannot meet your match we
do ask that you notify us immediately we'll talk a little bit later about the
implications of missing match compared to missing Moe but um this missing match
is a more time sensitive than missing
Moe yeah so more about and again we love a good you know us code reference uh
related to where this is coming from but again just to reinforce that this is not
being kind of dreamed up by us within the agency and was something that we're
carrying out it's a federal requirement um and so maintenance of effort as I
kind of hinted at compared to match is the spirit of it is more to ensure that
there is a maintenance of certain level of State expenditures for library
programs and unlike match where it talks about other sources um of support this
is specifically State support um local funds or other things do not count
toward Moe um and again the requirement and the purpose of it is to ensure that
federal funds enhance rather than replace State funds the goal is to help
do as much as we can to in Ensure that there is a solid foundation of State
support um running the and supporting the State library and the federal funds
again enhance help with um developing projects and things like that and um in
the event that you do not uh meet Moe we're
required to reduce the allocation that would have been paid to your state if
you fail to maintain a proper M level if you were to miss by a certain percentage
um if a waiver is not approved then that same percentage would be uh taken from
your subsequent allotment so in this case uh the 2023 Moe that you'll be
reporting would affect your 2026
award so you know we I understand that this can be a difficult uh concept and
we don't want to bog you down with all the details
much like this photo of a classic Wisconsin cranberry
bog uh your program officer is always available to help you weighed through
your specific Moe questions but all that to say this is a critical uh exerpt from
thee requirement uh and it emphasizes All State dollars expended by the State
library administrative Agency for library programs that are consistent
with lsta purposes so I read all of those words very carefully and slowly
because they all matter uh the all matters the expended
by the SLA matters um the consistent with lsta purposes matters and so um and
then this exclusions are also very important Capital expenditures uh
special one-time project costs and similar windfalls so so it is Broad but
there's also a lot of terms to kind of hold on to if you have inherited a sort
of a legacy Moe calculation we just encourage you to kind of assess what
you've always done and say okay are we are we excluding what we should be
excluding are we including what we should be
including oh yes so these are those purposes we discussed um and they are
I'm going to read every single one of them very carefully now I'm just kidding
uh there's a lot and the purpose of these subsequent slides is really as a
point of reference for you um to go back toward but the the big idea here is that
the LSA purposes um can be broader and more encompassing than perhaps the
priorities that you have identified in your Five-Year Plan um so that's when
you're thinking about what state funds could be considered fore they may they
may meet lsta purposes in a broader level and the they may not specifically
support one of your projects related to your Five-Year Plan but that's okay
becausee is a little bit more of a broader State support as long as it
meets one of these many lsta purposes so that was 1 through five this is 6 seven
and 8 and then 9 through 12 there's 12 of
them um and so again if you're if you're taking some time to care carefully
assess what's going on with youre it's good to kind of reference these to think
about the sort of ecosystem of the state support that's coming through your State
library and think oh is this is this technically meeting LST purposes and
assessing that for your Moe so here we are again with
diagrams again not wanting to bog you down of course but um there is this is
helpful because another interesting Quirk if you will aboute is that it's
one of the few um areas of financial reporting where there is actually
potential overlap and so this tries to encapsulate what what we're talking
about here so you look at the lsta purposes that's the big category at the
top and then branching off of that almost like a subset of the lsta
purposes is the ones that you said you were going to focus on through your
5-year plan so I I don't think that any of your fiveyear plans are covering all
12 of the LSA purposes perhaps they are um but often it's more honed in on a few
and so that's why it's like a piece of it and then underneath that 5year plan
as you all those of you who have um intimate experience with the spr know
that in order to report a project you have to align it to one of your goals
which then aligns with the lsta prior ities and so under those projects is
where you report match financials which you've seen in the column of lsta or
whether it's state or whether it's other and that is where the state um match can
fall into there and then at the same time so there's maybe some State funds
that are supporting a project um or projects in the spr those same state
funds can also be counted towards youre so it's one of those rare situations
where you're reporting it here and you're also reporting the same number
potentially over in thee um field um and but they're also as you can hopefully
see demonstrated here the state match portion of your projects that you report
could only be maybe a a smaller uh fraction of a larger State funding that
you're capturing in youre so it's it's complex certainly um I'm not I'm not
under any delusions that there'll be more questions about how that works but
that's sort of an attempt to give you a general layout of of how it
works and um this is a little bit easier visualization uh is the way it's
calculated so um as you can see here if you wanted to on your own test kind of
your awareness of youre requirement uh you could take go into the spr or even
your own internal records and look at what you reported for 20 20 2021 and
2022 add them together divide it by three and that average is your
subsequent Moe requirement um a little bit of an spr hack to do that without
doing any math is in you have access to the your 2023 um spr right now you could
go into your financial status report and hit save and that minimum will show up
because we have it in our the back end of our system also
all right so we're going to take a brief um lecture breather and get into a
scenario um and I'm going to introduce we set the scene set the stage for our
scenario our maintenance of effort Story begins with a conversation among lsta
coordinators from three states east aago new
swissa and old gorgona these three coordinators have
been SLA BFFs for for a while now and we join them in the middle of a virtual
hangout as they prepare for their spr report hey besties how's your spr
reporting going sorry I rushed you it's fine it's
okay Betsy not too not too bad the projects are just about finished but I'm
still working through the financials I totally get that there's always
something I need to triple and quad duple check especially thate figure for
sure that reminds me to check out the financial status report in the spr to
see what the minimum requirement is so I can make sure I work my financials to
match that number to the penny what do you
mean uh you know you don't want to report too much over the minimum or else
you might have a hard time meeting the requirement if that three-year average
gets too high
sure you I mean I certainly understand your logic behind wanting to create a
kind of safety net but I don't think that line of thinking is in keeping with
thee requirements I have to agree with old
gorg over here at a recent site visit our program officer mentioned the same
thing talking about all means all so we needed to revisit oure calculation to
include entire categories of State funds that count toward Moe rather than
choosing portions and percentages that got us as close to the minimum as
possible oh my gosh wow I am so shocked right now okay thanks I'm so glad this
came up I'm gonna reach out to my program
officer and discuss this with her hey that's what we're here for and your
program officer too of course and now that we're talking about
this I'm realizing that it might be time to reconnect with our finance office to
take a closer look at what we've always done there are some new folks over there
and the figures they give me always seem logical and sound but I'm not 100%
confident that their approach is consistent that is so smart bestie and
sounds like a great way to be on the same page with your finan F Finance
folks it might be helpful to share some of imls guidance documents related toe
like the waiver guidance in the manual that everybody here knows about to help
give you and finance staff a Common Language to speak well speaking a
waivers looks like yours truly is going to be heading down that road this
year I know yeah remember the lake V flood last
spring it caused widespread destruction throughout the southeast portion of the
state and we're still recovering from the financial losses the only good news
is that it seems like a pretty cut and dry waiver so I'm thinking I don't need
to worry about putting a draft waiver together and meeting that earlier
deadline to imls well I certainly don't want to tell
you what to do but I've heard that submitting a draft it was very helpful
to States looking for an OE waiver I agree it doesn't guarantee you'll get a
waiver or anything but having an extra set of eyes to look over your draft can
really help especially because there's always going to be a certain context
specific to your state that you may not realize you need to articulate to a
larger audience wow you both are right as usual lots for me to consider I
should probably review the Moe waiver timeline and plan accordingly I'm so
glad we had this time to chat same me too thanks besties and
[Applause] the lake the lake F reference really
didn't get much a
laugh we're going to continue to talk aboute um and talk about uhe waivers and
recalculations so apparently brandy Old Fashions are really big in Wisconson and
just like you can get a brandy Old Fashion with either Seven up or club
soda you can approach Moe in one of two ways depending on your situation so I'm
going to walk through the waiver process as well as with calculations now the
waiver is when uh is considered if you do not meet thee requirement at the end
of the fiscal year in your spr report and you want to request a waiver to
avoid the penalty this only happens at the beginning of that calendar year
after you submit that spr report a
recalculation on the other hand is initiated by you and it can happen any
time and this occurs when you need to reassess what you're calculating in
youre figures uh and and want to get a new calculation on the books uh as we've
all mentioned the statute says all means all withe so you want to be making sure
you are counting all of those stable cost categories
so uh I'm going to cover the recalculation first so once you look at
your figures and you decide that it's best for you to recalculate you will
send a message in egms that has a cover letter that explains the reason for your
recalculation and your updated cost categories you'll also submit an
attachment that shows your your categories that you list and the figures
that cover the current year as well as the three prior years so it's going to
be covering four years total we do have an example of what a spreadsheet could
look like it's in uh the grant EST States manual we have it linked here and
you want to make sure you check on thee expenditures tab
there uh now once once you submit that message to us we'll take some time to
review it make sure it looks accurate and if we approve it we will send you a
formal confirmation letter after that we are going to go into the spr and reopen
those spr reports in the corresponding year so the present year um in the past
three years um and you may be still working on the present year um but yeah
we'll open up the past three years uh you will go in update the spr numbers
for the fore recertify and then we
[Music]
reapprovals ago based on this recalculation you missed Moe we're not
going to make you return funds from three years ago this is just resetting
that calculation with the new cost categories going
forward so now we're going to talk about the waiver uh which is definitely more
complicated and please know that we are wedded to the statute aboute W waivers
and we have to follow them uh in recent years we have been working with our
legal team to help distill it and simplify the waiver process and it's
it's our desire to communicate what is weighted most in that waiver process and
make sure that is a transparent uh process for everyone now the big thing
is we must determine if a waiver would be Equitable based on exceptional and
uncontrollable circumstances this could be an
unforeseen decline in Financial Resources it could also be a natural
disaster that you experience experience but we have to look to make sure that
these types of instances are affecting thosee figures
directly so uh if uh if the financial situation in your
state has gone sour Crut you may be able to demonstrate that
you're eligible for Ane waiver uh most of our waivers that we see coming in are
around financial hardship and these need to be circumstances that are
unforeseeable and uncontrollable
unforeseen um one one example that we see often is
that many states count salaries in their Moe now if if your salaries are lower
because you've had a lot of retirements and resignations that year and you're
just having a really slow hiring process that's not generally seen as a just
justifiable uh reason for a waiver however if let's say there is a natural
disaster or something has happened um in the state and it's caused you to
reallocate salaries to another set of funds that is needed for the state that
may pass muster for a
waiver so
assuming that the state and we're talking about the state as a whole um um
is able to make adequate showing of financial hardship we have to determine
if it would be Equitable to Grant a waiver um so first we examine the state
as a whole actual appropriation uh for for the year in
question and we look at the proportionate amount of overall revenues
in the state in that same year so we're looking at appropriation versus Revenue
in the state as a whole then we examine your
individual sla's actual appropriation for that same
year we look at those two numbers and compare
them and we want what we want to see here is that the cut at the SLA level is
proportionately the same at the state level if your SLA is being affected more
more than the General State numbers uh that we would not find that
Equitable and what if a natural disaster hits your state like and sometimes it
happens faster than chees curds thrown into a vat of Hot Oil Well Done a true
Act of God um what we want to see with natural
disasters is that the fiscal year proximity uh is affected by this natural
disaster we we want to see what is called a causal connection that there
that This Disaster has directly affected the costs in
youre so and as a result your state is in financial
decline so you really need to draw a direct line to from the disaster to the
decline in funding
so what is important to understand is that the uncontrollable aspect ofe is
around the entire state so not just not just within your laa but uh all these
swiss cheese portions and that it and that it points
back to was this within the state's control or uh did this happen as a as a
direct result of something that no one could
control so not meeting match versus not meeting emoe and Dennis touched on this
a little bit so not meeting your match affects that current award and there is
no way you can wave not meeting your match
requirement basically uh if you find that you're not going to meet your match
requirement you have to notify imls as soon as
possible and what's going to happen is that you will have to return federal
funds at the same percentage at which you do not meet your match so if you
miss your match by 10% then you will have to give back 10% of that Federal
award for maintenance of effort it affects your future award so if you miss
miss youre do not uh do not get a waiver then the following Grant year the next
award that you receive will be uh lessened will be diminished taken away
diminished yes um at the same percentage at which you missed Moe so again if you
missed youre by 10% your uh future award will be 10%
less yes I'm going to pass it back to you fantastic
okay that was a lot everybody take a few deep breaths roll your shoulders that's
a lote match it always throws me a
bit okay we're going to talk about financial management procedures
yeah let's get
going so first we're going to discuss requesting
payments this is what it should look like when you've requested a payment via
egms if you're confused used great
um please reach out to your program officer I'm really happy that none of
you were like what the
heck these are some suggestions when considering payments get to know your
finance office utilize egms features to stay abast of finance office activities
requests submitted at the end of the quarter may take longer to process so
don't be a br brat um when it comes to connecting with your finance office was
a bit of a reach but I like it it's a great
slide we touched on this yesterday um how to get paid fast you're going to
submit no more than one payment request per week per award going
forward um you can request payment as a as Advance or as in reimbursement but
not both for the same time period and please avoid overlapping payment periods
know your Awards and date don't request funds for a date that occurs after the
end of your Awards period of performance please
red returning funds in some situations it's necessary
to for an slaa to return funds to imls example situations from our guidance
include when the slaa or imls made an error in the draw down return the funds
immediately to imls or when the slaa or any of its
subrecipients does not obligate Grant funds it has drawn down as an advance
within 30 days of the draw down return the funds immediately to
imls you can see the two primary methods for returning funds up on the screen we
get a lot of questions about how to exactly how to return the funds in terms
of procedures they are up on the screen SLA funds should be reconciled on
a monthly basis and should adhere established internal
controls however this sit situation may arise after an audit or when a
subrecipient returns funds to the SLA months or even years after an awards
liquidation deadline when the SL AA must return funds from a prior award year
well past the liquidation deadline return the funds immediately to imls
there's a theme here for your grants to States program we typically expect full
liquidation since imls cannot reallocate unused funds they go back to
treasury they don't go to Dennis or
Madison advances versus reimbursements all previously requested advances
advaned funds must be fully expended before submitting your next request
advances must be spent within 30 days of making the payment request we can't
stress this enough notify us via egms reach message when funds are
spent and at this point and reimbursements may be um a more
appropriate approach than advances but please reach out to your program officer
to discuss the situation if you have questions and at this point I'm going to
pass it back to Madison
now I want to touch on indirect costs and modified total direct costs for
those of you who Grant sub Awards Sub sub your subrecipients are
entitled to the DI Minimus indirect cost rate which is more than that SLA rate of
4% currently the DI Minimus rate is 10% um it is it is going up with the new
regulations in October um but you are required to honor a subrecipients
rate if if they're claiming a federally negotiated rate uh you should uh require
them to provide the documentation for that and subian don't have to take the
full rate they if the rate is 20% or if they're using the diminus rate of 10%
they can actually take less than they can take 5% if if they prefer uh now
what is key is that if using the dominous rate
uh you have to be aware of the modified total direct costs and it is outlined in
2 CFR and this essentially means that um there are things that you have to take
out of the budget when determining the the amount that goes
towards indirect costs so so I'll go ahead and and read the citation it means
uh mtdc covers direct salaries and wages fringe benefits materials and supplies
Services travel subs and subcontracts of the first
25,000 um it excludes equipment Capital expenditures OPI um charges for patient
care rental costs tuition remission scholarships and fellowships and
participant support costs and the portion of each sub award and
subcontract in excess of 25,000 um so when you are when you are
determining the indirect cost amount for these subrecipient budgets you want to
make sure that those exceptions are removed from the budget before
determining the rate uh a best practice as I mentioned
is uh requesting that negotiated rate paper work if they are using a
negotiated rate that's higher than the
10% so here are some budget examples of um providing enough information in the
budget for salaries and wages in the spr when filling out information Please
provide the position titles and the FTE equivalents especially when you're
accounting for more than one staff person in this budget category now these
two screen shots here provide great examples of budget descriptions uh the
First shows the differentiation between lsta and state funds and the one below
it shows how a single staff member salary is allocated across multiple
projects now remember that for staff uh we do not need names we just want
position
titles for other operational expenses um these are only for for those indirect
costs and should only be used for a subrecipient indirect costs if you the
SLA has an indirect costs you those should be represented in the
administrative project not this project not the direct project now here are um
some examples that we have on the screen the two descriptions at the top were
returned because the charges described are not what one would consider uh
indirect costs we could see how these types of charges could be misperceived
as other charges because they don't seem to directly fit into any of the other
budget boxes um but for the purpose of the spr however this category is solely
reserved for IND costs both of these instances at the top uh it would be best
to put those costs in the services box now the example at the bottom is uh
how it should be used to capture the indirect cost of sub recipients um this
specific indirect cost rate percentage that was charged to the sub recipient
Grant is key and encourag we'd like you to include the rate in the Box um and if
your project if you're if you're bundling and you're combining multiple
subg grants uh with several C recipients uh you can uh itemize that box so you
can list each of the sub recipients and include their rate
[Laughter] it's just one area but uh it's something
I don't know you can tell I've been doing this for a really long time
because when I read something this nice it's just it makes my
day and so I just wanted to uh part and also speaking a little bit to
yesterday's um data presentation about how over time that the projects have
become like more efficiently reported um and that has a lot to do with what all
of you have done to Aggregate and consolidate um uh several subg grants
into one place so from a budget perspective and all of our wonderful
Finance people here and the ones watching we love you thank you um you
know for just a helpful sort of um snapshot of what it could look like to
summarize uh several subgrant um in a concise way and so this is kind
of an example of that where there were several subrecipients they were all kind
of in a similar category as you can see and they give you sort of a top level
description of um of what was purchased and then the details can be found in
another place in this example there was like a spreadsheet that they were using
internally to track all of these and they just attached it as additional
material so you didn't have to reinvent the wheel if I can find those details
and look at them elsewhere then I have everything I need in this report so um
and that's what we want to encourage that like most of you probably are
having these sort of Standalone um methods for tracking these details and
so as long as we have like a top level summary here um and as you can see it
tells you what all of the require recipients were required to provide a
match so we see all of that listed here and it points to the number everything
matches it's just wonderful I went into that spreadsheet and I looked at all the
details and I could review that the equipment was all solid and reasonable
and all of that so yeah this is just uh one of many possible examples for how
you can not only aggregate the outcomes data but also aggregating the
financials that's all I think that is the end of our formal pres the end of
our formal presentation if you all have any questions Moe
budget and we do have time to get weed Terry's got some
yeah I don't think we necessarily need them to be aggregated a lot of states do
have a single match only project um and if you feel that gives you adequate
space to describe what is going on in those match projects I think that's fine
for us if you feel the need to use more than one project for
match that's fine I would say just just like any other project that you would
aggregate or combine as long as they all meet the same goal and intent um that
should be feasible or manageable exactly MH
um if we need to recalculate oure but it's a very let's say it's just
something very small that's not going to affect our ability to meet Moe do we
still need to go through the recalculation process the formal
recalculation process or can we just do that and and use that um you know the
added you know the thing that we added in can we just use that kind of going
forward well um well one one example that I can
think of from one state is that it wasn't necessarily A recal they just
they had a they had a cost that was in past years a I guess like a one-time
cost where they it wasn't guaranteed every year and then something happened
with the legislature and it was a it became a guaranteed cost and it became
one of those stable cost categories so they didn't they didn't do a
recalculation they just from then moving forward They just added that cost as a
new stable cost um that may not necessarily be your examp your case
specifically I don't know if Terry has anything to add
above
so I really noticed a couple of years ago you all were um asking us to provide
more information in that Supply section and looking at your most recent example
of a supplies question I usually just put them in a list but would you prefer
complete sentences we do not need complete
sentences okay UN list it's just fine we also don't want bullet
points the system doesn't want bullet points um I have a question about admin
costs when you were talking about the different salaries that could be in
there could someone that was like an admin assistant that is supporting the
lsta program and that work be in there or it should it just be something where
it's more coordinator or um chief officer I mean if they're contributing
to the work of the lsta program they can be included in there
we've got another question
man for the other operational expenses category in the spr how difficult would
it be to rename that category like subrecipient
indirect is that a change that could happen that's a great question I that's
like a note to take back to the ranch I think a note has been made about that
already and I think it's it's part of our you know reiteration of the like the
future of the spr yeah because you're right it is it is not straightforward it
it may also be something that it wouldn't be replacement it would be in
addition to like it would it could be an additional cat
that's true too I'm yeah I can see your face Wendy coplin
yeah Terry not get into that
yeah oh
man acat
great question that is different um just because um as you may have seen from all
of the the charts and projections and numbers and all of that incredibly like
well harvested data if if the activity numbers aren't in those places than when
they run an export and like are trying to kind of match up Apples to Apples um
it would be much more difficult for them to look through and download everybody's
like additional material attachments of that of those numbers and so in that
case for the purposes of their um of their data analysis it's kind of
critical it stays there similar to this um we still have the financials in the
right in those fields for us to pull and to be able to Total it's just those
specific details that would be suitable for like an additional material
spreadsheet we can assume at the activity level if you know at the if
they were listing this as like the at the purchase as a purchase not that a
purchase is an activity but acquisitional they outlined in those
boxes how many pieces of software how many pieces
of Hardware that they purchased and that's why we need those numbers in
those boxes specifically to add to Dennis's Point yeah I I would say and
also um maybe a a version of that that they
might be getting at is let's say in this example they purchased 1100 pieces of
equipment um and in the activity narrative they might say like for more
details look at the additional material spreadsheet to know like how many Dell
servers or whatever was purchased um that level of granularity would be good
in a supporting spread sheet
all right any other thoughts thanks very much thanks
everybody yeah hey we're getting towards lunch there is one
[Music] more short boot camp segment we're going
to try to squeeze in this one Madison is g to fly solo on and she um if you don't
know her background had started at IMs um in our discretionary Grant making
office and then migrated to our finance office and was doing um grants
management things sort of across the different programs and then came to gr
to state so she's got a lot of great um knooow that she's sort of packed into
some of this and uh we're excited to share it with you so thanks
Madison thank you uh we're going to be doing a quick presentation on Grant
monitoring best practices and monitoring your your federal fund funding is a real
critical component because it allows you to uh meet the compliance requirements
that are listed in the federal regulations and it also allows you to
meet your project goals um it also helps us to uh when we when we see what kind
of monitoring you're doing uh provide additional technical assistance and
ensure that Ade adequate controls are in place to improve
accountability so uh basically internal controls are
procedures and policies that help ensure funds are used properly and 2 CFR 200
outlines that grantees must establish and maintain internal
controls uh this includes compliance with statutes regulations and those
terms and conditions as well as following procur procurement rules and
acquisition regulations so uh the next few slides will be essentially tips for
uh having internal controls so good
indicators uh that you have some good internal controls are timely liquidation
of drawdowns timely submission of reports that you take care and Safeguard
assets purchased with federal funds um that you understand the
required certifications and assurances and corresponding policies so all those
things that we we mentioned yesterday that your authorized official or state
librarian has to sign with every award um it's good to understand what they're
signing um and uh um know who those signatories
are know the chain of command and you want to make sure that there are
multiple levels of approval for transparency within your organization uh
checks and balances within your group are good
so when it comes to procurement for States 2 CFR uh uh outlines that you as
the state must follow your State's procurement rules um there are other
regulations around procurement in the in to CFR that's
worth pointing out um those are Contracting with small and minority
businesses women's businesses veteran owned businesses
uh you should take priority for those um highlighting domestic preferences for
procurement and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that and then also
uh using or procuring recovered materials so biobased products recycled
materials um environmentally conscious materials um should be prioritized as
well so for that domestic preference we get a lot of question questions around
this as it requires uh both States and any subrecipients you have to the quote
unquote greatest extent practical to purchase things that are made in the
United States now there is no dollar threshold for this uh there is no
exceptions on on the awarde or if contract type Etc it applies to everyone
so what does this mean practically for you uh if there is a a conference
opportunity or continuing education opportunity that may be taking place in
a different country uh it doesn't mean that it is
completely unallowable but we want you to look critically at that opportunity
and think could is this the best and only opportunity to do this type of
education or is there something within the United States that could fulfill
this requirement uh and you want to make sure
you document your reasoning for that so if you really believe that um and find
that that overseas conference is the best and only point of education for
that topic it could be reasonable and allowable another example that we see a
lot are uh resource materials and books uh your libraries may want to fund
collections in in different languages and some of those books may not be
easily uh received from from United States vendors uh so you know if you
want to get books in Chinese it may be easier to purchase books from an Asian
um uh site or procurement uh area and that is Justified as something that's
reasonable and necessary um there's also Soul Source
consideration so if you're using El severe um it's you really have no other
option
the next we mentioned we mentioned this yesterday uh a little cryptically but
tcfr is uh explicitly prohibiting recipients and subrecipients from uh
purchasing telecommunications and video specifications equipment from countries
that are quote unquote doing I guess they are considered the enemy or a
covered foreign country um so we don't want any doing business with the Enemy
affectionately um they they they spell out the
company's by name and and uh highlight that uh you cannot work with these
companies or their Affiliates um and while I'm not going to read out those
companies explicitly here on the slide you can check out check out the FAQ um
checking sam.gov and there could be indicators in sam.gov that you will not
want to purchase from those
organizations so I mentioned at the beginning of safeguarding materials that
you purchase with federal funds and this this comes under the equipment uh um
regulation in 2 CFR um and so these are just some basic outlines for those
equipment purchases these are things currently that are f ,000 or more um in
the future that's being changed to $110,000 um but essentially any
equipment has to be preapproved by imls before you purchase it so you'll want to
send us a message in egms um requesting uh what you're going to be purchasing
how much it's going to cost and how it's going to contribute to your fiveyear
plan um using that equipment it must be used for the authorized purposes of the
project that you're funding at least for the entire period of performance
um or until the property is no longer needed after the period of performance
so we encourage you to keep using these these pieces of equipment after the
grant is over um please note that uh regulations around equipment differ uh
between states and other non-federal entities and I'm going to touch on that
in a few
minutes but the regs do require keep inventory of equipment a physical
inventory must be kept and and reconciled with records at least once
every two years so it's good to keep a record of the equipment that you are
approving and issuing with imls funds you must have a control system in
place uh to pre prevent property loss damage or theft and if any of those
things do occur they need to be investigated uh you must have procedures
place for regular maintenance so you have that really trusty bookmobile that
you bought for that rural County that's really helpful uh they do need to have
um uh procedures in place to making sure it's maintained in good condition um if
you if it comes down to after the performance period um the equipment is
not useful anymore or they want to sell the property um proper procedures must
be followed for that and dis disposition is fully outlined
um when it comes time to dispose a piece of equipment you want to first get an
idea of its fair market value its current fair market value so if it's
it's if it's $5,000 or less so it's no longer considered equipment
um you or the suby can dispose of it however you like without any
consideration to imls it is if it is still valued as equipment so over $5,000
um you must request disposition approval to imls now uh we're not trying to make
this super hard for you guys uh but it is a federal requirement so what we ask
of you is to present to us the plan of how you're going to dispose of this
piece of equipment um so you could transfer it to another entity that could
use it for its similar for similar purpose um could like for example of
that book mobile could another Library uh in the area use it um
or if you choose to sell it uh you need to tell us how you plan to use that
those funds uh that you receive in the sale um we generally encourage that
those funds go to a similar purpose so again the
bookmobile you can use those funds to purchase a new one or to help with
Outreach Services just an example
so uh H when it comes to equipment and
subrecipients you as passrs it is best to require that your
subrecipient keep their own records of their of their equipment and if you ever
conduct site visits um it's good to ask to see those physical assets that were
purchased um check them out make sure you record that you've seen them um and
this includes both current and past Federal
Awards other requirements for passrs So This is folks who are doing Sub Sub sub
awwards um there are things both pre-award and during the award that you
are required to do um to ensure adequate monitoring so when you're when you're
putting out your sub award opportunities you want to make sure you provide clear
requirements in accordance with the laws and make sure that your potential sub
award are aware of these um when you get receive applicants for these sub Awards
you need to conduct a a potential risk assessment for
non-compliance things you could do for this um do you know have you had
previous experience with this organization have they had a good track
record with with their funding do they typically complete their projects are
they successful with their projects have they ever had any audits they uh if you
ask them they should close that to you and you can find more details on the
audit have they had new uh systems in place that have completely changed
recently or maybe they have a completely new set of personnel than in your past
experiences with them um so these are things to consider when you're doing
that risk assessment as as we mentioned um several
times subrecipients must have a sam.gov registration UEI that UI number it
doesn't have to be the full registration that you as a a federal awarde have
received but they do have to have that UEI um also you must honor that indirect
cost rate so at least the diminus rate or if they have a negotiated rate you
have to honor that but you can require documentation for the
rate so during the award uh if you give out sub awards that
are greater than or equal to $30,000 you have to report that in the
federal funding accountability and transparency act sub award Reporting
System also known as fsrs or fur fers uh you really only need to you only
need to report these Awards around the time of the award uh within 30 days or
within by the end of the next month that you issue the award you do not need to
report anything after the award is over um just at that time of the
award um it's good to provide training on the requirements of these Grant funds
and keep in touch with your sub awardees check in with them have a good collegial
relationship have the same relationship that you have with
us um and they'll they'll feel comfortable coming to you with questions
and concerns um again keep records of your sub Awards
and require your subes to keep records as
well and require financial and performance reports and review them for
Success now uh if you find you do a risk assessment and you have a little bit of
concern with awarding an entity some funding but you don't want to outright
deny them you can require additional methods ofone monitoring on your sub
rewards uh this could include in-person site visits it could include extra
reporting uh you could uh um allow reviewing of receipts if you
have the capacity to do that um you also were required to take action for any
non-compliance that you find now what does that mean taking action um you
could temporarily withhold cash payments until the correction is made you could
disallow certain costs or certain parts of a project you could suspend or
terminate the project if it gets to that point and if you find there's some
serious fraud waste and abuse happening on this project you could initiate
suspension and debarment proceedings which is one of those things that show
up when you check someone's sam.gov
number all right so those are some methods of monitoring do you have any
question questions both Statewide and sub
boards I have a question about
frankly um do you think we need to cond
risk if know is that yeah if you know them
and let's say uh it's good to document any concerns you have with specific
entities um so if uh it's good to keep you know complete and uh thorough
documentation of the grant project so maybe at the application process you can
make some note of maybe past concerns um that doesn't mean you can't not award
them
obviously I guess I'm not fully understanding you just have like a oh is
this your formula okay yeah
I think that's fine I think I think what's helpful is what is going to be
helpful documentation for you and your staff and someone you know let's say you
win the lottery and you're like peace out and someone has to take over the
grants like what kind of information do you want them to
see suggestion taking action the end
sure yeah the F's providing training to his
peers and this is uh to be clear this is in um 2 CFR 2000.
339 for remedies for non-compliance and they list specifically temporarily
withholding cash payments pending correction disallow part of the cost or
an activity wholly or partly suspend or terminate the award initiate suspension
or dearment proceedings and withhold further awards
for the projector program
exactly
yes mhm yeah that's
great so following up on the equipment disposal is that the equip disal is that
uh forever so as long as that equipment exists they have to ask for there's no
depreciation or anything goes yeah if I mean if it depre that's determining the
fair market value so if it has depreciated in value um and you find
that the current value is under 5 ,000 you don't have to ask us okay but you do
have to do that current market value estimation and then inform you that it
has if it's over $5,000 we need to be informed if it's under we don't need to
hear anything okay and then if if they were to transfer that equipment to
another I don't know another library with your permission then the reporting
responsibility also transfers to them well if it if it's outside yes that's
true okay yeah um no I'm suuck guessing
that right I don't I think if you were to sell the equipment or donate the
equipment to another Library I don't think we would need to
keep in touch with them about what they do with
it yeah okay we just need to clear it the the record that that you as the
primary purchaser we would just need to close
that Loop okay and then one really quick uh question the fsrs is that where we do
the ffata is that the same yes that's it okay also known as
ffata great we have a few
minutes thanks everybody oh we have one more one more gotcha yeah um so
typically for the DI Minimus rate uh it can be claimed if the organization or
agency has not had a negotiated rate in the past I'm assuming that's the case
here so if for example they had a negotiated rate that was below the de
Minimus rate they're basically stuck with that um uh it's not the case that
they can claim the DI Minimus rate because it's higher even if they had a
negotiator rate like you know imls is not going to allow that have have you
seen instances of a negotiated rate that's below the been lower yes yes oh
wow okay um that's unfortunate for them
um because what's interesting about that is that if someone has a negotiated rate
and it expires they can go back to using the Dom
Minimus so I feel like you could use a demmin I've just never heard of that
instance yeah yeah I guess if your active rate is lower you have to use
your active rate
yeah one more question mhm in the 2021 changes they talked
about a clearing house for the indirect cost rates oh have you heard anything
about that
I think that's because the 2021 language was like if you never had
an indirect negoti con and now they loen
that
language indirect Neti
notal didn't do have
not and sub should be able
to they can MH
I mean in any general award except for lsta funds you have to use 4% yeah yeah
yeah I mean yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah if you
were to apply for a discretionary Grant with imls and you wanted to use less
than your negotiated rate you could only CLA you can claim only part of it
MH but one thing to make sure you're is that if you in for a competitive ILS
our discretionary team you don't have to use you can use to minim if you don't
have negotiated rate and if you do have negotiated
certain and to follow off on that some people choose to use less than their
negotiated rate because they feel like it makes them more competitive but their
agency who is controlling that has to grant them the waiver to um essentially
uh like defer it or something like that where or not defer it where they're
actually saying it's being waved and
and now this is turning into a discretionary thing if you no no no no
no that's good if if you if you're interested in applying for a
discretionary Grant um we can't and you know a lot of a lot of universities
apply for grants and University indirect cost rates are notoriously very high um
we can't we can't say that a lower rate is more competitive when we're doing
review like we can't we can't be like o 55% of that Grant's going to go to admin
um that's that can't be considered when we're reviewing the grant grant
projects great well thanks everybody happy to answer any more questionss if
you think of [Applause]
them well I think that was the perfect amount of cheese and thank you Cindy so
much for your time with us we collectively appreciate you