Welcome back, everybody.
Good morning.
Welcome back to the.
The state library job Fair, Day 2.
I hope you all found your perfect candidates yesterday and
we'll just recycle the name badges and swap out the states
next year. It'll be great.
Welcome back.
We we are heading into the last day of the conference. I see the
luggage has already found its way over to the back wall. We're
going to have a dedicated break at 10:00 o'clock that's longer.
It's a 10 to 10:30 break if you need to check out of your rooms.
And we know this elevators are not moving fast so we hope you
make it through, but luggage can go in the back. We have an
exciting morning with our director this morning and I'm
just going to spend the 1st 15 minutes.
Kind of kicking us off.
We'll play a fun game if you're up for it, so be thinking about
this. I'm going to ask you to finish the phrase I came to
Seattle and.
Blank I came to Seattle and I blank. So you can share things
from the work World Conference. You can share things from your
tourism venues out in the world. You can share things you learned
from fellow participants. I came to Seattle and I blank and if
you do this.
We've got some leftover Emerald City candies for you.
I think we'll kick it off though with our parking lot questions
from yesterday. These were the things that we didn't have time
to answer during the scheduled program. So we're going to
revisit them a bit today, so.
You know kind of going in order from the topics that we covered
yesterday, we had a question will addition this is in
pertinence to the state program report, the SPR, will additional
materials be public facing in the future?
? It's a question mark for us too. We have heard that that
might be helpful. We've heard that we might need to put some
controls around that, like some things being public and some
things not that you would have control over. So we'll certainly
be looking into it, but we don't know yet. We're going to find
out.
What makes the project exemplary in the SPR? A number of things.
These are determined by you. They help us though when you are
a state that maybe has 100 projects to choose from and we
get a call from someone in your state that might work on the
hill and they want to know like what the exemplary projects were
last year, what were the highlights. It's really hard for
us to parse through 100 projects in like 4 hours. So if you have
marked.
Something exemplary, it's super helpful to us. Maybe it was done
super cost efficiently and became a model for the rest of
this state. Maybe it's representative partnerships. I
mean, you will know and your recipients will know when
something really was outstanding. We hope and we hope
that you'll utilize that exemplary projects field to let
us know what those are.
Made a comment about implementing the multi factor
authentication so I know sweetheart will be all ears.
One issue with login.gov is that even if you check off that you
want it to remember your device, it almost every time, even
within a day or two in some in some way asks for you to
recertify again. So for a system like the SPR, please make sure
it remembers us for longer.
And then I think this is a clarification statement, it's
about reporting for the 23 to 27 five year plan.
In the in the SPR, we will report on old projects coming
up. That's correct. The next reporting cycle if you're not
already in an extension for ARPA, which means you're in
fiscal 21, the next cycle that's coming up and ending is fiscal
year 2022 that was in the old cycle.
So in the five year evaluation we will need the new project
info for 20 to 23. I think that's their state range. For
the first year of the evaluation we rearranged a lot of our
projects and added some in the new plan. So I think the system
and our coaching you through the five year valuation for the next
cycle will accommodate this. We're going to have the next
five year evaluation accommodating fiscal year 2324
and 25.
Because as you know, we can only ever get through the first three
years of a five year cycle when we do the five year evaluation.
So it's not that the 2022 grants are a throwaway. We still really
care about them, but they're not going to be included in the
formal evaluation and they will come under your old goals. And
we keep saying over and over again, don't change your goals
yet and This is why.
OK, we have.
It's just that inspirational content, intentional approach to
belonging, inclusion and equity. Maybe that is coaching us
towards a place in the future. And if so, we appreciate you.
Then we've got a fun question. I guess this is a show of hands or
maybe a microphone question.
In honor of Taylor Swift's upcoming tour.
Which Swifty Sarah are you? I don't know the Swifty eras, so
I'm I'm a bad asker of this question.
Anyone.
Folklore. I hear a folklore.
And some seconds enter enter was it red? I'm so out of this.
Great question.
What was that reputation?
I mean, I mean Taylor Swift, OK.
Great question.
Let's let's go on to our our trivia question. I came to
Seattle and I blank who would like to be our brave volunteer
at a microphone to go 1st to tell us how they end that
sentence.
I gave you 3 minutes to think about it.
Three or the hills of San Francisco.
Hey.
Thank you.
I came to Seattle and thought I was going to have a heart attack
walking the hills of Seattle.
We're still here.
I came to Seattle and took an Uber so I didn't have to do the
hills.
I came to Seattle and I saw the shrunken heads.
Do you want to know where they are?
If you walk down the street, down the hill, and you could
take an Uber back, get to the water and there's a place called
yield curiosity shop, and it's right on the water. It's
Seattle, go to place, and they have tiny shrunken heads and all
sorts of weird.
Greetings.
I'm so excited I actually got to come to Seattle. I did not get
stuck in Atlanta this year.
And given that Wendy was our MC yesterday, we're so glad you
made it. Great MC job.
I came to Seattle and I learned that people like to take stuff
from Ohio and that Evan doesn't know inches from feet.
May I have two OK.
I came to Seattle, took an Uber to a restaurant which turned out
to be closed, and walked up the hill. And the second time.
And I came to Seattle and I'm taking pics at home.
I came to Seattle and I followed Susan to the restaurant that was
closed.
We all follow Susan sometimes.
All right. Thank you for indulging that. It's great to
hear how you spent your time in Seattle.
All right. We are turning to a session I'm really excited
about.
And I I want to say that we, we've had a setting of
expectations with our current director, Crosby Kemper, that
I'm not sure we'll be able to maintain in the future. Crosby
has graced us with his presence at this conference for many
years running, and I'm here to tell you that's not the norm. So
sorry, Crosby, we we roped you in unknowingly to this
conference. We're so grateful that you've been coming and
spending your time.
With us, though, it really means a lot. Crosby is headed into his
last year with IMS, so we've prepped everybody to ask their
best and brightest questions of you. We have 45 minutes to hear
from Crosby and he, you know, as many of you know, has been just
a wonderful director for this time. He's gotten us through the
pandemic. He is a driving force behind why the stimulus funds
happened.
And rolled out so well, he continues. Yeah, let's give him.
He continues to bring really positive energy and focus from
other arenas to our agency. You continues to bring new resources
in the form of personnel and funding into our agency in ways
that we haven't seen for years. And on top of all this, he times
finds time to read deeply and think critically and make us all
laugh all the time. So I hope that you'll enjoy this next.
We have maybe 1/2 an hour to hear from Crosby and then maybe
15 minutes or so for questions. Please help me welcome him, our
director.
Thank you Terry, so much. I appreciate. I always love
Terry's introductions. She describes the person I don't
recognize, but she said I'm not the norm and what she really
meant is I'm not normal.
And and that's and that's true. So you know you're going to hear
from me today and I apologize in advance. I I came to Seattle
expecting that it would rain and I'm so disappointed.
So I do have a theme and and I Jamie from Arizona asked me a
great question just a few minutes over here about
application processes and money for for the digital divide and
and that sort of thing. So I think actually the question and
answer session may be the most important thing. So I'll try and
get through what I I have to say fairly fairly quickly. I
actually have about 10 pages of things I wanted to say. So I'll
try and cut it down a little bit so we can get to the questions.
I do have a scene and I was reading the, I read a little bit
of the new book by a guy named Richard Haass, who's one of our
leading diplomats and and president of the Council on
Foreign Relations for a long time. It's called the bill of
obligations and in it he has a great phrase that I give to you
and I hope I'll also finish with this theme of my remarks, which
is he said in this country we have a commitment to rights and
we all know how important that is.
Even even in sometimes the absence of our fully adhering to
the those rights that we're all struggling to retain, the
commitment to, to rights that is in our founding and is in our
DNA. I think they said we have a commitment to rights, but we
also need a culture of obligation. That obligation is
the other side of rights of the coin of our realm, and I believe
that's absolutely true.
And I'll get back to that in a minute. But the first thing I
want to say to you about.
Grants to states program, state librarians, state library
authorities is that you are the partners with this agency in the
largest cultural program of the federal government.
It is, I think, one of the most, if not the most important
programs for a lot of reasons. When I last talked to you, last
talked to us, a state library group with the cosla.
Meeting in Montana retreat in Montana, I was talking about Jay
Ashcroft and some rulemaking that that JJ had done for
spending of state library money and in Missouri and I I sent him
a letter about this. He actually asked my opinion about about
this, which was a mistake on his part because I told him that it
wouldn't work, that he was giving handing to every every
any citizen.
With any kind of reason for restricting the book, the
ability for anybody to restrict a book for everybody, and that's
the exact opposite of what libraries should be doing, and
it makes it impossible for for a library to maintain a
collection. You could have a Wahabi Muslim come in and say, I
don't want any books with an undressed woman. I am woman not
completely covered.
That would eliminate very large percentage of our books. You
could you could have it the the question.
A book like Huckleberry Finn, which if you're an African
American parent you might have a reason to to not want your child
to read Huckleberry Finn, particularly at a certain age
because the N word is all through it now. It's it is in,
one in and it's at core it's the first great anti racist novel.
It's it's a it's a satire of of racism. But not every child is
going to understand that at a certain age. So do we take
Huckleberry Finn?
Library shelves do we take?
You could go through a list of any any kind of objection to
books and and just about any book would could be taken off.
The table.
And then there's the parents rights bill that can folks
actually the person that who's been supportive of the IMS was
the original author of the Parents Rights bill and in
Congress just passed the house and will die in the Senate. And
if you actually read it carefully, it's all about.
Making sure that parents have an engagement with particularly
school districts, but also libraries. And that's something
that in the library Bill of Rights and the in the culture of
librarianship is actually something that I believe we
endorse. The single most important thing about it,
however, is that it is a federal law.
And the United States, with the exception of filtering.
The federal government has never stepped in to talk about how
libraries should operate. Libraries, like school
districts, are local institutions. I'm a federalist.
I'm a madisonian. I'm a believer that the founders created a
unique system of government with the balance of powers and levels
of of sovereignty, including not only the federal government,
state governments and local governments and school districts
and libraries are are part of that. So when I talk to Julia
Letlow, who is the congressman, and I will.
Who wrote the bill? I will praise her for the sentiments in
the bill and I think the Ala should have done the same thing.
I think they made a mistake in the heavy criticism they gave
through billing and just simply say that this isn't federal
responsibility, it is a local responsibility.
I think the local responsibility of librarians is probably the
single most important thing about libraries today.
We we live in a time when community is is fractured, when
when we see social media.
Encouraging the extremes of our anger, our categorization of
each other as others, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook
thinking he was going to create a global community. And instead
he's created a global nightmare in which we're all as angry as
we can be on social media. And that includes, unfortunately, a
lot of librarians.
We we should, we should pay attention to the fact that
Community is only built face to face, and it's built in
understanding each other. That obligation that we have as
librarians to understand our communities and understanding
everybody in our Community as an individual.
And and and we live in a time that's not only polarized, but
in which.
So many people are living alone. We have 28 percent of our
households are single person households.
This is the highest number of that kind in the history of this
country, I think in the history of the world. And every
frontline librarian understands the problem with that, the
mental health problems that we have in this country, which are
of course not encouraged by drug and alcohol problems. And it's
not just the Sacklers, it's it's good to have a a villain in all
of this but in fact we're all engaged in this people living
alone, people with with drug and alcohol problems, with mental
health problems.
Encounters with the justice system, etcetera. We know, we
librarians know, homelessness, crime, you name eviction. Any
problem that we have in our community is tied directly back
to these problems, the problems of people living alone. And it's
also tied directly back to literacy.
We know that most homeless people, significant portion of
homeless people, significant portion, majority are either
homeless people of criminals of of the people living alone are
people who have either limited or no literacy.
And or they're literate only enough to to post on social
media and simple in simple ways that we all post on on social
media.
So what's the?
The solution to this, one of the solutions, it seems to me, is
that we concentrate again in in, in librarianship, on on where we
came from, which is reading and literacy.
So to to to tell you a little bit about what we're doing, a
year ago in March, we had a convening on reading and
literacy with Robert Putnam from Harvard and Maryanne Wolf from
UCLA and and some leaders in the library world talking about
this, talking about what we know about literacy in the library,
what we know about reading. We know a lot. We need to know
more. So we're going to be doing research at the IMS net at
Birnbaum, who is our.
The head of our Office of Research and evaluation is here.
There he is, and he'll be doing research.
Working with the library community and with research and
the research community on early childhood and and libraries. I
think ultimately we'll look at summer reading and and libraries
and what we should be doing about that and we'll we'll help
start practice groups. I hope that the state library level at
the Urban Library Council level that rural and small libraries
and and the research libraries and focus more on literacy and
particularly.
Literacy that crosses all the divides we have in this country.
Before we go to the question and answers session, I do, I do want
to talk a little bit about the positive things that are
happening in our world and I'll leave the digital divide to the
question and answer session but.
We the.
The United States Congress in its infinite wisdom, mainly
Senator Reed from Rhode Island.
Who's been our biggest supporter in the Senate?
Asked us to form an information literacy task force, we've
already had two convenings of essentially the research
community and the federal government, community agencies
and departments to talk about what's going on in the federal
government and what the research shows about information. There
is we're going to concentrate on public health and and financial
literacy to areas where we think a, we know a lot and B libraries
play a significant role.
And see, it's relatively speaking in this country at this
time, nothing is completely controversy free, but relatively
bipartisan. We learned a lot during the pandemic about what
works in terms of local information about things like
vaccines and masking. We learned that at the local level, public
health authorities at the local level, working with libraries,
working with museums, science centers, etcetera, working with
local.
Community groups and civic groups, social justice groups
were able to reverse some of what happened at the beginning
of the pandemic, which was of course people of color, poor
people, people on the other side of all of our divides worse
affected by the by the pandemic. And we reverse some of that
during the course of the pandemic and the second year of
the pandemic in terms of infections and death that people
of color specifically Hispanics and African Americans.
Actually had a better experience than white people in the second
year, and according to CDC statistics now there there are
controversies about why that why that is. But it seems to me and
to others David Leonhardt writing and then New York Times,
that some of that has to do with local information being
delivered by trusted sources, especially libraries at the
local level. I won't say that everything was great during the
pandemic at the.
Among libraries some, some libraries participated in that,
some did not and that's cloverland that did a study in
which it showed that only 27% of the population felt libraries
had successfully participated in in the in the pandemic. And and
so I hope that again when we look at our communities from the
point of view of obligation we understand that our obligation
extends.
To things like the pandemic, to the public health of the
community.
So we're going to be doing two more convenings and libraries
will be involved, and state librarians, state library
authorities.
Will be involved. And I would encourage any of you who are
interested in the topic to, to join with us. We'll be doing one
at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City in June and a little
bit later in June. Actually, I hope I've got this right and I
may have it backwards now. Drive it backwards. We're doing it.
We're doing one in Providence, RI.
The 1st and 2nd of June in Providence at the at the
Providence Library which has not being surprised the Senator Jack
Reed information comments and Senator Reed encouraged us to do
one in Providence in the Providence Libraries a great
library so we're happy to be there and then the middle of
June we'll be doing Liberty Science Center.
Umm.
So we hope that we can be a positive source of information
literacy in the country. We'll be dealing with misinformation
and disinformation, but in a very different way than than
some other parts of the federal government have dealt with it.
We'll be looking for creating information literacy at the
local level because of the civic trust of local institutions,
particularly libraries and museums.
The other positive thing that that that has been given to us
this time by the President that I want you to know about and
that I hope will participate, we will all participate in this, is
the President reestablished the President's Committee on the
Arts and Humanities.
Those folks who resigned after a previous president misspoke
about what happened in Charlottesville and the
president is President Biden is reestablished the President's
Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and it reports to
the IMS, is housed inside the IMS at Sean Woldemichael was
picked by the president, she was a Smithsonian curator, was
picked by the president to be executive director, and she
offices.
With us and the President talked about cultural vitality and his
executive order and I hope that the PCH will will demonstrate
that and we'll we'll have some fun. It is meant to support for
the executive order. The IRS and the other two cultural agencies
are slightly smaller sisters, the AH and the NEA slightly
smaller because of the grants to states program which should be
said. And so we're looking forward to that.
We're looking forward to having some positive things and
celebratory things going on through the President's
committee. You'll see that the president has picked. I think
actually the first lady had a lot to do with it is picked the
other 25 committee members and let's say Hooray for Hollywood.
I can't reveal their names to you, but we we have the names
and it will be an exciting group.
Some people known for their big smiles and and so we're excited
about that. And the other thing we're excited about that I think
is also a very positive thing. And we want to engage at the
state level and we want to engage at the local level. In
fact, we want to be the agency that engages at most with local
communities and through state libraries and state library
authorities if we can do that. And that is America 250
celebration or commemoration, investigation and violation of
the.
The Declaration of Independence in our 250 years of history.
Since then, we're working with the American Association of
State and Local History, with USCIS, the Customs and
Immigration Service, and the Constitution Center.
On on this and the Constitution center in Philadelphia. But the
the, the person who's most influenced our thinking. My
thinking about this is Daniel Allen, professor at Harvard,
whom you might know from her work work on civics. We've
funded some of her work on civics and high schools and
libraries in Massachusetts, but she wrote she's an African
American.
Political philosophy professor. Her first book was on Plato at
Harvard. But she's written a book that I think is the the
book that most ought to direct our work on America 250. And
it's called our declaration. And it's about how the word equality
gives the most important meaning to the declaration that we can't
have freedom without equality. And and her book is I think the
most important.
And temporary look at the declaration.
And she also wrote in the Atlantic about a year and a half
ago a great essay about why I love why she loves the
Constitution. And again it comes from the point of view of
working through the importance of all men are created equal
from the declaration through the Constitution and the present day
America and and how how hard we all have to work on on being
better representatives of of at least the the ideals.
In those documents.
So we will be trying to tell local stories with America 250
stories that that tie local history local heroes, local
events to the meeting of the of the declaration of the meeting
of the Constitution. As I say we're working with USCIS ASL and
the Constitution Center on this one of the things and I would
love to have you all think about this and and and and help us
with this that.
That we want to do is focus on the naturalization ceremony.
Naturalization ceremony, where immigrants take the oath of
citizenship, is increasingly done in libraries and some
museums. When I was director in Kansas City, we we sort of
specialized in this. We we had one event with 120 new citizens
from 70 different countries, one event, one of taking ceremony.
And of course, it's very moving. Their families are there.
They've worked hard to do this, spent money and resources, and
they've taken a test about American history and government
that most high school graduates, I think most college graduates
in America, couldn't pass.
But the most important thing about the the the the oath of
citizenship is that it's not just an acceptance of the rights
of citizenship, it is also an acceptance of the obligations of
citizenship and.
In my view that the most important sentence in the 20th
and 20th century philosophy was written, I happened to be
reading a book about her last night by Robert Zaretsky, a
statement by Simone Bile. Simone Bile was a philosopher.
The defender of workers rights in France in the 1920s and 30s.
A Jew who became interested in Catholicism.
Never converted. That's spent a lot of time in cathedrals.
And Charles de Gaulle asked her to write the program of the
French resistance for what they would do if they came back to
power at the end of the war, if they took it, took it back from
the the Germans. And the first sentence of what this in English
called her her program, which is called the need for roots.
The first sentence is obligation to proceed, right?
I believe that that is a call to action and a motto of the
fitting librarians in this country. Our obligations. We've
always felt an obligation to our Community, obligation to each
other and and I think at our best, we've always felt an
obligation to some higher power, whether that's.
Reason or nature or God or what whatever you you think is the
the higher power in your life. My my view it's all three but.
Our sense of obligation has always been pretty high, but our
sense of obligation to each other in the Community is still
the most important thing that we do. So I thank you all so much
for being a part of our very beautiful if very trying and
very tough world. Your your sense of obligation and our
sense of obligation that the I am less to you is the most
important part of what we do. Thanks.
I would be happy to take questions. Jimmy, you want to
ask your question again?
And this is coming from, I noticed that we got fewer Wi-Fi
hotspot Lending Club grant requests because of the CF
coming in. So libraries are we're getting money from other
places. So my question is could you talk a little bit about the
relationship between IMS and the FTC and NAIA and what's going on
with the money? This is such a great softball question. Thank.
Thank you.
So this is a a huge thing to me. I was the director of the
library in Kansas City and I still have a problem, you know,
just getting online much less using the Internet. And Google
Fiber shows up in Kansas City. So I became an instant expert on
the Internet, right. So I, you know, and I and I, so we worked
with Google, Google Fiber. When I went on all kinds of panels
and committees and, you know was in the White House with the
connect dad and connect home and all that. We sent one of our
partners to run connect home.
In the government etcetera and and then I became chair of
Shelby Schools, healthcare, libraries and broadband, the
leading advocacy organization etcetera. So you know that's
probably one of the reasons I got the IMS job and because I
work closely with the Ala on that etcetera and.
But here's the story of the federal government, the
Internet, if that various people are involved in all of this, had
been asked John Windhausen. It had Shelby, for instance.
Receiver at the DIA, which I helped. First contribution to
the MDI was from from me in the library.
We asked any of us how much money it would take to connect
everybody in the United States. We would have said a number like
$100 billion. And out of the last Trump budget, the first
Biden budget, ARPA and the infrastructure budget, we are
spending $100 billion on the Internet.
We are not spending it through the iOS. We are spending it
through the FCC, the NT, IA and the largest amount of money
through the governors, through however, each individual state,
that's the infrastructure money, is going to to spend that money.
And some of you have been involved in digital equity
plans. I hope all of you are involved at some point because
that's really the point of capture for this money. But as I
was saying to Jamie earlier, we know who will be involved for
sure, who has been involved.
To this point, we know that AT&T has a lobbyist in every
state, every state. We know that rural telephone companies have
got lobbyists in most states. I could go down the list of all
the people who've got lobbyists and not every state, certainly
not every state library, not every state library association
has has got a lobbyist. And frequently this was true in
Missouri when I was a director in Missouri that the the
lobbyist for the Missouri Library Association.
Was also working for one of the World Health on companies and
you can guess what his priority was.
My point about about this is, is that we were given all this
money but it's a highly politicized process and you have
to be involved politically to to get access to the money or it's
the money at the FCC and the NT, IA you know they got we're
spending we'll spend maybe $10 billion of our budget will be
spent related to, to the digital divide over the next year, maybe
a little more maybe a little less.
The the NT I got $3 billion, ultimately $10 billion, and I
think the FCC's got gobs of money.
And and as I said to Jamie and I will deny I said this, if you
take it out of this room, any federal agency that's run by
lawyers, the FCC and the NT, IA will have an application process
that nobody can navigate without a consultant. And I'm serious
about this when I write my letter to the President after I
leave the IMS item one if we're about equity and we should be
about equity, equities my middle name as a federal bureaucrat if
we're about equity.
We have to make the application process easier. The applicant, I
tell you, I give the I I spoke to a Department of Education
seminar on this with about 100 people in the room, and I said
that and I got a standing ovation. You know, everybody in
the federal government knows this when you talk to them about
it. But we can't change it. We can't change it in part because.
Well, lawyers are running things. I'm sorry that my auntie
elitist moment.
This moment but we do we we have made some progress on that. I do
want to say this is that we've spent I've spent time since my
Shelby days and at the end of the last talking to chair pie
and now Chair Rosenworcel at the FCC talking to the folks at the
NT IA and they know they have a problem and you you probably
didn't see but you could have seen where you paying really
close attention to our press releases and their press
releases.
That we issued simultaneous press releases a couple of weeks
ago, the FCC, the MTI and the IMS talking about the
application process and how we're going to make it easier
when the E rate process really gets so that a small library.
Small school district can apply without a consultant. I'll
believe it.
I don't at the moment believe it even though we issued the press
release saying this is great news. We are working on that. We
get it, we absolutely get it. And on their good days even
though the the the director at the NAIA and the Chair of the
FCC got it. I think nobody else in the federal government. I
don't think at the top in the I talked to Secretary Cardona
about this at the Department of Education is a great guy. He
wants to do the right thing but he's got other problems and and
that's the problem with the larger.
Agencies and departments to the federal government, they have so
many things they do. This one seems easy. We write a check, we
put it into a bucket that's called the digital divide, and
we walk off to the next problem. And unfortunately after that,
it's the people in charge of the application process who are
lawyers, and they make it too difficult.
So we're making progress on this, but it's not enough
progress. And I will. I'm serious about writing a letter
to the President about this. When I when I leave. I was
watching NPR. No. Oh, I was watching CSPAN. Sorry, but not
last night. But the night before last and my room up, you know,
not wanting to come downstairs because I knew would take an
hour and a half from the elevator.
I was watching CSPAN and they had the guy who I had never
heard of. I had never heard of this guy who was in charge of.
Broadband for the federal government, you know.
I'm sorry.
This is, this is one of those things, so Alice in Wonderland
once you get inside of this. But anyway I hope that that answers
your question about that. We, we still have roughly the same
amount of money in the sense, in the sense that our, our, our
GSTR grants, estates, budgets actually gotten a little bit
bigger each year. We probably tracked until this year at least
above inflation. This year we we're, we're probably, even
though we had an increase it probably didn't meet inflation.
But that's true of everything in the federal government.
And so we still have money available for the digital divide
from our our point of view, we're not lowering the amount of
money that's going into LSA grants that can can make it into
that side, but the really big money is elsewhere. It's still
going to be difficult. But if you've got a digital equity plan
in your state which you must have actually to spend the
money, we need to be involved in that. That's the, that's the the
biggest gift I think.
To you is be involved at the state level.
More questions?
As you can tell, I have a few opinions.
Happy to give it to you.
I'll ask a question while the rest of you think of your
questions. Presby. Yesterday we looked at some of the five year
plan intentions across the states. Emily had rolled those
up for us and one of the big focus areas was reading, which
we know is something that you are a champion of and that you
have visions around. And I wonder if you have words for
this room as everybody embarks on their new five year plans and
thinks about reading and importance.
So first of all, from an equity point of view, you know, as I
mentioned before, virtually every problem we've got in this
country, including the divides we have in this country, relate
to reading. Reading is a foundational skill. You can't
really use the Internet, can't do the digital things that you
want to do, particularly in terms of workforce development,
healthcare, education. If you go up the ladder of education, you
have to be literate, right. And we know, again, I mean I, I know
this just from my experience in the Kansas City Public Library.
We had a big homeless population, the Central Library.
During the day when the shelters were closed, the place, the
places that that homeless population in Kansas City went,
there were three places also. By the way, this the same, the same
thing is true of the group coming out of the long term
prison population in the state of Missouri. The long-term
prison population when they come out go to two.
Facilities in the state, one that's very close to the Saint
Louis Public Library and one that's very close to the Kansas
City Public Library on their way out of prison and the same. So
the same thing is true of the homeless group and of this group
coming out of long term prison and that is they they go either
to a day day job operation, Day labor operation, they go to the
mental health clinic, the state mental health clinic.
Or they go to the library. The one place where they're getting
serious positive help is the library.
And the day labor stuff is, well, it's it's mostly a joke
there. There's some, there's some good programs around, but
they're small.
And and and and with both of these populations over 50% / 50%
of these populations are homeless population in the in
the long term criminal population are illiterate and
and virtually all of them are part only partially literate and
and to literacy is a huge factor in in every problem we have in
this country and it's it's foundational so it's it's the
most important thing we we can do and we know from all the.
Research. There's a huge amount of research about reading.
There's a huge amount of research about how you learn to
read and and what that research tells you is 2 things. One, the
informal support. Higher libraries is hugely important
too. That interactive reading. You all have probably heard of
the 30 million word gap. Hart and Risley did this research at
KU just down the road from me at University of Kansas in in the
90s and and there's been high quality.
Research on what exactly that means the 30 million word gap,
it's the quality of the words is important, not just the volume
of the words. And the quality comes from interactivity. It
comes from adults reading with children. And one thing
especially to know children reading to adults reading back
to adults. And we know that that pleasure reading has a lot to do
this that when the child, the first time the child picks a
book on her own.
Is a key moment in life. And that happens. That happens in
libraries. That happens in libraries. So reading, reading
is deeply important. And we in the library world have of course
gotten away from that when I became a member of the Urban
Library Council in 2000 and 2005.
That the UFC had put out a strategic plan 15 or 20 page
strategic plan. I read it and my very first post on the on the
Urban Library Council LISTSERV was. Is anybody else bothered by
the fact that the word reading does not occur in the strategic
plan of the Urban Library Council? It was interesting. I
got a lot of, for the first and only time, a lot of positive
comment on the post.
Urban Library Council and and since then it's been it's been
important to me I our tagline in Kansas City was Kansas City a
community making Kansas City a community of readers and and we
tried to do that in every way we could I think I think it's the
most important equity thing that we do is reading and I know
we've we've been asked by the Community in so many ways to do
so many different things. We're the Swiss Army knife now
libraries the Swiss Army knife of the of the community.
Whenever there's a problem we get involved in it and and and
that's going to continue to be true. There's no way around
that. But we have to educate the communities, leadership, civic
leadership to understand that what youth librarians do,
children's librarians do. The book is still very important and
all three things having books in the library, having books in our
branches in particular and having librarians who can
interact with kids in reading groups.
Of all kinds is is probably still the most important thing
we do and we can't defund libraries or or or take library
resources to other places without continuing to fund what
we do in reading and maybe expanding what we do and
reading. So thanks, Terry, for that softball.
So I understand your tenure at IMLS will be coming to an end
and I just have to ask what are your plans post your position.
So #1, it's also possible the president could extend by term
by a year. Thank you.
You won't because they were supposed to shift to a museum
person in the next iteration, and I guarantee you the AM and
the AMD. Those folks are probably already talking to the
to the President, but not getting rid of that library
person.
But you know what I might do, we've been working very closely
on various things that that we do with some foundations in the
country with the Knight Foundation for instance. And and
I'm very close to John Palfrey who runs some McArthur
Foundation received funding from from the Mellon Foundation over
the years etcetera. I'm hoping that I can do something.
In, in our world, in the library world in particular, that has to
do with the question of reading and equity and we're going to be
doing a convening at the towards the end of the year with the New
York Public Library on this subject.
How we reach across the various divides and and help build a
more literate, more equally literate equitably literate
population and and I I hope I can convince some foundations to
help us in doing that and play a role continue to play a role in
this going going forward to that that's my my plan such as it is
you know or the President could you know.
Make me Secretary of State.
I'm Michael Goldrich from Louisiana. And in your opening
comments, you talked about a culture of obligation.
I'd be interested to hear what what does that mean to you and
what is the public library's role in creating the culture of
obligation? So Civic trust is probably the most important
thing that libraries have. We're probably, you know, you hear
the, you look at Pew studies of this or Gallup studies or for
whatever the military. You know, basically the only only
positively viewed institution and in every.
Study Pew studies showed that libraries are are at the same
level as as the military and Once Upon a time, police and
fire departments.
And and so and how do we get that civic trust? Well, I
believe it's because of the view of population. I mean, I know
this is true. We went out for an increase in our levy in Kansas
City, got 84% of the vote. And and you know, we pulled people,
we talked to people, etcetera, in all parts of our community.
And we were trusted in every part of the community. And we
were trusted to be nonpartisan, to be about serving everybody in
the community and and to be about the community.
And and I I think that's the view of libraries most places I
think we run some danger in the current polarized time and if we
don't recognize that we're serving everybody in the
Community and that includes people we might not agree with
politically. And and so. So one of the important things about
that is that we find ways of including everybody in what we
do. We we must of course and I think most Americans.
Understand this and and and and not only accept accept it but
endorse it. That we must of course focus primarily on the
folks who need the Public Library who need the the Public
Library the most. And one of the things we've been trying to do
over the last couple of decades is get outside of the library
reach out to pull people in to partner with with with we're the
best partners in the community in most communities. So reaching
out to those partnerships. So it's not just you know there's
some concern.
Particularly among local librarians that even the word
outreach is a colonialist rhetoric, right. Well if you're
partnering with your your friends and and and and the
other good folks in the community and all kinds of
partnerships. So churches as well as social justice groups as
well as neighborhood groups as well as civic groups, the
chamber including the Hispanic Chamber and the Black Chamber,
etcetera, if you're partnering with everybody.
And that's what libraries do. Then, then there isn't any elite
telling telling the community what to do. It's On the
contrary, it's listening to the community and doing things with
the community as a partner in the community. So that to me is
is how we engender and keep our, our civic trust. And it's the
obligation we have to continue doing that. And and librarians
are really good with the word obligation. Most most librarians
become librarians.
Because they have some sense of mission. Mission to the
community and mission to young people and mission to kids.
They should overcome the the the prejudices of the world,
whatever, whatever it might be. We're mission driven group of
people, and we need to keep that up. But that's the thing that's
core to that is a sense of obligation and a sense of
obligation that transcends our own individual beliefs.
Dead silence. Are you asleep yet?
I can do that. I've done that to many audiences.
Insomnia's best friend.
You said some really inspiring words last summer at the
national medal ceremony about the way that we all serve with
our hearts, and I wonder if you be willing to say some words
along that way.
So I I'm inspired by what?
Danielle Allen said in her her essay about the Constitution and
her and her book about the the declaration where she was
willing to use the word love in years an African American woman
who undoubtedly has experienced plenty of the opposite from
other people.
But who genuinely feels devoted to our country, feels a sense of
patriotism, feels a sense of the nobility of the ideals that we
were founded upon.
And and and understands that it's love of country, love of
the ideals of the country particularly in in this country
where we were founded with ideals, we weren't founded
because of language or ethnic group or or whatever we were. We
were founded in with a sense of love of our country and 13
colonies came together.
And it was predicted that they couldn't come together because
they they they sensed that they had a love of the ideals that
they that they shared.
She talks about that. I we this is sort of a back door to to the
question of of love. But yesterday we had a conference.
With the White House, it was the White House who directed White
House has.
Something called United we stand, which is their their
focus on countering hate crimes and a particular part of that
which we talked about yesterday with the White House and a
number of associations groups.
Is anti-Semitism.
So we talked about that, but I finished, I I rounded up the
conference by by quoting actually I think I've got it
here somewhere from George Washington's letter to the
Hebrew Congregation of Newport. And they had sent him in in in
his first term as president. They sent him a letter praising
the his activities as as president and he sent them back
a letter in in which he talked about.
The country being founded with an enlarged and liberal policy.
Which included liberty of conscience.
And you said this is not an indulgence.
The toleration of Judaism and the in the Protestant country.
This is not an indulgence on the part of this country, but it is
a recognition of the inherent natural right.
Rights part.
Then he said.
Any people of goodwill?
And good conscience.
Will be good citizens.
I thought that was a lovely sentiment, and I think it's
because it's it's sentimental because George Washington
understood the idea of love of country and understood that
every citizen with good conscience goodwill.
And respecting the inherent natural rights of every everyone
else deserves to be a citizen and and deserves the the the
love and attention of fellow citizens. So I I I think in some
measure, that's the way the country was founded. That's what
Daniel Allen sees.
And.
No, I look at when when I got to the library as the director, I
saw so much goodwill, so much love coming from from
librarians, particularly our children's librarians, but
really all our librarians that such goodwill towards the, the,
the Community and every person in the community. You know, we
became a Center for the whole for the homeless. We became a
Center for these folks coming out of prison.
Umm.
And.
I remember my first encounter with a homeless person in the
library is trying to use our catalog, our computer catalog,
and.
And I helped him. I helped him out and he was looking for Louis
L'amour books.
Check in with more great name.
And, and I and I had discovered, I discovered from our librarians
that actually our homeless population and the population
coming out of prison to the extent that they were readers
and were reading books, that they love Westerns. So I asked
him a couple of questions about it and he said, you know, you
should read Louie Lemoore's autobiography, he said to me.
And so, good citizen, I did. I read it. It's called wandering
man and I would recommend it to everybody in this room is a
great book about reading.
It's a great book about reading and and I thought you know what
a what a little wake up call for for me there's this homeless guy
guy coming out of the shelter who has just given me a book
recommendation that will stay with me the rest of of my life
and it's really Lemoore book you know really the love and I I
took that as a sign from.
Above.
One more toujour, one more.
Thank you so much, Crosby.
It's our dearest hope that your term will be extended and we'll
see you again next year. But what wonderful words to send us
off with in case this is the last time we get to be with you.
So thank you again.
We're headed now into our long break.
Well, our break is winding down. We see a lot of people back in
the physical room and hopefully in the virtual room too.
I hope you all looks like we got some more luggage down.
Congrats. Yay elevator working for us this morning.
We have a this is one of the marquee topics that we wanted to
train you all on this year since we took a lot of time last year
to revamp our own site, visit checklist and we're kicking off
the five year cycle. So this is a hugely important topic and I
just this is going to give me a little moment to thank my staff
again. Dennis and Madison in particular have carried a lot of
the content.
For this conference. And you know, Madison gathered up all
your ARPA slides and kind of distilled through them. And
Dennis had been working on the scenario, planning like a champ.
And we kept leaning on them as Cindy and Laura were sort of
advocating for the virtual folks and how we needed to adapt. But
now we're pulling Cindy out from behind the virtual curtain to
she's no longer the man behind the curtain.
The great and powerful eyes.
She has jumped right in. Less than a year in the program now
has come from the church that all of you sit in at the state
library and it's just hit the ground running with us. And I am
LS she throughout the conference planning, like I said, has been
a huge just champion of what we need to do to make this a good
virtual experience. She went to not only the Baltimore
Conference last year in this vein, but then helped with the
SEC conference.
And Austin and has come back with lots of learnings. And so
hopefully we're, you know, improving and iterating on our
hybrid experience for this year. And if we're not, that's OK,
just keep letting us know in the surveys and we'll keep working
on it. But I'm, I'm so pleased that all three of our program
officers are getting to present this session to you. So I'll
call them up to the dais and we'll get started.
Thank you, Terry. And I appreciate the Emerald City
Wizard of Oz reference because we don't have any of them in the
presentation.
But with as Terry mentioned with the start of this new five year
cycle and the return to travel, we are bringing back site visits
this year and we are thrilled. These visits for us as program
officers give us an opportunity to better connect with with you,
our States and see first-hand the amazing work that you're
doing. So we're we're very excited to see you in your home
state.
So for this session, we're going to be going doing an overview of
site visits and what you're prepare and what to expect, what
goes on during the visit, what goes on after the visit, we'll
have a brief pause for discussion or from you know,
both from the perspective of new folks and seasoned folks who've
done these visits before. And then Dennis will be reviewing
the newly revamped site visit checklist, which is in the SPR
now we also have.
Um photographs that will be referencing. We'd like to call
this our our travel log of from our past visits that Dennis and
I have done pre pandemic more or less some some post ish. So just
to give you an idea of what it looks like on the ground but
this this photo here is of the state library in Augusta ME.
So the purpose of the visit is for monitoring the LSST program
and it's also an opportunity to provide any technical assistance
to you or any suggestions that we have to improve the program.
We do not like calling these visits audits. We are not
auditors. We are trained librarians just like many of you
are. And so we like to scope them as support visits. We want
to see the wonderful things you are doing.
Both funded by LSA as well as what makes your programming in
your state uniquely you. So this is really your time to show us
what you do best and then the end if if we have suggestions
for how to improve those programming or or how to improve
following the the guidelines and the requirements of the LSA
program. We will be tell you those up front and and they are
recommendations as I mentioned we love seeing.
Branded projects on the ground, it gives us way more insight
into how we read the SPR reporting and it also gives us a
better ideas of how to promote the work you're doing. It also
allows us to promote other IMS opportunities. As some of you
know the LST a program is not the only thing I am LS does. We
also have a whole arm of discretionary competitive
grants. We want to promote those give your libraries in your
state opportunities.
To apply for those as well as you, state libraries can also
apply for those discretionary programs and also the National
Medal for Museum and Library service, which we always want to
highlight for everyone, which the finalists were just
announced yesterday for this year's medal.
So what we do to prepare for your visit? First, we send an
initial notification that we plan to come to you in that
year, and we want to make sure it works for your schedule where
we don't want to catch you off guard. Those of you who will be
visiting, we we will be visiting this year have already received
that notification. Then, once we know that we're we're both on
the same page, we'll send official letters through EMS for
records purposes and then we'll start with the actual planning.
In the meantime what we do we were we review your SPR reports,
your five year plans, your evaluation, as well as any other
relevant materials that we think will will better prepare us for
the visit in your state. This photo here is of my 2018 visit
to the Ohio State Library and specifically this was a a site
visit to Otterbine University. They do and and Cindy Boyden in
her in her previous role as LST coordinators in the photo.
They do really great conservation work at otterbine
us that was really lovely to see.
So what we expect from you, you will make the schedule which
includes visiting with staff at your office at the LSA as well
as selecting and scheduling this, the field visits to the
libraries institutions that you want us to see you prepared the
full itinerary and that also may include driving around your
program officer. We more often than not 99.9% of the time
cannot rent a car. So we we need to.
Rely on you for transportation. We also need you to complete the
site visit checklist and this must be completed at least a
week in advance before we visit and and Dennis will cover the
site visit checklist a little bit later in the presentation.
And here a dentist want to talk about the photo.
This is my site visit to Alabama. Shout out virtually to
Kellen for organizing it. This was in January of 2020, so I Oh
no, February, I think of 2020. Right before we weren't
traveling for a while and I wanted to point out this
particular visit. This was the BB Comer library in Sylacauga,
AL, and they were one of the very first national medal
winners and so I was able to call and arrange the visit.
Where I met with the current director of the library, that's
to my right in the picture. And then to my left was the original
director who was there when they won the National medal. And they
did an incredible job of of hosting me and going through all
the things that they've done. And I would say while it's
definitely more important from a site visit planning perspective
to see recent grants or things that have been funded recently,
in this case it was BB Comer had recently received a workforce
development grant.
And I can see. But then I also had a chance to look at some of
the longitudinal impact because the program has been around so
long. It's really exciting when we're on on site to see like,
hey, we funded this in 2012 and now it's kind of exploded into
this like, you know, community centric, fully embedded thing.
So again, just to kind of get the creative juices flowing, it
was just really cool to see all that has happened at the local
level since they won this award over 20 years ago.
So the site visit itself, it usually lasts 2 to 3 days based
on the size of your state. We meet with key personnel at your
SLA, which includes meeting with the chief or state Librarian,
your finance folks, any other staff members you think it would
be helpful for us to get to know? And usually at that time
on site at the SLA, we review the checklist and so that's
usually the first day of the visit.
Subsequent days are then spent out in the field visiting
projects that you would like to see, but now during the
pandemic, obviously we had to put a hold on our site visits.
During a brief time when people were vaccinated and everyone was
excited during the summer, I think it was summer 2021, I was
actually able to do a site visit to the DC Public Library and
excuse me.
And it was so much fun and this is a photo from that visit.
Thank you Sarah for organizing that day. You can see we're
masked up. This is me and Laura was able to attend the site
visit with me as well. And this was us visiting DCPL Fabrication
lab which they use IMS funds to fund a 3D printers and really
other amazing technology.
Alright, So what we need before the visit is the following. An
itinerary and list of people that we will meet. This includes
title and location and if they are a sub recipient of the LSA
funds information on that sub award for project. We want to
see a copy of your SLA organization chart and we also
see need to see documentation for your maintenance of effort
and match funding.
This photo. So this was my first post pandemic on site visits at
Tennessee State Library, which is extra exciting. And this was
I was talking with somebody else earlier about this particular
situation where we'll talk about the schedule and how we do
things a little bit later. But Tennessee in particular was
scheduled to for me to have a visit much earlier. But they
were about to move into a brand new wonderful building and they
said, why don't you wait until.
We're actually in that renewal building. We could see it. And
so that went, it was supposed to think supposed to be 2020 and
obviously that didn't happen. So it got scheduled back to 2021.
But but all that to say is like the flexibility with certain
situations like that, you know, we'd much rather work with you
on those kind of situations. And in this case, in this picture,
we visited Jennifer took me to the Stones River Regional
Library and that was, it was excellent. It was very
illuminating and.
Typically, one of the main elements of our itineraries,
especially in a state like Tennessee that has such a robust
regional system, is to talk to certain system heads. It's kind
of also, it's illuminating to understand how the funds are
handled at the regional level by those systems. And it's also
kind of efficient because they represent a big flop in this
state. So you can kind of hear from them and understand kind of
the the nitty gritty. It was a really great conversation it
was.
I remember specifically being super impressed by how well the
federal regulations trickle down to their purchasing and all of
that process. So yeah, I highly recommend regional visits.
So other things that we will need to see are referenced in
the site visit checklist and those include sample policies
that you have that are required as part of the program, written
guidance to subrecipients. If you do sub awards and if you
have any other materials that may be that may be referenced or
useful or just allow us to get a better picture of what's going
on, we'd love to see them photos, letters from of support.
From patrons, that sort of thing. Just to better understand
how the program works in your state. This photo here is of a
assistive technology manual during my visit in 2019.
Ancient history to North Carolina. I was able to visit
the Durham Public Libraries sensory space or it was the
beginning of of the sensory space and this was a really cool
photo. Not only did I get to see the the technology manual of how
how they help staff learn the materials in the sensory space
but they also had this really cool magnifier thing that you
know you could you could zoom in on a piece of paper.
Read it.
If you didn't have your glasses, or don't have glasses or just
need help with the small print, which we all do these days.
So when we talk about visits out in the field, it can, it can be
for any type of beneficiary, whether it is a sub recipient of
your sub grants or a library or any type of institution that
benefits from your statewide program such as databases, for
example. We'd love to see it. I said this before, essentially we
want to see what care characterizes your program and
your state. This is your opportunity to shine and we want
you to feel prepared. We we don't want to come at you.
Us in surprise. So we're we're here to support you. On the
visit. You can show us any organization that you think is
doing great work. A couple photos here. On the left was a
summer 2021 visit to Maryland. That was a fun visit because it
was like a hybrid visit where we did the site visit checklist and
the administrative stuff through zoom. But then I also got to do
a site like on site field visits, which was fun.
And that was to Cecil County Public Library, which I believe
is a 2015 national medal for Museum and Library service
winner. And that's a photo in front of their bookmobile, which
was super fun to see. It was. It was a really great trip, Dennis.
This is my most recent trip to Minnesota. Shout out to Tammy
for doing a wonderful job of organizing everything, and this
is a wonderful little group photo of.
A, A group of Minnesota State Library services staff and
Minitex, which is an organization based outside in
the university and they're a major partner with executing a
lot of statewide projects for the state and they're an
academic institution that academic kind of like driven.
But it's one of those things where when we read in the SPR's
we see these recipient names, these organizational names very
repeatedly we're like.
Now they're really clearly clearly significant partners.
And so we spent a good, a good hunk of the day just going
through a number of their projects and and then you know,
I think there might be this assumption at the state level to
say, oh, well, you know, they read all kinds of reports about
statewide databases like you know, what's the big deal. But
it's quite the opposite like the, the more common the project
is, the more helpful it is to have like in-depth conversations
about like what?
How are you doing it specifically in your state?
Because I know that we get questions from other states
about, hey, do you know of any states that are doing like
consortial purchasing or all these kinds of random questions?
And it's like, oh, wait, yeah, I know, I know that minitex is
doing something with econtent that's really interesting. And
and so, yeah, as as Madison mentioned, the support visit
component is very applicable here because it's really like I
can't get, there's only so much I can get out of reading.
Airports and so asking those kind of an itty gritty questions
about OK, how do you, how do you work with the Courier? How many
stops do you have? It's just really interesting and they may
not have like a specific goal in mind. I always say that when I'm
asking clarifying questions, like I'm not trying to uncover
anything, it's just like I have really, I'm just curious about
how things work specifically in the state.
Great comments. And the photo on the right is of West Warwick
Public Library in Rhode Island. I visited them, it was my first
real site visit in 2018, and that's me with the state
librarian and LST coordinator at the time with the director. West
Warwick is a small library sort of out in a in an area that I
think could be described as a food desert. And they just have
wonderful programs that support their community across all
different types of demographic.
Demographics including.
I know they did technology and digital digital literacy classes
for seniors at the time, a food security programming and I also
remember they were really big, had a really big group for for
gaming and support for I believe Dungeons and Dragons
specifically but but all types of gaming incidentally after
this.
They they've become a national medal finalist and and just
yesterday when we announced the finalists for this year, they
are included as a finalist. So congratulations, Rhode Island.
OK, so after the visit, relax. Seriously. We know that this is
stressful, but we want you to know that you're going to do a
great job. It's a lot of work now. After the visit, we will
send out a letter thanking you for your work and your time that
you devote to the visit. That will also include those
recommendations that we may have for you, which will likely also
talk about before the visit is over, for example.
We may suggest that you revise your subrecipient guidelines to
include acknowledging IMS and outreach materials or something
of that ilk. We also appreciate responses to these
recommendations and may follow up with you for additional
information or request more information on a project we saw
that we may want to highlight. We also work with our
communications team very often and they ask us often about what
type of things can be featured.
Getting our promotional materials such as tweets, blog
posts, that kind of thing. And so we always want to keep an eye
out for things that we can feature on a national level. And
in the past we have done a site visit blog posts highlighting
visits to specific places.
Now I'm going to pass it on to Cindy, who's going to talk about
our visits for this year.
If I can do this.
OK, great. So upcoming site visits, this is going to be
where I try to recall all my geography lessons from member of
the state monikers. Dennis will be going to Idaho, New York,
Missouri, Montana and New Jersey. I will be going to
Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, North Dakota and I get to come
back here in September and Madison will be going to Puerto
Rico, Rhode Island, Ohio, which I'm jealous of.
And the US Virgin Islands, these site visits will be happening
between the months of April and September. Ish. We try to get
them during those months based on weather and our workload and
hopefully that works out best for all of you as well.
And for next year, this is what we've slated. We have not
reached out about this. This is this is just what we're thinking
about. So nobody panic. You don't, you haven't seen this
before, but we're thinking that, Dennis, that tennis is going to
Arkansas and Wisconsin, Mississippi, Delaware and Iowa.
And I will be going to Colorado, Kansas, South Carolina, Wendy
Copeland, I'm coming to you. Vermont and Massachusetts and
Madison will have the Pacific workshop. She'll be going to
Hawaii, North Carolina.
And maybe those are some pretty great places. My friends just
got a great profit. We all had a great performance.
So we can start to be competitive with our state
portfolios anytime you want.
Yeah, we do. It's pretty funny. At this point. We're going to
have you folks do some work at your tables and online as well.
We would like to generate some conversations amongst yourselves
to start thinking about the site visits and we want to pose these
questions to you for the veterans, for those of you who
have been through the site visit before, you know, what do you
wish you would have done differently from your previous
visits?
What were your highlights, you know, what was your experience
completing the checklist?
Any excuse me, any anticipated unanticipated delays in the
process to watch out for?
And for you first timers, you know, what are your concerns?
What are you nervous about? We're not trying to, we're not
trying to trip you up. We really aren't. But I know having gone
through it once, it is stressful.
And then for everybody, we'd like to know is there something
that we should know about the site visit preparation process?
So if you could take a few minutes, we're going to start
with the veterans and have you folks address those first few
questions at your tables and online and then we'll do a share
out and we'll just go to the next category. All right, folks,
take some time to talk amongst yourselves. Veterans, lend your
thoughts and experience. Thanks.
Designate a table representative representative.
Ohh, we'd like somebody to come on up to the microphones and
share your thoughts on the Debbie Hall is our first veteran
volunteer.
As she should be. Debbie Hall. What you got, my friend?
OK, I am a veteran. Next year, if this is true and Dennis
comes, it will be on my fifth site visit. So.
We we've learned a lot.
As as a state that does not do sub awards. The first site
visits were awkward because we knew they'd like to go out in
the field and we thought, well, we'll just take them to some
libraries who use our databases, who uses summer reading program,
who are friends to the state library and don't hate us, you
know, and so that the problem was that everybody came in
August and Arkansas and Terry Brown started it.
And she came in our highest.
Temperature was 110. And then when Timothy came five years
later in August, I think we hit 115 and we were going out
visiting these libraries that we didn't need to go to. So here
comes Dennis.
And so I started thinking outside the box and I said, you
know, we have a Youth Services workshop every March and it is
one of our best attended workshops that we do. And it's
open to public librarians and school librarians and it's to
start off the summer reading program and there are breakout
sessions. And so I said, Dennis, can you come in March and come
to our workshop? And he was able to do that.
And I think that was the first time anybody actually asked
somebody to actually come, you know, a different time. And he
was able to get there on a Wednesday, the workshop was on a
Friday. And we have a managers meeting for all of our managers
at the state library and most of them are project directors. So
he was able to attend that. So that's one of the main things
that I think and for all you newbies, just have fun with it
and think of things that you enjoy.
And that you really like about what your libraries are doing,
or what you're doing at your state library and have fun with
it, you know, after.
How many site visits I've learned to relax about it. As
far as the documentation we do a three ring binder and we get all
of our documentation. We work with our fiscal officer. I have
done you know the project, the guidelines for all of our
project directors that I update for every five year plan, make
sure and have that ready. But it it's it's it's nothing to be
fearful about way back in the day.
When there was a different.
Vibe about IMLS, it was it was a fearful. And I I got that from
our state librarian at the time and it says well don't don't
tell them that don't don't talk to them you know well well I
need to know this. Don't call them you know and it's like I
don't understand that. So enjoy it. I seriously enjoy it. A show
off.
Your libraries show off. Your state library show off your
projects. That's what it's all about. Just showing off.
Thanks so much, Debbie.
Yeah, go ahead. I just want to piggyback on what she said. If
if we suggest a time to come to you and there is an event or
something going on that you would really like us to see,
suggest that time. We would love to, we would love to switch it
up and and come when it works best for you.
Or when it's not 110 degrees.
I don't. I don't think it was 110 degrees. It was Minnesota in
September, so I'm not really a veteran. But I have been through
this process once and I've been through it without an LSA
coordinator, so I did all of it. As far as the checklist, which
really is not that bad. It's just putting your ducks in a
row. I did, even though I interacted with Dennis many
times before the site visit, I did still like read.
Yeah.
And and then my organization did as well and so, so yeah.
We were all pleasantly surprised that, well, no, I wasn't
surprised. I kind of knew this already. But Dennis is
practically a perfect person in every single way. And like our
our tiny SLS staff or state library services staff of
introverts.
And here comes Dennis, and we're in a car together for seven
hours going around the state. It was wonderful. And I, I really,
I just want to give a shout out and tell you, yeah, just show
off, relax and give a shout out to Dennis because he is so
knowledgeable. Just sitting down blindly in front of minitex. He
was able to relate and talk about programmatic things with
an organization that he had never met. And so really just,
and I have that sense also from Madison.
Cindy the the being able to like you know cross the waters and so
knowledgeable. So don't don't worry about having to I I was
going to put together note cards about each of our grantees but
then Dennis was so friendly and so knowledgeable that I didn't
have to do that. So anyway, just I'm looking forward to it again.
Thanks so much.
Tammy's check is in the mail. Thank you.
Sure. Wendy copper. So for us, my first site visit, I was just
there like I felt like a month. It may have been a couple of
months, and so I've done that before. That makes me a veteran,
but I was very new, so.
What could I have done differently? One thing was I
didn't tell people your projects being highlighted because you're
doing a great job.
They thought they were in trouble.
And no one told me that. So they were all super, super nervous.
And then finally, I'm like you're not in trouble. We're
picking you because you're such a great project. So make sure
when you say the feds are coming that you say because you're a
great project. And that's something I would have done
differently.
And on the there was something else that was the, oh, the
highlights of the visit. You can't do it all like you want to
do it all. Like you have to pick and choose, and you want them to
see every single project that you have, and you just have to
pick a few. And sometimes it's maybe not the project that you
are most proud of, but it might be someplace that they've never
been, especially if someone's been there before. You don't
want to go to that same project or that same library system.
You might want to put a different one in a different
area. And I mean, it's a lot of fun, but you need a lot of help
with it because it might be the LSD coordinator who's filling
out the information with the state librarian. But then when
it comes to driving them around and picking them up, you might
want to have some of your other staff help you just so they get
a break from you. Because you're like, you've been with me for
how many days in the car? And then you feel like, Oh my
goodness, they don't want to talk to me anymore, but they
they still do. And.
I mean, and we had a lot of people who had volunteered. Oh,
I want to take them out to dinner. I want to take them out
to dinner. I want to. I want to be the one that's taking them
and driving them. And because I got to see them five years ago
when they came over the next time or that kind of stuff, too.
So really just have fun with it and make sure you have all your
checklist stuff done.
Thanks, Wendy.
And for hang on one second, Susan, I would also say, and
this is just me being a little selfish for those of us who
fluctuate between extroverted and introverted, please don't be
offended if I say I can't come to dinner.
I'm done. At the end of the day, folks, I'm really done. I love
all of you. I will come to every single one of your states, but
I'm not for dinner, so just FYI. FYI, Susan, I'm going to check
in on virtual, so hang tight. One second. Terry, how are we
doing?
I knew we would be.
I think you have to turn the switch at the bottom. It's a
very tiny little switch.
Right there we go. Get used to the virtual sign. All right,
we've got some great active virtual participants. Thank you
to all. And some of the veterans, in particular. Amy and
Florida said that her first visit 20 years ago had a
highlight at the Deaf Literacy Center in Pinellas County,
Florida. Hope it's saying they're right. Probably not.
Also just going to see programs in general a highlight for her.
And even when they arrange for Ms. folks to see the Secretary
of State, the Assistant Secretary of State, the
department CEO, all of those visits are important and help
elevate the state libraries work. So another highlight from
her.
From Karen and Illinois, she had years, also many years of site
visits and some where they had active sub grants and some
without. And she said those years without when they were
doing more of the statewide visits, a little more
challenging. So if you have the choice, like be sure to go and
see those active libraries that are receiving funds.
Katie and I think Delaware had done a few site visits but
peripherally and said it would have helped her when she got to
the point where she was filling out the checklist to have been
more actively involved. So maybe think about that if you have
shadowing opportunities for other people in your state.
Jean and Colorado agreed that if you don't have sub awards, you
just have to get a little more creative in your visits. And she
also gave us a teaser Cindy that you'll be going to prison on
your next visit. Will it be the first time?
I thought that couldn't get any more provocative.
Leave it to me, I'm gonna land on California, land in
California said her first visit was actually the virtual flavor,
and this was during the pandemic and she had viewed it as more of
an audit at that point. So it created a lot of stress and she
will bring a different mind frame to it when she goes into
it the next time.
Thanks so much, Terry. Thanks so much for all the virtual
thoughts and and shoutouts and tips and tricks. Susan, I'm so
sorry. Thanks for waiting. Appreciate it. No, no, no, no,
you weren't.
Oh, it's all yours.
Just roll with it. OK, there we go.
The next person will have to put it back. I want to speak to the
checklist. I have to say when I opened it up, I went totally
deer in the headlights, intimidated. But when you start
working through it, it's not so bad. And ultimately it was
helpful for us. And I too have only been through one, and it
was the virtual flight.
Thanks so much, Susan. We're good at checklist. Please.
It it is Angel. Thank you.
So I have been through 21 virtual and one in person. My
first in person was literally less than a month after I
arrived. Likely my supervisor took the reins, but it's a great
way to get to know Dennis 13 hours in the car that like
second week I was there. Highly recommend it. And that's not
sarcastic. It was great. Actually. The great thing about
it being so new to the job was I didn't know that this was a
fairly big deal. I didn't know what happened that often. I
didn't know enough to be freaked out by. It was just like, oh
cool.
You get to travel today again. Wait, you're not paying for our
food? That sucks.
That's what I remember, is going to that cafe and going we're
going to choose somewhere cheaper.
What I wanted to say well, I just wanted to piggyback on the
if you have subgrants, I love the advice, make sure they know
that you're coming for good reasons, but if you hype it up
to them, they will be so excited. They will be so
excited. I have yet to have a library that I've approached
because before we went virtual, I started chatting with some in
anticipation of your saying, hey, if we end up going to your
neck of the woods, would you be interested? And they were
ecstatic when I said, you know, like, we were just so impressed
with what you wanted to do and we wanted to show you off to
Washington.
I did not have a single person who thought that was a a
imposition. The other thing I wanted to mention for the
virtual one, which I'm sorry, it was not.
It's a completely different vibe happened during cars. It was not
a great. The checklist is very doable, just.
Because you're going to have to share it with other people in
your library. Be sure to be aware of the strengths, like
crew procrastinates and who's going to take 19 follow up
emails and who is going to take a knock on the door and who's
going to like run down the hall every time you approach them and
say hey follow up question. Because at some point you have
to hand over some of the reins to other people. And for me that
was the hardest part, was making sure that everybody has slightly
different approaches. I had someone who had it to me like 2
seconds after I asked for.
Something loved her to pieces and someone else who was much
more time intensive follow-up. So just I would read through
that checklist right away and make notes of who is who you're
asking for what and start with those hard ones first.
Thanks so much, Angela.
I want to make one comment just based things that have come to
mind from everyone talking, and we talked about it briefly up
here and I'm forgetting what that was. Oh, one thing to look
at before your visit is any documentation from the previous
visit that occurred. So those could be the letter that
contains the recommendations that we may have given you in
the last visit. And also someone mentioned looking at the
previous itinerary, seeing what they did.
You can you if you know, if you want to take us to the same
places because they're doing cool stuff, that's totally fine.
If you want to mix it up, also fine. You are. You are in
control. You are great and powerful.
Yeah. And also to, you know, while maybe some of the first
timers might want to come up and while they're thinking about
what to share or ask to the group.
Especially for the states that are that don't have a lot of
don't do sub awards and are wondering what to do you know
again our primary focus is LTA funded grants, estates funded
work of course and obviously going to local institutions that
sort of tangentially are impacted is great and but again
I think it can't be emphasized enough how how any local
library.
Is that it's so informative to understand how your state works,
the culture of the state. You know those kinds of things are
directly informed and help us when we're reading these reports
because we just, even though it may not be like hey this this
library received this sub grant and here's the tangible item
that doesn't it's not always an option for your visit but
knowing the kind of people that are in your state, you know,
there's a lot of times something that we're, we very much pride
ourselves on with this program.
Is we represent we try to represent as much of the country
to our agency. You know with there are several libraries that
we visited that we say you know you should really consider
applying for a national medal you know and giving them that
confidence to do it and helping us represent or I'm a less
represent as much of the country as possible and then sometimes
our discretionary colleagues will say hey do you we we have
we are looking for reviewers.
Do you have any suggestions and I'm always looking for people
who aren't necessarily in that sort of elite, you know highly
academic well resourced library kind of perspective, the small,
the rural, yeah right. And it's I think that's a great
perspective but like it's harder to find those like really like
gems of people that would be really great to have this
opportunity to add their perspective to a larger
competitive grant program as a reviewer. So again.
So yeah, it's not necessarily maybe a sub award that I'm
seeing, but I'm seeing great people in the state of great
libraries in the state, which is just a win win.
We're going to move on to the second question. So I'd like you
to take a couple of minutes and if you've got first timers at
your table, great. If you don't, think back to what that felt
like or join up with another table. I'm flexible, you know
me. What are your concerns or questions about the site, site,
visit process? What pain points are you already feeling? What
are you getting worked up about that we're going to try and
persuade you up. So please talk amongst yourselves, find some
new kids.
And we'll we'll see you in a couple of minutes. Thanks
everybody.
Folks, we're going to wrap it up.
Is it OK over there in the virtual land? I'm getting the
thumbs up for Miss Laura. Great.
All right. Who would like to share some thoughts?
From the perspective of a first timer, we got oh, we got people
coming up already. What are your Rachel cook in the flesh?
Oscar winner Rachel Cook.
Also, I'm not contagious, just for the record.
I'm not technically a first timer, but my first time was
virtual and yeah, 100% oddity. I will say that it was very scary,
very stressful. But my question is, when I'm doing the
itinerary, Utah is a big state and some of my coolest projects
are like hours away. So how far can we take? You guys? Like,
what's a reasonable expectation?
Well, I'm looking at Missouri right in front of me and not a
big state but a lot of things to see because of how much they sub
granted. And what they ended up doing for that trip was I landed
in Jefferson City and then we did like a tour of part of the
state. We stayed overnight in Springfield and then and then we
go even further and I left out of Saint Louis so and that I
think Montana's planning to do something similar to coming into
Helena leaving out of.
Potentially so that helps a lot. In Mississippi even did the same
thing. We stayed because of how far the trip was. We stayed
somewhere else overnight. Yeah, but you know, you don't, you
don't have to either. But if you if that's like a really critical
thing like it's possible to.
Anywhere, Rachel. I'll follow you. Anywhere, girl. Yeah. We're
happy to go anywhere in the state that you want to take us.
And if it requires that sort of extra, you know, like booking of
flying out of a different airport or staying in another
hotel for a night or two. We're down. We just need to know it a
little bit more in advance, like maybe a month out. It would. It
would help. It would be helpful for us to know that.
And just but you.
We're going to, we're going to go to Carmen on this side first.
Hang on one second, Mara. Miss Carmen.
I don't generally consider myself dizzy, no, but, but there
are times when I really am thinking I must be. Because when
I heard about site visit, my first thought was oh, I hope she
comes before I retire.
Why is it sure something you would think that's pretty crazy.
Not not knowing what I'm in for, I don't know, I just kind of go,
oh, this is going to be so fun. I walked into my thesis. What do
you call that?
Spending my thesis only I didn't know I was defending my thesis.
I thought I was just getting together with my committee.
And so I sat there and answered their questions and I just
thought this was just a lot of fun and realized afterwards when
I walked out, oh, I just did my difference.
Oh, cool.
I can't wait to visit with you.
I also consider myself somewhat of an introvert, but I don't
know, maybe I'm getting to be more of an extrovert.
I am looking forward, I really AM, and I appreciate so much
what you are sharing because it does give you an idea of what
boring North Dakota could possibly do.
I'm already excited, Carmen, don't you worry, I will say
Mara, one second. I will say on the interesting with the
introverted side of things for those 13 hour car rides.
Silence is OK. You know, we're we're librarians, you know? We
like occasional quiet. It's OK. You don't have nobody has to
fill the time. The whole time. It's all good. It's all good.
I'm not Dennis, by the way. As the extrovert. No, as the
extrovert. Tell me. Please stop. Please stop. That's fine. Mara,
please share your thoughts. OK. So I have a site visit coming up
in a couple of weeks, and I've been a fly on the wall for site
business before, but I've never been.
Responsible and I find that I am getting anxious thinking.
How many hours a day should I keep them occupied? How
micromanaging can I be and get away with it?
And then hearing it you, Cindy say ohh, I need time off. I'm
thinking would it be OK to like schedule a whole day but then
put optional things and send it to you the week before and then
you can say yes. No. Yeah. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. I
mean I I definitely am like again the extroverted person,
probably more of like a 12 hour sure, but that's a little
excessive. And I think, I like, I think the idea of picking and
choosing what is what is.
Possible. It's really good idea. OK, yeah, thanks. Probably more
like a 10 1/2 hour to go.
Everything hello. So Christine from Hawaii now that I sort of
know that you might come next year, but I saw on their Pacific
workshop and so sorry this is a question of probably only
relates to to us but can you just mention a few?
So that means about my Pacific workshop. Just so everyone knows
a little bit more about what goes on beyond the grants, the
States conference. I'm also the program officer for the six
Pacific territories and freely associated states. And so
instead of of hauling them all here, I meet with them in Hawaii
every other year. And we have our own smaller version of this.
How come we all can't go there?
Yeah. Their needs are a little bit different than what we cover
in this, in this conference. So it just works out better I think
both financially and strategically with the programs.
So what we try to do is when we do the Pacific workshop with
them, we'll also tack on our visit to Hawaii and a lot of
times we'll put you all to work for the last year we did, we did
the Pacific workshop last year.
And while we didn't do a a site visit to Hawaii officially, for
that visit I had Stacy, the state librarian come and do a
tour of of the library that's in Honolulu, which was really
helpful and wonderful and a great experience for the folks
in the territories. So yes, we hope you'll be be a part of the
Pacific workshop as well. Thank you.
Hello, hello. This is my first site visit and I haven't even
like peripherally been around them. So this is super new, but
I was curious if you could talk about if there's value in
seeing, I mean now that we have our five year plans, we kind of
have an idea of what changes we want to make. Would it be
valuable for you to see what we plan to change so that when you
come back in the future you can see what's different and what
the LSA?
Or I am the less money has done to like add value to the
program. So maybe not necessarily showing off what's
shining now, but what we hope to be shining later.
No, I think that's a great idea because it shows you know that
you're hard at work and you have a vision for the future and you
can share that with us however, however you want to. So that's a
great idea. I completely agree and I think there's a section of
the checklist that's all about the five year plan. And so
that's a very tangible way of us understanding like the context
behind it or where all of that's coming from. So I think that's
great.
Terry, any thoughts over there from Abora? Hi, Laura. Any
thoughts from the virtual folks? I know they're they're live.
Yeah, there are a lot of spots.
Tom, in Florida, I wanted to know how to determine which sub
grants get highlighted. Shannon and Georgia was concerned about
how to showcase on behalf of services like demos and there's
a lot of you know question about the documentation needed for the
checklist in general. Karen Egan also had a great suggestion
about having a pre meeting for all staff who will be involved
in the site visit, just to make sure.
Everything's ready.
And there was a lot of interest in seeing past itinerary
samples. Great. Thanks, Laura. Thanks for all that, all those
suggestions. And I'm going to let Madison get away. Thank you.
If if you can't find a past itinerary, if you know that
you've had a complete change in staff since the last visit, we
more than likely have those records. So feel free to ask us.
We can provide you those.
And I think Dennis is going to get more in depth with the
checklist, those details a little bit.
And as far as selecting those particular projects I would I
think that would that came from Shannon directly and I would say
that.
Potentially the best course of action would be to talk to your
program officer so that the two of you could work that out and
come to a conclusion. You know, bottom line, the three of us are
so flexible about where we're going to go, what you want us to
see.
I know I'm super new, but I think I can speak for all of us
where we just wanted to be the best experience for everybody
involved, us viewed them. And so if that means.
14 hours in the car or you know, four days, 3 airports, whatever.
We're happy to do it. We are just so fortunate to be able to
go out into the field and see your folks with you or is so
excited about it. So and just to punctuate and this once again,
it doesn't have to be like a whirlwind like multi day, 14 day
hours a day. No, like, I don't want to give that impression,
but like if there's something that you're just super
passionate about, if you're willing to do that.
That's great. We're willing to do it too. But it does not have
to be. You know, all like it's extravagant and all that. It's
all good.
It's Layla hi for preparing subgrantees for the site visit.
What types of information are you looking for beyond just the
general overview? Are you interested in seeing their
administrative processes or is it more of like seeing the
project as a whole? That's a great question. How do we
prepare the subrecipients?
I think generally we would just want to see the project as a
whole. We don't necessarily need to see their financial ins and
outs typically like what you would provide in an SPR report
in advance would.
Typically generally be be what we would want to see. Sometimes
the the project has already been reported on and we can just go
in the SPR and look at it if it's not just a brief overview
where they are in the process of the project.
Project directors who will, who we, who we will be meeting with.
Yeah, I would agree and you know correct me if I'm wrong, this is
my impression the smaller the grant, the kind of the less we
would ask those sort of questions just because we do
have a grasp from you all every year about those financial
transactions and things. Sometimes it's helpful to
understand how it works from their perspective, you know,
without it coming across like we're investigating anything.
But umm, you know, kind of out of curiosity, but I would say
maybe some of the maybe if you have a large statewide partner
that gets a lot of funds, you know, that's why I was talking
to Tennessee example with the regionals like they were very
open and very, it was very illuminating to hear how they
work with their local procurements in relation to
that. So it was just kind of an organic part of the
conversation, but it certainly wouldn't be like a if it's if
it's a small collection development grant, I wouldn't
imagine it being like a primary topic of conversation.
Yeah.
Chris, hello.
Everyone, can you hear me? OK, you can move the mic up. There
we go.
I just wanted to say that whoever said Dennis is perfect,
I need to have an argument about that.
I've I've had the fortunate experience of being on one site
visit to Mississippi and Dennis was my.
Representative to lead me there. And and he did talk for about 12
hours straight every day.
No, but he really, all of our program officers really know
your business based on what you've married, based on what
you report. They are very good about coming to me on any
questions that they have and I learn a lot from them.
So as the lead person for internal controls at the agency
and with grants estates being roughly 70% of our program
funding.
It's very important that we have strong internal controls and our
program officers and Terry really lead a very strong system
that we can rely on. We can we have 17 clean audits in a row.
Anything grants the states goes wrong that's going to really put
that in jeopardy. And I can stay in my 10 years, eleven years,
I'm the last. We haven't had that issue. So keep up that good
work. The other thing I'll just say is communication.
Build relationship with the program officers. They're not
looking to get anyone in trouble, they're looking for
best practices, they're looking to understand who's behind the
reports, and they really know everything about you based on
what you like. We provide them from the CFO's office.
The reason you do the accrual of which we're trying to get some
insight from analytics, just some numbers and we provide that
to them based on what we see from analytics. Maybe there's
some slow spending going on by when asking these questions, but
it's about communication. So they do a great job. You do a
great job based on what I see from having to go through audits
every year, keep up the good work.
Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. 01 other thing, Cindy. Dennis had
me thrown in jail as well. So we're there with you. Yeah,
yeah, we have photos.
That was a cool library. We're going to move on to the last
question everybody is there anything I MLS should know about
the site visit preparation process. Let's take a few
minutes talk talk at your tables. This is your opportunity
to you know let let your hair down. We can take it. We can
take it. Let the virtual folks Terry I'll reach out to you
folks in a couple of minutes as well. But what would you like us
to know about the site visit preparation process.
We'll see you in a few minutes.
What should we know?
Let us have it.
So they was coming back up.
Be brave, girl.
So Dennis is coming to visit in about a month and the whole
planning process was really smooth so far. So I just wanted
to give positive feedback on that. Dennis reached out to see
when would be a good time. So we were able to consult with
different staff members and find a time that was great for
everybody and also won't be in the dead of the summer when it's
really hot. So that was really great. I think one thing for
new.
People that would be helpful is maybe having just a.
Mini checklist of what needs to happen to prepare for the site
visit. And maybe you have that and I just just didn't see it.
But something like the agenda, the checklist, just all the
planning that needs to happen that that would be my one
hopeful suggestion. Great. Thank you so much.
You're not not seeing that.
Theory.
We had more quietness on this question, but just two people,
Shannon and Georgia, said that all the documentation and
training provided by Melissa is really helpful, including this
session right here. And I think owing to the chatter on chat,
we're all learning from each other. And then Jeanette from
Vermont chimed in at the sites. Been helpful. That's great to
hear. Thanks.
Jamie.
Another solid veteran.
I just wanted to say that we had a lot of silence at our table
about what I am alest could do differently. I mean, it's
smooth.
Lots of prep like this though.
Thanks, Jamie. Appreciate that.
OK. Well then I'm going to. Thanks everybody. I appreciate
using your brains and your hearts as always. I'm going to
pass over the conversation now to Dennis.
Thank you, Cindy. That was really, really informative. I
really appreciated everybody's participation in that. So, so
this part should be brief. It's more of a technical overview of
the changes to the site. Visit checklist. We are very excited
about the changes that we've made. There have been a couple
of pain points with the the format of the previous checklist
for a number of reasons. You know, it was a Adobe Fillable
PDF and those are blessings.
And curses, sometimes, you know, you have to have the right
reader. Things get weird. And, and in general, we just were
like, you know, how can we not be so married to this PDF
format? And so we were brainstorming and we thought, Oh
well, you know, we're already in the SPR and filling out fields
and you have that kind of mechanism. So what it what if it
was more web-based? So that's kind of where that kicked off.
And then we were like, well, if we're going to completely
transform this checklist, let's look at these questions and see
like.
Are these questions valuable? Can we think about them in a
different way? And then the ever evolving question of like, how
can we make the required documents be asked of you a
little bit more?
Logical and not maybe placed at the very bottom of the list
because that can kind of get weird. So that was the
inspiration for this process. And so as I mentioned, it now
lives in the SPR, which we are thrilled about. It's not a
fillable PDF, but I know that on some of you mentioned in the
discussions having three meetings, talking to people who
don't use the SPR to help fill it out so it can be saved as a
PDF just for your records. But then we also, and I believe we
sent this to.
Our states that we're visiting, there's sort of like a legacy
copy of the PDF on the grants states manual for the checklist
if you need it to be a little bit more living outside of the
SPR for reference.
And I I mentioned all the requested documentation
materials can now be uploaded within the checklist. So a lot
of you are familiar with uploading additional materials
in the SPR, it's that same sort of function, it's just now
associated with the section of questions that the documentation
relates to. So we're hoping that's simpler. And I mentioned
already the reference copy of all the questions are available
on the grants to states manual. So we're trying to marry that
web-based and kind of document.
Format of it.
And so, as the new checklist format, this is a little bit of
a snippet of what it looks like it. For those of you who are
familiar with the PDF version of the checklist, it should look
familiar. The headings are the same and just the only
difference now is that they're kind of expandable, collapsible
headers. So if you just want to, again, to make it less
intimidating, if you just want to click on general information,
you'll just see those questions, you can click them when you're
done, expand the next one, etcetera and so forth, you know,
save frequently and often, of course.
As you all know with the SPR experience and one of the
features is now, there's a last modified date that automatically
tracks sort of like when you last updated this. So this can
potentially be more of a living document for all of you, instead
of it being necessarily this like let's do this all at once
in five years.
And as I mentioned too, even when you're done completing it,
you can print it to PDF if you need a local copy with the
answers in it. And I mentioned already that the checklist is
divided into the five categories with expandable headers.
And I also more detail about how the additional materials work.
This is again a screenshot that might be hard to see, but this
is under general information. That one header at the top,
that's the section of the checklist is it asks you for
those bulleted items that are the reference documentation that
relate to the general information portion of the
checklist. So in the financial information it will ask you to
upload you know, MRE things, other financial samples that's
going to be in that section.
And you can either upload the documents or you can provide
URLs to the files. That's been increasingly popular, especially
post pandemic, to just send us links to shared folders and
things are. One note of advice is obviously we need to have the
program officers need to have access to the folders, so if you
give us links to things we can't access, that could be tricky.
And then this is a new feature and a whole new section of
content that hasn't been in the checklist before and they're at
the end of each of the general sections and we're calling them
discussion prompts there. We had a lot of discussion internally
about, you know, we have the checklist and then we find
ourselves asking follow up questions and because again
we're just curious about things beyond yes or no or like filling
out a document, but we also realize that that might be off
putting.
To spontaneously have a follow up question that makes it sound
like we're again investigating something and really we are just
curious. So we thought why don't we have some of our questions
that could prompt discussion, give you a heads up that we
might be asking them or curious about them, but it's not a field
that you have to fill out. So it's more of just like hey, we
might discuss these things less formally. So it's not in the
official record, it's not anything like that, but it's
just things that didn't kind of fit the checklist format and
again just no curve.
That's the whole point. We don't want to ask any curveball
questions that leave you like, I don't know, I don't know what to
say and causing any undue anxiety.
And then yeah, this is a very briefly an overview of the
checklist itself and why we have these questions. And and so the
really the checklist provides us an overview of basic statistics,
gives us a little bit more detail about your legal
authority in the state to administer Ellis State funds and
how you administer it, the policies, procedures, things
like that and then of course financial administrative
information related to the program.
In the general information section, I mean it's pretty
self-explanatory. It gives us some general information, but
but again, it it seems very basic. It's very basic
statistics, but from a program officer perspective it's very
insightful to understand. OK, these are the amount of
libraries, maybe these are the amount of regionals, or no,
there aren't any regionals in this state. Those kinds of
details are very helpful.
At legal authority in compliance with federal law, again kind of
makes sense as to why we're asking for those, but it also
gives us an opportunity for deeper perspectives on legal
matters and the grounding for a legal authority in your state.
Where is it in your state law that that authorizes your state
librarian to do what they do and how federal interacts with your
state laws and policies? Obviously we all know about the
drug free workplace, so if Dorothy was.
Hanging out in the poppy fields, I don't know. She couldn't go to
the state library for a while. I don't think so.
That is my very labored Wizard of Oz tie to this session.
And then the administrative activity section is is very
helpful. Again, these are the kinds of things that we do not
have insight to with the SPR. What are your written policies
and procedures? Who handles the grant records? Do you have an
Advisory Council? You don't need one. But if you do, how do they
interact with LSA funds? And again like giving a peek into
the grand files, how do you organize them? How complete are
they those kinds of things and really?
As we've done this, this is not only an opportunity for us to
help offer recommendations, but you all have really great things
happening that we had a lot of States asking like do you have a
great example of a subgrant manual? Like yes, we do because
we just visited the state and here is an example. So again,
it's about modeling and kind of elevating things that are
really, really successful.
And the financial activity, everybody's favorite and this is
typically where we would invite the end of your fiscal reps,
controllers even potentially depending on how your state is
structured to help not only answer these questions but also
hear from us about why we have Moe, which is always just very
mysterious to those who are not directly engaged in this. And so
we as far as scheduling the visit, you know, blocking off
time for your finance people to.
Help cover these part, this part of the checklist is very
important. So we just talk about 4% administration, how does that
work? What are your cost categories for that? I'm talking
about OE because again as you know our perspective in the SPR,
we see your MO number and it's there and we're like thank you
for that. But there's in the SPR there isn't an opportunity to
understand like where that's coming from. So that's why we
talk about it a lot. Yeah. And if any audits have occurred and
why resolutions in that regard and.
How your procurement policies interact with federal
procurement policies, which is always fun, and any equipment or
inventory and policies that you have.
And then the wrap up section, there is an area maybe if
there's some context that wasn't covered in the other sections of
the checklist that you feel are important to add. It could just
be about how the state is structured. You could even talk
about maybe the political climate, if that informs LTA
anything, it's just kind of like an open-ended area. And then
this is relatively new. We usually we get the agenda and
itineraries via e-mail, but this is an opportunity again for.
Institutional memory and record keeping to have it in the SPR.
So that way you're like, oh, this was this was the agenda
last time and so there's an opportunity to help with the
documents there.
This is we may have covered these elements already, but with
we do all of our states within a four year. And then we don't
visit, we won't visit any state in 2027 because you are all
doing plenty with five year plan evaluations and writing a new
five year plan. So that that average is out for us to do
about 5 states a year as you saw in the schedule and we also
mentioned this already, we kind of base our schedule based on
OK.
Five years ago, I visited the state. So it's like a healthy
distance between the two. That doesn't have to be the case.
We've had states that just are don't have a state librarian or
don't have an LSD coordinator or both. And they're just like,
doesn't make a whole lot of sense for you to be here. I
don't know what we're really going to be able to talk about.
And so I'll kind of reach out to another state and ask, hey, can
I come a year earlier or that kind of thing so we can make
those kinds of accommodations, especially with plenty of
advance notice.
Yeah, so that was a bit of a flyby, but I wanted to not hold
you up for lunch, and I wanted to. I really appreciated the
healthy discussion that you all shared with each other. But if
there's any questions about the checklist or how it works, I
know there was somebody who had questions about documentation.
If we didn't cover them in the way that the new checklist is
laid out, please feel free to ask.
The.
Well, well, you know where we all are. If you have any follow
up questions, I appreciate all of your time and all of your
participation is really insightful. Thank you so much.
Am I free to release them?
Was delicious and Seattle.
I am happy to start to kick off the second scenario planning
session that we have. I'm thrilled.
Eight in the scenario planning session again today is Glenda
themed, so it should be really exciting and fun and not panic
inducing scenarios like yesterday. As a reminder of the
structure, again, we're talking about windfalls and wonderful
things today and you will again have 30 minutes to digest the
scenario individually. Kind of process it like before for 5
minutes and then for 25 minutes just talk.
That's a group about the implications for the work of
state libraries your facilitators will have. You'll
have an IMS facilitator still, and, and this is really a note
to myself as a facilitator, is to identify sooner than when we
did yesterday, a representative who will share a summary of the
group's work. When we come back together and just and we'll have
additional time to also debrief across both days about the
planning process, scenario, planning process in general, and
what you gathered from it.
This is a reminder of the norms. Be open to new ideas, the
challenge, your own assumptions. Suspend your disbelief. Of
course. Very important. Stay in 2040 and not how that couldn't
possibly happen, because we're in 2040 and we're suspending our
disbelief. And once again, fully participate, listen, actively
contribute, leave space in the conversation for others and stay
engaged. All right? So now we are.
Reassigned the breakouts by state. We know that there are
more than one of you per state. In some instances, that means
both of you just kind of go as a unit.
And so in the Madison Ballroom with Madison, of course, is
Alaska through Minnesota.
Terry, in the East Room has Missouri through Pennsylvania
and I have on the South Room Puerto Rico through Wyoming. And
of course we have our wonderful virtual breakouts and they have
the link to the separate breakout room.
Yeah, right. Exactly. All right. So without further ado, let us
break out.
Freak out.
Do you need more time to report out for the virtual? Why don't
we start with the virtual this time around?
Long way.
All right. So in our scenario.
Based on a new study from the Department of Ed.
Literacy rates in adults have jumped from 79% to 99%.
Findings credit programming and collections and public libraries
across the country. Demand for library services and reading
materials is skyrocketing. Reading is now cultural capital
in the United States. Personal cachet is measured by the amount
of books one reads. I know some of you are really excited. I
know, I know. Someone on chat described it as library utopia.
Yeah, yeah. So for the first question, what would be the?
Applications for the state library, leveraging successes,
focus on equity.
Efforts for children's programming should be stepped up
for sure.
And that would probably include consultants broken down by
grade, like elementary, middle school, high school.
Audio books and ebooks would need to remain in place for sure
and relevant.
Let's see here libraries and publishers.
Would the SLA would have a role in the contract negotiations?
There was a lot of there was conversation about interest
groups and there.
Having to navigate that complicated sandbox? How about
we put it that way?
Consider how many library schools are currently offered in
in the country and should that increase. And we want to make
sure that libraries can continue to provide quality reading for
users, like an info lit theme and they were emphasizing
quality, not just quantity.
Very good. Good job. Virtual group. All right, who wants to
be the first of the in person group to report out?
Not everybody at once. All right, Nicolette.
So our scenario. By 2040, federal, state, and local
governments collaborate to guarantee that everyone in the
United States has affordable access to the Internet at a fast
speed. We decided this is a result of years of planning and
installing infrastructure with assistance from libraries and
communications companies. Devices are readily available to
the public, and digital literacy is also generally agreed to be
universal. So we talked about how.
Even if people have access to devices and the like basic
digital literacy to use them, that libraries will still
probably necessarily need to focus on things like information
literacy, which is not guaranteed just because you have
a computer. So teaching people to, you know, we all know what
information literacy is, as well as, you know, financial and
health literacy and all of those kinds of things. We also talked
about early digital literacy and looking how young people.
Are interacting with technology and that that's something we'll
have to consider probably differently than we do now, but
still.
Incorporating technology and literacy into early literacy
programming, we talked about not a huge shift in what state
library agencies and coordinators are doing,
potentially just reinvesting some of our dollars away from
buying lots of devices.
All the time. Or buying, you know, working on the broadband,
but umm, you know, investing in project management, future
technology. We talked a little bit about AI and I said robots
in VR, but in 2040 it's probably going to be things we can't even
really comprehend right now, necessarily funding. We will
need to consider funding things like more databases, more
training and information literacy. Also more ebooks.
Some job titles we talked about, you know, continuing with our
technology and innovation librarians, I think I wrote
down.
Early digital literacy trainers. I know there was the word
shepherd thrown around technology Shepherd, because we
need people to shepherd people through this change and that
that would be a big role in the library. And we do talk a little
bit also about mental health and Wellness, human connection and
sort of counter programming to all of the connection and
bringing people together back in spaces. And I did write super
compliance really big and making sure that everyone's doing that
too.
I probably missed a lot because we had a very engaging and
wide-ranging discussion, but.
Yeah, that's a good summary.
I was there. It was good.
Alright, next group.
Hmm.
So our scenario, I know this is supposed to be the positive one.
This is what our scenario was. Following an overhaul of the US
Constitution and an executive order from President Lisa
Simpson in 2040, all state librarians, top SLA officials,
are appointed governor of their respective state with no term
limits. Moving forward, it is required that the governor have
a background in libraries.
Took us a little while to start talking and I will say that my
comment was I don't like any of this.
Jamie made a really good point that.
As far as librarians, we really value being nonpartisan. So you
go from that to being political. And it was, I think, just very
uncomfortable. And maybe we're just used to dealing with, oh,
there's a disaster, let's go, let's go fix this. Like, we're
used to problems. We're used to fixing things. So there were a
couple of different things that we kind of came up with.
The first is what librarian would want to be governor, kind
of. But then you start looking at the different state librarian
requirements because we all have different requirements with
that.
And then we did decide that the LST coordinator would be
Lieutenant governor. And I feel like that's a very fun position.
But there were some. So some of the concerns that kind of came
up first were we're looking at what's our mission creep,
because now we're in charge of everything. And even though we
generally think we're in charge of everything, now we really are
in charge of everything.
We would probably take a different approach to budgeting
the types of things that are funded, not just libraries, but
I think a lot of the social services that we wrap ourselves
around education, people would really want to partner with us.
We would really it would be type that type of thing.
We, I must would probably be a lot more political.
We to talk about there probably a lot less internal hires and a
lot more political appointees, and that can go in a lot of
different directions. There would, amazingly, be even more
bureaucracy possible.
We talked about there would be a lot more scrutiny of library
services and more price. You kind of get a Little Mix of
both. You get elevated and sometimes when you're elevated,
it's like, oh, look, everyone's paying attention and thanks for
lovely, and then everyone starts picking at us a lot more. What
we really wanted at the end we decided was we want more money,
but we just want everyone to kind of like leave us alone.
Libraries would probably be attacked even even more. We did
eventually get around to some of the wonderful things that this
could create, increase in state aid, kind of getting back to you
more funding for social services and cultural institutions.
More, just more, more, more more money, more staff, more ability
to really set our own priorities, more support for
workforce development and lifelong learning we talked
about like, oh, there'll be a lot more funding for
universities. And again, like some of the other people are
talking about library degrees and any other kind of degrees
being able to really support.
Things that we value with money that we would have a level
playing field for funding for libraries of all sizes. I think
we all know that in many cases it's very local funding. And it
just depends on like, do you have things there that like have
property taxes and again getting back to that different funding
piece, the other thing that we finally said was we would
definitely have conferences in Hawaii. And I think that's the
important note to add.
All right. Our third and final in person group. All right.
Like.
So our scenario was due to the productive work of kasla, the
federal funding goal of $10 per capita is achieved for LTA
starting in fiscal year 2040. Note in 2023 the federal funding
level of.
LA is approximately $0.50 per capita each each state in US
territories federal funding in the grants states program
increases.
From the year prior by a factor of 10. The states received
notice of this three months before the new awards are
issued.
Kind of deja vu, maybe a little bit. OK. So we structured ours
in threats, opportunities and then kind of other stuff that
didn't quite fit. So the first thing we brought up was the MLE
and match. Obviously, MLE is a average of the three years
prior, but meeting that match for some states might be a big
issue. I think for many of us, having that state funding
available is something that was of concern. We weren't sure if
it was an opportunity or threat.
That's kind of in between, so.
So opportunity wise we saw that we could fully fund local
projects without asking for match potentially and we would
be able to create equity with such a large amount. We can
rethink programs and we can fund larger projects and obviously do
more sub awards with these funds and especially tackling issues
like building capacity and doing multi year grants to rethink how
programs are currently being.
Run. So with the short notice, we thought that there might need
to be a need for the quick and easy grants just to get money
out the door, and that could be through mini grants or formula
grants. And we thought that an opportunity would be a dedicated
focus on specific populations like the underserved and doing
comprehensive research. So we're not spending money without
knowing what the need is.
And we saw that this could be an opportunity for growth for Lt.
coordinators. There could be chances for promotion. We saw
the role changing from more of a day-to-day operational to more
of a managerial because there's going to be more staff needing
to run the program, doing the program officer work in the
day-to-day.
State libraries would have more sway at the table and with the
extra funding that comes with more partnerships, and so that
can be kind of good or bad.
And.
There's the opportunity to revisit construction with LTA
open that can of worms and plus or minus five year change, five
year plan changes mid cycle and the administrative costs, the 4%
that could really fund a lot more stuff at the state library
and really open up opportunities for other spending. So threat
wise we saw additional staffing as being an issue.
Everybody's hiring. Are we still hiring? Then yes.
Fatigue, not only internally at the State library, but also with
sub awardees, there'd be grant fatigue timeline and potential
delays. Got a + 1 on that and that would just be what we've
all lived through. So smaller libraries not having the
capacity still, you know we all have libraries who don't apply
for grants. That's just going to continue forward because their
capacity doesn't change just because we have an increase in
funding.
Um. But that could also be an opportunity to how can we help
support them better? And so more money, more problems, and the
political ramifications of visibility? The state library
would have a seat at the table. And what does that mean for
people trying to?
Use it.
Umm.
More audits? Sorry, I I scribbled that word. I was like,
no, the potential loss of local funding due to the increase of
federal funding. So local libraries could move, lose money
due to this, increase turnover extensions, and then the state
library could be viewed as big government because of this
massive amount of money. And so the trustworthiness of libraries
could be impacted, which is something that I think we all
find very important.
Umm, we talked about.
Umm.
Potentially like having a start up mentality but how do you
approach how to approach things strategically? So try to slow it
down on the front end and.
We'll have additional grants processing to make sure all the
components are in the application. So like when you're
doing those initial checks on an application to make sure it's
complete, that will be more time consuming because obviously
you'll have more sub awards and.
I think I hit everything unless somebody has something they want
to add.
That's great. Thank you. All right, Dennis.
Dennis, Dennis on your right, hi. I inadvertently only
answered one of the questions. I need some more coffee. I'm so
sorry. I just wanted to give back the feed some of the
feedback that I managed to capture. Just as a quick
reminder, this is the scenario where the literacy rate jumped
and four question #2, the role of the LST coordinator there
would be an LST coordinator department.
And more sway in the organization, like Catherine was
saying, and we talked a lot about how did we get here.
Publishers were overthrown, which was really interesting to
consider.
Those audio and ebook licenses were retained by the libraries.
We talked about increased social services offerings, healthcare,
telehealth in the libraries, and more. Remote learning. Abolish.
Excuse me?
Provide additional services to incarcerated or decarceration
folks. And then for #3 we talked for the funding support a
shorter workweek, flexible work hours.
No parameters for readers. So this was something that we
touched on for you can read anything you want. There's no
ban. There's you can pick up any book you like. Folks, some of us
may take this for granted. Please do not.
And let's see here. SLAA retains licensing. Licensing that I said
sustaining the 99% literacy rate. We would want to make sure
the messaging and the perception of the libraries maintains that.
And like Catherine said, revisiting the construction can
of Worms is a possibility.
Libraries as works of art.
Our tourist destinations, we've seen some of those in our lives
which are just amazing book groups, not just functioning as
book groups, but also to combat loneliness and social anxieties,
sort of like somebody literally, literally said book groups on
steroids, which I kind of liked.
And an equitable base collection for every single library. So
you're sort of all starting out at the same place I am. A less
would have more money than the Department of Defense.
Just look, just marinating that for a second.
And no SPR.
And finally on #4, for job titles, we talked more about
early childhood and development librarians, equity focused job
titles.
A reader.
Isn't it great to be read to how about that? A programming
department, an author liaison, a library extension consultant,
more social Social services coordinator or consulting a book
loop. Again, a book group coordinator, drone book drop
delivery operator. Love that. Books for babies. So as soon as
you bring your baby to the library for the first time, you
get a book right there at the library. I love that. And that
would be.
Addressing, you know, the high adult literacy rate. But we want
to make sure that those babies get started as soon as possible
and helping caregivers and parents to pass along that
increased literacy rate with best practices to the young
ones. Sorry to make you all come back to me, but I just wanted to
get all that in. Thanks, Dennis. Great. Wonderful. OK. Well,
yeah, that's off to everybody. I don't want to get too much in
the way of what's coming next because.
Our assistant? No. Our deputy director for library services,
Cindy Landrum, is our kind of futurist maven, and she's going
to speak to us virtually very quickly. But I wanted to just
spend a little bit of time on asking you, like, what your
overall impression of the process was. What type of
scenario fostered more interesting discussion yesterday
or today's? And what insights did you glean that you could
apply to your work? We're really interested in those kinds of
how, how this could.
Kind of be transferred. This practice could be transferred
outside of.
This this process in the conference. So again just for a
couple of minutes, if anybody has some quick impressions, we
can popcorn them and then pass it on to Cindy.
Dennis, I shared some of this with Terry who led the scenario
that I was in before, but I really liked this exercise. I
hope that the folks in the room did as well. Yesterday is more
provocative one perhaps with the Union that Madison led and then,
you know, the more money than God the Terry just led with us.
I think giving us these scenarios that seem wild and
putting them so far in the future that some of us might be
retired allowed.
Just the like the space and the grace to just kind of go crazy
with you know what we're sharing and what we're thinking you know
abolish the SPR over here on the on the virtual conference. I
don't know that I would have said that if if the scenarios
weren't a little more you know they were just a little more
state so I think it's great and I think that the way that.
You folks asked for our participation with those kind of
four questions. And then each of you brought a different flavor
to how you kind of facilitated the conversation. There's so
much in this exercise that I'm going to steal from you to use
for future facilitation groups that I do. So thank you for
doing this. That's wonderful. Thank you. That's very
encouraging.
Some thoughts from the virtual world does this would be an
interesting staff exercise. Let's see here. I got to scroll
back up. Love this type of scenario planning because you
really see needs for now and the future.
It was kind of like creating stretch goals helps identify
gaps. This would be an interesting to use, interesting
exercise to use at the SLA when we were looking at our programs.
That's what we've got so far. Great.
Right.
All right. Well, I appreciate all the feedback and the
participation. You all were wonderful. So thank you so much.
We have a surprise guest for you. My boss, our deputy
director of libraries that I am LS was actually an expert in
this. We weren't sure if it would work out for her to join
us virtually, but she's here, and Cindy Landram, who's been
with us for a number of years now, just for the first time
last this past year, ran our staff.
Your exercises like this. She's an expert in this and is part of
the Futures School of thought. There she is. Hello, Cindy. We
can see your face now.
It was great to to be with you virtually. I'm really jealous
that I'm not with you in person, but somebody has to keep the
lights on here in DC while everybody else gets to go out
and play. So I am glad to be with you and super jealous
because I did sneak in to the virtual session and got to hear
all of you report out and I was super stoked. The two hour super
stoked about this exercise is Terry said we have been.
Running through these scenario planning types of exercises and
futures work in our office of Library services and I just
wanted to sort of stop in and share some thoughts and insights
with you as you step away from this and have some time to kind
of think about this process that you just engaged in. First of
all, just say when Harry says I'm an expert in this, I don't
know if I would say.
I'm an expert, but I definitely am an evangelist of sorts. My
first engagement with future thinking actually happened when
I was, when I like we young librarian in the state of
Arizona, the state I call my second home. And actually
futures thinking was a competency that I had to be able
to demonstrate as a part of my performance review. So I, you
know, I was in it very early.
And have continued in the future space, both academically as well
as a matter of practice. And pretty much every place that
I've been, I've done this work or attempted to do this work
with my colleagues. And for those of you who may know me,
you know I've been a lot of places, so I've typed a lot of
States and have relationships with many states.
And so I'm I'm just really happy that this body is doing this
work and fully engaged in it and special shout out to a number of
states that I know are really leading large scale efforts
here. But I I wanted to just share one of the reasons why I
kind of popped in to see.
How you guys were progressing with the questions is because I
just wanted to to offer a bit of some thoughts as you move this
forward or if you plan to or desire to. You know, one of the
things I found really interesting in your
presentations, umm, you know, the the scenarios you got today
where you know wonder and awe and wonder windfalls and they
were super, super positive and on a few occasions I heard
people say.
I'm sorry, but I really need to address this sort of not so
positive thing. But that's the thing about the scenarios is
that whether it's this catastrophic thing or this
wonderful thing that they can actually kind of go either way.
They're not going to be 100% positive or 100% negative and
they actually provide a variety of opportunities for us to think
about something in very different ways, but as you're
thinking.
About this and you walk away from it and there are a lot of
great comments and positive response to this. I also want
you to think about the things that may be challenged you in
doing these scenarios. Or if you're thinking about how you
may navigate this type of work in your own organizations or
community, the libraries, some of the challenges you might face
and some of the important learnings that you might take
away. You know, one of the pushbacks.
I used the receive particularly early in my career, and
engagement in this work is I'll just share a story. It was
around ebook, so the reading scenario really resonates with
me. But it was about 10 years ago. And you know, of course we
were at another sort of interesting juncture with our
friends in the publishing industry and ebooks, and I was
sort of in the speculative space thinking about the what.
You know what if the Big 5 became the big one, you know,
and I had a library director say, well, you cannot predict
the future. And I was like you are correct, I cannot, but I can
create the future. And that's really the thing that is the
take away. And I want to kind of break down those two real two
really important words in that response, I and create. And so
I'm going to start with the.
I because the eye is all of us and it's really important when
we're engaging in scenario type work or you know there are tons
of other methods in the futures work and for strategic foresight
space that we can use. But it's really important for us to
understand where we sit in a particular future and where we
sit in our own engagement with the future in terms of
ourselves.
So you know, you may have had some discomfort or you may find
that others may have some discomfort, and that's actually
super natural. There are neurological studies that
indicate that our relationship to our future self is like how
we relate to a stranger. It's like we can see ourselves, but
we don't know ourselves. And so that can often impact how we
sort of engage with the future.
And also there are environmental issues and sociocultural issues
that can impact our thinking, our ability to think in this
way. So, for example, if someone grew up in a home where no one
asked them, what do you want to be when you grow up? Or they had
a health concern that you know they heard, that you know you're
never going to live past a certain age, it can be really
difficult.
For people to engage with a future that they've never been
exposed to or thought about or particularly if they haven't
thought about themselves in the future, but I think someone said
this earlier and it's absolutely true. It can also work to your
advantage. I heard someone say, oh, I don't have to think about
that because I'll be retired. Well, I have. That is so true.
I, you know, worked with scenarios that are 10 and 15.
2020 years into the future and oftentimes I get the best, most
creative responses from people because they're like, guess
what? That's going to be on you because I won't be here. And so
it does allow you to let your imagination run free, even if
you recognize that you may be a part of setting the stage for a
particular scenario to evolve.
It's all different ball game where you realize, oh, that's
going to be somebody else, not me.
But the other thing I wanna address in that I can create is
this idea of creating the future. And it seems like I'm
going to put on my cave and I'm going to do this. It's going to
be me and I'm going to change the world. And it really,
obviously it's not. There's a lot of moving parts when we
think about the future and how we create conditions that are
conducive to it. But we can influence, we can shape, we can
think about the future and.
Even our everyday decisions how does this decision, how might
this decision play out and say five years and also they give us
scenario. Sometimes I would get called into a, how shall I say,
come up with all the reasons why something shouldn't happen. For
example, because looking forward a particular decision may have
implications that we.
You know, maybe haven't considered, but the thing I
really want to leave you with, the thing that I want you to
take away from this, is to really a way that we sort of
think about creating the future is by paying attention and being
curious. I don't know if any of you have had this experience
where you read an article in Library journal or you saw
something at your local news, or you overheard a conversation and
you went.
Stop.
And oftentimes we kind of dismiss the hunt and the home,
but futures work allows you to engage the hub and the home. So
thinking about something that you might see that sort of
sparks curiosity about what would happen if.
That particular thing actually kind of took hold and and became
a thing and what does it mean for our state library? What does
it mean for our local libraries? What does it mean for people
that work in libraries or the communities that library serves?
I think it's really important to allow yourself the space to be
curious and to allow yourself to engage the hunt.
And the and the home, but also the thing about, well, OK, what
kinds of things might be driving these things? I, I, as I was
sitting in the virtual session of the conversation, shifted to
like, well, how did we get here? And that is really an important
conversation to have when you're doing the futures work, because
when you set a future state, it's really important to kind of
backtrack and think about the things that might.
Have gotten you there, or the things that you might put in
place that could shake that future. In a dystopian sort of
future, you might want to think about constraints that you might
want to engage that might curtail the growth of that
dystopian future. But I'm going to, I know that I am. The
difference between you all catching a flight and also you
all may be going to dinner if you're your flight is later. But
the thing I really want.
To impress upon you as one is you're thinking about this and
engaging this and thinking about this experience. The number one
thing is to stay curious and allow yourself to think about
what could be. And you're right. When people tell you you can't
predict the future, you're right, you can't predict it. But
there are enough things around us that are happening globally
and our local communities and nationally that.
Really give us an opportunity to think broadly, to think forward,
but also to think about how we can shape the future and
basically influence a future that we would like to be a part
of and that we would like to live in and that we'd like to
leave for others. So I'm going to leave you with that.
As you head off into the skies or if you're driving or however
you got to this conference and thank you so much for being
participants. And I want to give a special shout out to my
colleagues and grants, the states because they always put
on an engaging and informative conference and they always have
their finger on the pulse of what's important in libraries
and what's important to our colleagues. And I call you all
our partners in the state library. So thank you so much
for your time.
And safe travels to you all.
Thank you, Cindy, and thank you for holding down the Fort for
us.
I have to say the Cindy Landram era at IMS and and you should
know she is the one who will be in place after our director
changes course. So she will be in a seat to make decisions that
Crosby is making at the moment. And the Cindy Landram era at IMS
has been wonderful. She is an amazing manager, an amazing
librarian with lots of amazing experience and we just felt like
this was the moment.
That we had to bring her in and introduce her to all of you and
hopefully we can do a little more of this with her in the
future. I'm going to grab the appreciation wall. Hang on one
second before you take off your flights because we just have a
few closing things that we'd like to say. And while I'm doing
this, go ahead and get out your survey if you haven't finished
it already or taken the opportunity to wrap it up. And
please take the time to do this.
Once you're done, we'll have a place at the registration desk
for you to drop them off, and we take this feedback so seriously,
we iterate every single year based on what you tell us. We're
not out just to get the kudos. We want all of it. We want you
to be real and tell us what we need to do differently. So
please be honest and we will adjust.
Oh, thank you.
OK. So we've had the last couple of days and appreciation wall,
which is a big piece of paper.
But it looks like this for those of you tuning in virtually, and
there aren't too, too many of these appreciations. So I'm
going to go ahead and just read through them while you're
filling out your surveys. And I love this scene from Dorothy and
The Wizard of Oz where you're like, Hail Dorothy. This is how
I feel about like hail colleagues.
We haven't killed any wicked witches, but you're awesome, so.
First, appreciation. I'm reading the mentor program is
invaluable. I couldn't do my job without Wendy Coplin. Yay.
Shout out to Michael Gorick for supporting me in my first PLS
Public Library survey administration from Laura Hicks.
Thank you both.
Thanks Maura from New Jersey about the light rail details
from Carmen in North Dakota.
I think we all learned something from Laura.
OK, thanks to Claire. Her quick thinking and hometown knowledge
helped us have a truly delightful dumpling dinner last
night. Thanks, Claire.
That is, that is an IMLS appreciation. I may or may not
read it.
Rachel Cook, thank you for the kind words and the Oscar
nomination. So glad you could join us in person. Your friend
in Texas, Erica.
Feels like summer camp. I don't. I don't want to send you home.
OK, so this is A2 parter. So to Debbie in Arkansas. And husband,
thank you for walking with me or letting me walk with you to the
hotel. So glad I ran into you on the train. I would still be
sitting on the corner of 4th and spring if not for you.
I will be forever grateful your neighbor in Texas, Eric, comment
cormag.
This is my first time at a grants estates and everyone has
been so incredibly welcoming. I appreciate all of you. Thank
you. Jessica Auto in Wyoming. So nice.
All right. And to the Animalist staff for your warm welcome to a
neophyte coordinator. That's a great phrase. We should brand
that.
You started my conference out just right. We're glad.
Yay. All right, successful appreciation wall. We'll do it
again.
Umm.
We're getting ready to leave and I just want to say it's an
understatement that we enjoy being with you at this
conference. It makes our whole year worthwhile. Seeing you and
seeing evidence of your amazing ARPA funded projects, for
example, just makes our federal hearts beat with Joy. And the
same will be true of site visits as we kick off this new cycle.
And go and spend more time with you in the field. We're so
excited to get to know you better.
The welcoming and helpful nature of this Community means that
even though we're disembarking now from the grants to states
conference bus, we still have each other to lean on.
So thank you all for upholding this program with Integrity and
making a difference with federal and state funds across the
nation.
There's often a specter of fraud, waste and abuse when it
comes to federal programming, especially in this time of
stimulus funds. And I can say honestly, we we really don't
worry about that. And I'm LS. It's because all of you do such
a good job as pass through entities monitoring that money,
making sure it is handled with care. And the things that we get
to worry about, conversely, are like, are we amplifying your
great work?
So that is a wonderful thing to have to worry about.
So click your heels together, everyone. We're sending you off
from Emerald City back home until we can be together again.
And until then, be well.
Thanks.
Safe travels and virtual folks we'll see on the other side.