[Music]
and so i think what the conversation over the next two days is all about
bringing these people together bringing the great panelists group that groups
that that we have and all of you uh is if anything about the soul of the
library what is a library today what will it be in the future what are we
doing for the community where is our leverage point in the community where is
our importance in the community the beginning of an
upswing today is going to be about a cultural and a moral shift
and the place that that has to start is with inclusion
it's not just about programs and policies and economic equality it's
about doing the hard work of racial reconciliation
to create a new north star for what a real inclusive week could look like this
is what the library is doing in highwood it is transformational it is impactful
we have programs like i said for youth young adult adults and we recently
received a major grant of 578 000
to work on health equity and so getting health access to individuals
there needs to be a social movement among librarians
to kind of no i mean of course to social movement
beyond libraries but in particular among librarians
to mobilize many larger numbers of libraries i'm a
huge fan of libraries as as as crosby knows better than anybody i'm an
enormous fan of libraries not just as a consumer but but as a as a analyst of
society it goes to the the idea that
i think most of us believe that we have moved
from the traditional model to the transformational model in library world
and we're many of us are so far
gone from the traditional model that we don't even
think about it in that sense anymore but i think if we really were to look across
the especially for us who were in public libraries the you know
nine thousand public library systems when we started to examine how many of
them still operated in the traditional model i think we'd find a lot more than
we probably think what matters is re-establishing the
reputation as being a place that
that will provide what you want to read it's reading that changes lives not
libraries it's reading that would enable a
generation of teenagers to do the transformation we
were talking about yesterday and they would do it we believe that
they should because they read programs and the services and the
the libraries being the community hubs can drive
marketing of the library increasing people coming in that's what my
perspective is we know that libraries are resilient and
we know that libraries respond to what the community needs i turned from going
into the community and saying here's what i have to give you to go into the
community and saying what is it you need from us and how can we help you
there's a fundamental formula which is often used as a shorthand that the value
of a network is equal to the number of connections among users squared
so each additional user you add to the network creates exponential value if you
think of the library as a platform then ebooks driving down the visits to
the library is driving down the value of the platform
both the medium and the purpose for reading are changing under our
fingertips and we have evidence to show this that we are changing
how our children's attention is being developed and in very different
ways in that zero to five there is no question the best activation of language
regions is when the parent is reading the book
that what you all are doing or helping others do
is to make sense of the world when people come in and they say i need
a book i need this they email you you're making collection development decisions
you're deciding what ebooks to buy what print books to buy whatever the case may
be what programming to put on you're contributing to this whole notion
of sense making of helping populations make sense of the world around them
and you're building that trust
so the question is what role does the library have right
in helping our communities because our schools are overwhelmed they can't do by
themselves and particularly the families we're talking about the kids we're
talking about they don't have the resources
so who's going to come in and stand in the breach if not now when
we need you to be not in the community but also of the community
to recognize that parent that is low literate that is struggling
with reading that is struggling to make sure that their child is not in fourth
grade is not below a third grade reading level
the uniquely american thing is at the neighborhood level at the local level
what he used to call the township level that we can associate to deal with
problems that's really what libraries do there weren't there weren't any public
libraries or very very few real public libraries in the 1830s when
toppo was writing this i think if he saw what you are and what you do today he
would say that's the continuation of the unique
american thing