[Music]
thank you all for uh for being here again uh this morning and for our robust
uh discussions uh yesterday uh it was uh both fun and enlightening and it's great
to be back together and it's great that all of you found uh
enough uh enlightenment or fun uh last night that
you would return this morning so i i wanna i do a few minutes uh with a
couple of thoughts about yesterday as a segue into today uh and then i will uh
jump right into an introduction of tim coates and and the freckle report uh uh
momentarily so i i learned one important thing yesterday and that is that we are
all part of the illuminati
and i want you to know that i have already heard from marjorie taylor green
um she wants she wants to join
the other thing that i heard i think loud and clear
yesterday is that
librarians particularly the librarians who are
gathered here uh but many others as well are entrepreneurs and innovators
uh and i and i think that's an important takeaway for for a number of different
reasons um it is that we have the the first and most important reason
is that we have a lot of agency with what we do
we there we have power in the library world
and it as as libraries get bigger and more
institutional the the largest urban libraries
if you're part of the city county system uh if you have uh in in a small town or
a suburban environment you have a particularly active board
uh i think you all know what i'm talking about
uh of course there are limitations to this
but but we shouldn't ever lose the the important notion that as
librarians as library directors that we have agency in the world and um i think
uh uh felton and carmen and diane certainly demonstrated that and i know
so many of the people in this room who have also demonstrated that um it's
easy i think to uh in in the incredibly difficult
times the things that that bob and shaylin talked about uh yesterday the
the things that i mentioned in in my introduction the polarization in our
world sometimes there is the uh the tendency
been tendency certainly over the last couple of years for us to lose sight of
that that we have significant agency in the world and we'll talk some more
about about that with tim and with tony um
and with marianne in terms of reading uh and literacy
and equity and and and where those things meet um i understand there was
some conversation particularly with our academic colleagues uh about the
relationship of literacy and reading and what librarians do the ecology
of that and its relationship to equity and i do believe that that is the single
most important question before us
today and that tim will have a lot to say about that marianne will have a lot
to say about that and i can't wait to hear whatever tony has to say about
anything but i think that i keep that in mind as
we go through what we're going through today the the relationship of these
things because sometimes i think we we lose we lose that relationship
um another thing that is a takeaway and
felton had said this to me before the conference and he said it during the
conference and and and i i mentioned i mentioned it in my remarks last night
but i want to repeat it um i think there is a tendency for us to come away from a
meeting like this both inspired and determined to do something and then we
say um well we could do that or
you know carmen and diane can do that but can everybody do that are we all
superhuman and the answer of course is no and we're
not uh what is the average librarian the
average library director what what are they able to do
and and that's why i brought up jaime
escalante last night i'm not sure i finished that thought but i do want to
finish that thought this morning in in the work that i've done over the
uh the last 30 years of my life i've chaired a commission on the future of
higher education in the in the state of missouri that was sponsored by pew as a
sort of model for the national governors conference i worked with the kauffman
foundation monroe was there uh for many years uh very closely on on these issues
i worked inside the not not just with the
kansas city uh school district i worked inside the kansas city school district
uh the the library worked with individual schools charter schools in
the district um
when i was in st louis uh i was involved with bill danforth the chancellor of
washington university and others in the in the ending of the desegregation suits
in kansas city and st louis which was a huge thing huge thing nationally
billions and billions of dollars etc i feel have a right to say
a couple of things to you about this that i think are important things to be
said the first thing i want to say is on the side of the kids that we deal
with the kids are capable
that's that's the takeaway i have from what jaime escalante did with the
calculus class in uh in the barrio school in l.a is the kids actually have
the capability um
and and in the desegregation suit it was
interesting to me um there were people involved from both
the right and the left um republicans and democrats
conservatives and liberals and i found that some of the senior people on both
sides if you got them after a couple of drinks
uh would say to me you know the kids we can't help these kids we're
babysitting these kids we're babysitting these kids after second grade
um we're not actually serving them and and i know there are teachers in
school districts and they're librarians and libraries who believe that too
and i think that is completely and utterly wrong
uh and and i have a long experience with this i'm probably maybe the oldest
person in the room and i've been doing this for a long time
and it's not the kids it's our losing our sense of agency uh
in this that i think is the single biggest problem there are lots of
problems school districts are problems themselves
uh money is a problem frequently though it's probably less a problem than we
sometimes think but but the real problem is
is that we don't when we find something that works we don't do more of it
and librarians know that
the another takeaway from yesterday i think is
uh is how do we stop being transactional and be
you know to use the big word transformative i would say it's more
it's more about continuous improvement it's more about doing more of the things
that we know are right um
and i would say in and and tim will we'll talk about this
um and and i think in a very different way marianne will we'll talk about this
i think we we have to focus on the things that make a difference
the the key to not being transactional is to remember
what makes a difference and it tends to be it is about the individual librarian
or the individual teacher may having an individual interaction
uh with with the child if children is what we're concentrated on
and and we're going to talk some about
circulation in a minute and i want to say one thing about
circulation um and you know we're talking about equity and equality not
every circulation is equal not every circ is equal and we
know that i think every librarian knows that
um you put a book in the hands of a child that awakens their imagination and
that circulation uh is transformative marianne we'll talk about that uh uh in
a little while and so the reading ecology how we relate
what we do in libraries to how we how we work uh with school districts with how
we work with reading groups many of which are represented in the
in the audience and will be on our panels
is important to think about today i also heard what was said what nicole
said about library school and what felton said
about library school and uh and and library directors have had every ulc
meeting uh every night foundation meeting some at some point in some
corner of some room there is the same discussion about library school
and so i want to say this two things
one the imls in our new budget should it ever pass
um should should congress get around to
doing that we've been on a continuing resolution now for almost six months uh
and i don't think any records have been set yet but they they're capable of it
in that budget there there is a new program five million dollars that we're
putting towards professional development program that is specifically designed
around equity and uh and and producing in professional development uh
very in various forms a more equitable pathway
an encouragement of a more equitable pathway particularly for people of color
for for people who come from backgrounds that most of us didn't come from
i think it's important that we begin to work with library schools at the imls do
this and groups like this begin to work with library schools and
talk about the nature of professional development talk about the importance of
the mls or mlis in the world and other potential
pathways of professional development that don't involve uh
immediate uh excuse me immediate move into
uh postgraduate education that don't
necessarily take the time and money that can be mid-career etc and that focus on
uh the the equitable provision of that kind of
advancement so that the management levels of our
libraries can become
more like the rest of america i think that i think that's important i
think we we have to talk begin talking about that uh out of uh out of this uh
meeting and we have we have some money at the
imls to uh to begin working on on that and we can do uh some convening around
that um
i think at the end of today um i want to talk a little bit more about
polarization that obviously is a major topic and it's something that that bob
and sheila and talk about um uh very very eloquently and how the i we i
cycle in american history has taken us to a particularly bad place
today i think i'm uniquely qualified
because i'm a political appointee who was endorsed by the both the ala and the
cato institute and uh
and then i've worked successfully so far with that former president guy and our
current president neither of whom i'm sure actually knew who i was by the way
but um and i think america 250 the 250th
anniversary of the declaration um will give us an opportunity uh as a
as a profession as an industry uh and and as one of the trusted institutions
uh in america as maybe the most trusted institution in america uh to to talk
about uh polarization and to do something about polarization as i say
i'll talk a little bit more at the at the end about that
uh anyway uh so i i want to segue now to uh
uh to tim uh and and what will uh what we'll what he'll be talking
about um tim coats has had a fascinating career
um he uh it's a career uh with books god
bless you uh for that um
he's been a marketing director of large retailers uh in in england including
waterstones any any of you who've traveled in england will know know the
name waterstones he was managing director of the uk
academic division of baker and taylor again company that many of you know
he's been called the best bookseller uh in england uh which
you know is a great title to uh uh to have
um he's testified before that house of
commons uh uh on on the subject of books and and
literacy and uh and libraries he has a master's
degree from a little university uh north of london called oxford
and he wants to grab you
and me by the lapels
and shake us up
uh and and
and ask us um
if we know what we're doing do we really know what we're doing in
the library world his statistics actually there are
statistics the imos statistics he wants to take a look at those and ask
us if we know what we're doing uh he wants to share these statistics um
uh with uh with the imos and and its uh
director uh until some knowledge of the meaning and limitations of our
statistics might might fall out of our heads
um he wants us to think more about our collections and their impact
uh about our buildings and their use um he's a little bit like
the crazy uncle that you know you invite with trepidation
uh to uh thanksgiving
christmas dinner um he comes from across the pond uh to
join our dinners uh here um and uh and and maybe when he gets up and leave mom
and dad will sigh a sigh of relief um but you know something you're going
to realize after you've heard what tim has to say
actually lisa and rivka had dinner with him last night and they came back
converted you know it was you know i i thought the the pod people had gotten
them uh but uh after after he after he's done i
think you will look at our numbers in a little bit different way
um and i think that's really important because again as i said yesterday i
think there's an awful lot of inertial activity and inertial thinking uh in the
library world not unlike every other professional world by the way but
it's it's moments like this that we can we can do something else
so purpose uh and perspective is what we're about
here and i would like to give you one perspective one thing that uh tim
uh uh i think it ignores is the wrong word but i think
qualifies his perspective a little bit um and it's this
the statistics that he'll show you are 2009 to 2018 mostly
and that's exactly the life cycle of this the iphone
uh and i think that is the great externality of what we're talking about
it doesn't mean that his the statistics and what he says any less important or
the perspective but what we do about this
i mean i i've said this before in in a number of meetings when i came to the
library in 2005 that the most interesting thing to me
was the lines of kids teenagers particularly teenagers the teenage well
you you know before before the late 90s you
wouldn't have seen teenagers in the library at all right um
and and and particularly uh kids of color particularly say an
african-american teenage male was probably the last person you would see
in a public library at 9 00 a.m on saturday morning
and yet when i showed up the library in 2005 they were lined up at our bluford
library and why was that the use of computers
by 2016 or 17 they weren't lined up anymore
because of this it's simply that
true i think simple it's that simply true
um and i think we haven't done enough thinking about that i think we all know
this and we all think about social media and we all think about um uh
reading online etc etc but really it's about
this and so i would keep that in mind as you
hear what tim has to say
[Music] it is significantly about the nature of
reading in my view marianne will also talk about this
and so um think today about the building as an
asset and a liability your buildings is an asset no liability
think about your collection as an asset that you focus on as a
transformational asset not simply as numbers
that not every circulation is equal and that being mindful about this and
intentional about this is really important and so ladies and gentlemen
tim coats and the freckle report
thank you crosby now where have you gone i was over there
thank you i'm very very grateful i'm i'm grateful
and would like to say how grateful i am because
a year ago it must be nearly now i got this call
completely out of the blue from someone of whom i confess i had never heard
and uh then i worked out who he was and he has been nothing but kind
and interested in in the things that that i've been writing ever since that
and and then of course it's wonderful to be
able to come here that's that's very special i i
haven't been at the end of the street for two years never mind
so to be able to come here is special so thank you i mean it i'd also if i may
like to thank catherine if she if she if she's in the room
oh catherine for the arrangements that you and your colleagues have made
because it makes a tremendous difference if you know if everything is done as
nicely as it has been so thank you
i i'm going to show you oh if i may i just say first can you all i can't
see what's on the screen yet can you can is there anyone who can't read
what's on the screen because i i
shan't normally yeah i can say oh thanks i i shall normally
speak or read out what's there if you can read
it that that's fine that's that's all i wanted to say
okay so i'm going to show you information
which comes from three sources the first as crosby says is the imls own
data which they publish every year in in magical spreadsheets
uh huge spreadsheets which are full of really really important information
the second is a consumer survey which
was initiated three years ago so therefore before the pandemic
began which is called where did you get your book
and it starts by asking
anybody who who will answer have you read or made use of a book in the in the
past year and about 80 percent of americans
respond yes to that question and that's consistent we've done it
three or four times now and that's and in fact that number has risen
during the pandemic so more people it appears have been using or reading
books and it's a very big number it's probably more than people who would
say they'd watched a film a movie or had watched the tv series
so a lot of people read that's very important to understand
of that of of that 80 to 83 percent about 15
got their most recent book from a public library
so that's not a bad number the 15 but it shows the scale of what the
library service does it means that
four out of five people who read don't get their books from the public
library and
it therefore shows also when we talk about non-users which is a
librarian expression we're not really talking about people
who don't read or aren't interested in reading
we're predominantly talking about people who do read and are interested but but
don't choose to use the library and that's important too
because you'll find that a theme of what i'm going to say is about increasing use
and a lot of the increasing use we can get is from people who do actually read
the the third source of information is is the reports
that that crosby has been talking about there are two one called freckle report
20 and the other freckle report 21 and just
so that you get a drift of of of what i say i'll just read you
from the paragraph right right at the beginning of of the of the more recent
one throughout this report there is great
stress on the importance of reversing the decade-long reported
decline in use of public library buildings
and particularly of the printed work that they contain
in all the countries because i covered a number of countries
both inside and outside the library service there is a widespread sense that
technology has made this inevitable this author firmly believes this is not
the case that libraries provide universal free
access to written material is a miraculous and brilliant idea of our
ancestors technologies
that have already found how to make material digital
to improve the ability to search and find
and to transform book supply chains should all make the library service much
more useful not less
we just haven't found the way
the penalty for not addressing these matters quickly
is that decline leads to closure as we are already seeing
in some places but worse than closure
is the truth that we will have deprived the generations that follow us of
something that we all believe to be profoundly important
we can't do that could i have the next slide oh i've got
this excuse me somewhere here
is the slide
they go here it is just here we go
this
it's been going on for 20 to 30 years that
somehow somewhere somebody decided that we
should keep offering more services within public libraries we feel it's the
right thing to do and the intention of it has to have been
it couldn't be anything else that it would broaden the access of
libraries to more people but it hasn't worked
we rarely almost never hear anyone talk about
the fact that reading is private for a child to read a book
or for you to read a book is a private thing to do
reading is not a community activity i know that there are reading groups of
course i do but the point about reading is it is a
private experience and
what the role of the library is is to help that occur and take place and
and for benefit to come from it we hardly ever talk about that we talk
all about all about the community activities
and yet to a child the point is that they should read
something
so these figures for the last 10 years they're exactly the same as the sheets
which are on your table
every single year
oh thank you all thank you thank you
it means that at the end of each year nobody looked
the the green are print circulations
and and the yellow are our
digital circulations
by 2019 we had invested oceans of money
in in digital circulation in digital licenses
ocean
in-house this expression i've used here simply
means i've extracted the things the library services that take place as
cosmic would say on the phone that you don't have to go into the library to do
the largest of all is borrowing books you'll see some some fixes some figures
about that in a moment but none of none of the other activities
come anywhere near making up for the for for the falling
use of the buildings that has arisen from the fall in
circulation of print books
year after year this is these of course average which
means that there are some which are better
and some which are worse but year after year
nobody's noticed
children's books too and as patricia will tell you i think is
that it can be understood that most of these
figures are probably actually worse than than the graph shows because they get
reported a bit high but that's i'm not going to get into that
you can
so our job of helping children to find what they would like to read has not
been successful
is the point that crosby was making that there was a time
when there was very limited access to the internet and the libraries performed
but that has gone down [Music]
so you couldn't now build an operation on the base of
using free access to the internet in the libraries
people say to me oh you don't understand it doesn't happen in my place it does
those figures are full there are falls in every single state
every single state and then they've also falls in every
single of the 70 largest libraries in the country i went through
them all they're all they're listed in this report
and it's not just a number if if use is falling it means that
certain families no longer go to the library
it means people no longer use the lang the library as a dependable place to go
all the things we talk about trust doesn't don't apply to an increasing
number of people and nobody does anything about it
and it's not because there's no money the american public library service has
over 13 billion dollars a year and then and the amount is rising well
we haven't seen so we haven't seen the most recent figures but
up until 2019 it was writing every year there's no reason to think it works
so okay i'm sure that there are places where where money is short of course
there are but in totality you cannot blame the
politicians for not giving you enough money
interesting on this graph the green is the staff cost
the little lines in the middle the blue and the
that's the material budget in the middle just see how small it is
compared to the amount of money available
it's less than 10 in total and of that
a fraction of it is spent on print materials
so people could rightly say but you have all this money
and the thing that we all come for are materials so why do you spend so
little and of what you do spend why does so
much of it go to some wholesalers who take you know best part of half of it
there's the there's the spend on primitive and this and your the sheet on
your table actually shows that over 20 years the spending on print material has
gone has gone down by a lot but this is what people come for
can you imagine a store doing that and then the yellow is the the digital
spend and what a huge portion of the total spend it it had become by time by
2019 remembering that digital circulation was less than 10
of the total
we've added a lot of services but nobody asked us to
accept ourselves
this slide is really important it's probably the most important in the deck
it's it comes from this consumer survey we've done
this we've done it now three times
it's all they all say exactly the same thing
it's completely tied up with any other consumer survey that you would see
and the question asked is when you in this instance is when you last visited
the library what did you go for
85 percent of library visits are either for reading
borrowing books reading books sitting or sitting and studying
so when we talk about traditional and progressive
which are difficult words because they've been
used in the education sector and become come to me very little
what people want in the library service are books
and somewhere somewhere to sit and work and study at all ages
we haven't been looking at the data and we're managers and we're managing a
lot of public money
so we have to do something about it and my solutions are really simple
it's the reputation that matters not circulation they don't they come
second 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 and we believe that
they should because they read the transformation doesn't come because
they come into the library it comes because they will have read
something that will help them
that's a picture i want when i talk about library collections i don't just
mean you have to buy the right things you have to display them properly you
have to keep complete series you have to have plenty of copies new
copies of all the things that people want
and we don't do that
we are not going to increase the use of libraries by
programs it's not going to happen because that's just a statement of
arithmetic
the collections need to be diverse i took the doctors sarah somewhere she
would talk to telling us yesterday i had the importance of of the diverse
ethnicity ethnicity of the collections is so important and it's the one thing
that libraries can do that nobody else can do because they work in small
communities
and more backless so believes me 90 of what people read is
what is not stuff that i've just been published
it's stuff that's been around a long time you have to replenish the backlist
collections with new copies of things it's basic stuff
here's a nice display of of a children's section in a bookshop
to show you that you don't need green dinosaurs made of fluffy cloth
to attract children into a lot into like what you need very attractive
displays like this face out using the illustrations that the publishers have
put on the books kids love that that's absolutely that's heaven
so i have three recommendations really we have to measure better and we have to
pay attention to the measurements that we have
we need to spend more money and more concentrate more on diversifying and
improving the quality of the print book collations
and then we have to make sure that we do use those things to increase
the use of the life and we have to do it quickly
thank you
so thank you tim and and that sets the stage for uh a response a speed response
we're we're calling it uh from uh uh from three of our uh
panelists uh who i want to introduce now um and
let me get my introduction here
um uh
so jenny garner who is the library director in north liberty uh iowa the
north liberty library uh a place that she's been for
25 years six is the director who is an advocate for rural libraries
and the president-elect of the association of role and small libraries
parcel um
she's also involved with the iowa city unesco city of literature executive
board the iowa library association
and uh focused on uh social justice uh
diversity equity and inclusion and uh jenny is over here okay and they're
gonna be doing this from their from their seats at the at the table
pat lucinski i can't believe this is true but i'm reading this in in pat's
bio that he actually has been the director of the columbus library since
columbus founded columbus in 1492. no no i'm sorry 2002. he's been been the
director since since uh uh 2002. um uh columbus uh ceo magazine has named him
ceo of of the year uh columbus business circle award for the
most admired uh executive uh university wisconsin high school distinguished
alumnus award we go on and on and on with uh uh
with uh uh his uh his um
in comey uh pat has been a leader in the uh in the library world i think
everybody here knows knows that um and he's
pat is way over there table five uh kelvin watson kelvin has already
taken some hits uh today uh yesterday kelvin is over here uh he's he's run uh
some of the largest libraries in the in the world he's currently running the las
vegas library with its 25 branches and 77 million dollar uh budget um and uh
he's received a number of awards as well uh broward county library when he's
running it was uh named the library of the of the year in uh in florida uh and
he was the ceo of the of the uh queen's library uh
and uh you know he's uh he he was a commissioned officer in in the uh in the
army and he uh uh has had a a life outside of the library
world but in the library world but from the from the commercial side working for
for ingram uh uh and uh and others so he brings a particularly
unique perspective i think uh on on things so
terry you want to put this together
so we have a slightly different format than yesterday each of our respondents
will have two minutes to stand from their seats and respond to tim's
presentation and then tim will have two minutes to respond at the end of those
remarks and then crosby will come back up and introduce
our next keynote and we'll sort of start the cycle again so with that um can i
call on calvin we'll go we'll go down the line here so calvin jenny and pat
all right hot mike good morning everyone so uh
so i've had the opportunity to talk to tim a couple of times uh when he uh
issued the first freckle report so some of the things that i'll say is that
you know my background also is in bookstores so i worked for borders and
borders as you recall had lots of programs so i would say that was one way
that we actually drove actually people into the bookstores it was not
just about it wasn't totally about the reading as you know but it was also the
programmatic aspects as well and that's a similar approach that i use in um
in libraries and so in broward county the reason that we were florida library
of the year is because we actually increased not only our circulation but
we also had the programmatic aspects as well so i i think that
you know um for our our roles leveraging our
resources both inside and outside the library right increase
people's awareness of libraries we put digital libraries on 400 buses in
las vegas increased library card holders increased
circulation again it's it's leveraging those that
the resources all of the resources um working directly with school students
with programs like community share where we're delivering electronic books
directly to the student in on their at their desktop right so
these are uh my two minutes are up
[Laughter] oh oh the wrap up is 30 seconds okay in
30 seconds what i will say is that
um programs and the services and the the libraries bringing the community
hubs can drive marketing of the library increasing
people coming in that's what my perspective is
well i'll just kelvin said it i'm done um
i was going to start with this i think it's also about impact it's not all
about the numbers the numbers are great and we need them and we're not great at
collecting them we talked about this yesterday at our table um
i'm going to tell you a really quick story
about a young girl who came to a poetry night that i had when i was a teen
librarian i was a teenager when i started 25 years
ago who we had a program and i was really
excited because we had a pretty good turnout for most of our teen programs
and this particular one was a poetry slam and i was so excited to do it for
the first time and we had 10 people and i was like oh bummer this is so sad and
the next day a mom called me and she said i want to thank you my daughter has
been dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts
and your program meant so much to her and it changed my way of thinking
i had an impact so every day in our library where i work
where we have 20 000 people in our town i've worked in three libraries all in
north liberty because i started in a library that was 1200 square feet
and 10 years later we built a 6 400 square feet library and 10 years later
we built an 18 000 square foot library i worked with three people when i started
i now have 20 employees under me so our library is growing our library is
growing fast our community is growing fast our circulation numbers are pretty
good they're not where i'd want them to be and of course after covid 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 and i think that is one of the solid
answers and the other is marketing as kelvin brought up but how do we as small
libraries leverage that when we don't have the funds
so our favorite uncle tim gives us that gloomy report and then
says pat lucinski says it's worse thanks tim i can't wait for the staff
development day speaking invitations to flood my mailbox after that one
um but actually it's true and um i think what what tim really hits on is
the brand of libraries still being books when you see that 70 number
it's a big deal we don't talk enough about it oclc did a series of reports
over the last decade that confirmed its books its books its books so that's our
brand and so we need to think about what the story is if that's not the
brand moving forward good news is it and first of all why is
it worse because we were certainly one of the
libraries that early adopters to get rid of fines fine free
many of us also put in automated renewal
why hold the book on the shelf if the customer can keep it in their home for a
couple more weeks so what you're seeing here
our library actually has 10 renewals and i know of plenty of libraries that have
five renewals so what you're seeing here is
all of the circulation when what you should look at in your library is first
time circulation because all the others are circulations
of convenience not actually new circulation so the
numbers are actually much worse and it's sort of the law of unintended
consequences of the fine free people no longer have to come in to the
library for another visit where we could hook them with new materials so it's an
interesting thing that's happened on the good
side during the pandemic our job was a whole lot easier than museums because we
had a product that people could come in and get from their car
on the bad side that is no longer kind of where our future is
and if i have one criticism of tim's
report is that it focuses on inputs and outputs
and as elusive as they are i think our real opportunity is to talk about
community-based outcomes that we can be a part of
but that will be part of my remarks when i'm up on stage thank you
um thank you very much
calvin um
of those points i would like to address one particularly
when people look at these numbers they it's frequently say to me it's the
impact that you don't seem to understand
the impact is on the people
who use the service and the measurement of it is whether
they choose to use the service again so if the use of the service is going
down the impact has been negative
so i mean for years i've heard people say it's all about impact we need impact
measures no one can ever produce impact measures
but the real measure of impact is how much people use the library service
that's the answer to that point that's
so i do i do have one thought um where
to make about the statistics that you see at the tables um one of the things
uh that i thought would be useful to know i mean i think everything that tim
has said uh pat's point about um circulation renewal
is true one of my heroes waller maguire will
remember him uh was a guy named carl sandstadt who ran the
saint charles library and saint charles was a growing suburban community and
carl explained to me how to manipulate circulation statistics and he was one of
the very very early adopters of the automatic renewal number one
and number two he said make sure i don't know if you remember the hapler
statistics pre predated uh library journal statistics etc but um hapler the
thing was based on you you gave them your census data your previous previous
census data and they and they judge your circulation
on that and karl realized that um that that was the denominator in the
numerator if you were in a fast-growing area was growing really quickly and the
denominator wasn't growing so he looked really great for nine years and he said
i'm going to retire in the tenth year and he did
um so so the point of the statistics um
that i asked matt birnbaum in our research and evaluation area to to put
together is to go back beyond uh tim's starting date to 1990. i think if
you look at these statistics um they look it's flatter there's no it's not so
much a decline it's flat though i think again what tim and pat have both both
said would would point out that the statistics still actually are are pretty
bad uh but i wanted to give some context to that
so now uh tony uh again i want i want to introduce and i want to um i think uh
what pat said about the books being that the brand uh is is important here i had
this conversation that i mentioned before with uh with tony luke swarthout
um and uh marcellus turner mt was uh was
part of that conversation too is he here did he come is he
there he is there he is um and uh uh mt's version of that was
the word what he said what is the what of libraries well the brand is books and
tony's tony's statement was that he here is
this guy who is producing is a digital guru and he's
producing a bookless library and what is a bookless library is that really a
library um and and you know he said this uh with
a certain amount of uh awe and shock and uh and and it's it's it stayed in my
mind in a big way um tony marx brought tony again to the
new york public library um uh telling him that it um was even larger than the
queen's library and tony tony said that the queen's library is mainly about
books about corgis sorry
okay sorry
one bad joke that's all i really just one bad joke uh tony uh tony had an
incredible career uh in in england as a chief technical officer or some some
similar title at the guardian uh and at the at the bbc where he increased the
the bbc's uh web traffic from 2 million to 25 million in five years
um and at the new york public library many of
you know he he's
expanded the reach of the digital universe dramatically and uh
strategically um
uh and in my a number of conversations that i've had with tony i'm very
impressed with uh not not only the
the uh the attempts of the new york public
library to reach people digitally who have not been reached one of the
the activities that we're involved in the imls is helping the new york public
library fund uh is a a radio frequency uh
attempt to get through the big buildings in uh in new york uh create wi-fi with
radio frequency and
something that's also been used in rural areas the utah school district has uh
has used it creativity uh in in reaching people is i think what tony's all about
but also uh as the pandemic started tony marx
many of you will have seen wrote a a an editorial op-ed in the new york times in
which he said everything that we know and tim is talking about is the huge
increase in in digital circulation that we saw at the beginning of the pandemic
and continued through the pandemic and continues to this day
and i was talking to to tony about that and the problem with the increase in
digital circulation is it is the same people who are using
digital circulation before it wasn't new people at all
and it's certainly not people on the other side of all of our divides the
digital divide to begin with but all the other divides we have in this country
we're not reaching with the digital we're not reaching the
people who need the library's help the school district's
help uh the help of government the help of all of us uh if we're talking about
equity uh in this country so tony tony to me is asking all the right questions
uh and and he comes out obviously from a different point of view uh from the
digital point of view from the from the point of view of the person who is
creating the bookless library the uh the digital library so tony
i'm not making that mistake
okay so uh thank you grosby uh imels for convening this discussion
uh thank you kelvin uh jenny and pat
for joining this discussion i hope your questions and responses are going to be
gentle and thanks to everybody else for being here
so yeah my name is tony aggie i'm chief digital officer for the new york public
library uh at nypl i'm concerned with the
digital transformation of the library and i also oversee a design and
engineering team that helps develop operate and evaluate
at many of the digital services that are used by our patrons
a large part of that work is concerned with ebooks and their impact on our
branch libraries and our research libraries
so crosby has asked me to speak on this panel to see if ebooks have anything to
say to tim's hypothesis tricky question
i'm personally very interested to hear what you all have to say about the
freckle report and in particular the opinions of our distinguished panel
and of course i've had to construct this presentation
without hearing anybody else speak so here's what i've done
for the purpose of this presentation i'm going to take tim's hypothesis seriously
and ask if tim
is correct and american libraries are facing a
challenge as the result of differing perspectives on the importance of brick
and mortar buildings and our physical books if that is the problem
then can e-books be a solution
so my answer to that question is a qualified no
i believe ebooks do have an important role to play in the service of public
libraries but as presently constituted
our ebook services could not have prevented the decline
that tim describes in the british libraries
and is unlikely to reverse a similar trend in the us libraries
should it manifest so before i explain too much more i want
to give a brief introduction about myself to those of you i haven't met
i joined in ypl about six years ago before that my career had been in the uk
almost exclusively as crosby said for major now global media companies in
particular guardian newspapers and the bbc
for the last 20 years or so i've been primarily concerned with helping
organizations such as those understand the ways in which digital
technology was changing not just their operations but their entire businesses
i helped the guardian understand why it would have to build an online
up-to-the-minute news and information service and i explained to the bbc why
people would expect to be able to be free to watch their television programs
at times that suited them not the schedulers
on demand now these may seem very silly
conversations here in 2022 but in 1994 and 2003 i can assure you
they involved very long complicated and
shouty discussions
before a consensus could be achieved at the same time i manage teams of staff
who imagined built delivered some of their digital services used by i don't
know readers viewers audiences what we would call patrons
and my role at the library my po is similar
but one final thing i wanted i want to say i often say this my title is chief
digital officer and i think of the term digital in my title in much the same way
that fireman thinks of the word fire in theirs
i'm not trying to spread it i'm not here to be a
uh to promote digital to be an advocate for digital technology
i am here to ensure that the digital technology we use can be understood
the good the bad and everything in between
and then harnessed to help my library bs be successful as a library
fire can generate light and heat
but if you simply let it loose in the library it will destroy it and i am
concerned that digital technology is capable of doing much the same
american library's public library sorry today
have had more than a decade of experience of licensing and serving
ebooks to their patrons at this point i think we can start to draw some
conclusions so here are three things that we observe ebooks currently do to
the new york public library there is they reduce foot traffic to our
88 neighborhood libraries they place pressure on the print and
physical materials budget and they separate the patron from our staff and
from their neighbours so observation one
ebooks currently reduce visits to the libraries but we all understand that
ebooks allow libraries to deliver a virtual facility of our service without
needing to come to the building that is in itself not a bad thing
and during the early days of the pandemic this was a massive feature
we could be closed many patrons could still be reading books from their
library and actually even before covid many of
our patrons chose to read via ebooks rather than through the print
collection that means
they no longer need to come to the library
and seen through tim's lens in this change in foot traffic uh this is both a
flaw and a feature
i want to borrow something from digital platform theory and try to apply it back
to our physical libraries in this uh very fine book the authors
describe one type of digital platform as a transaction platform
i think we should call that the t word i think
think of amazon's marketplace or airbnb
or uber one side you have producers on the other
side consumers in the middle is the platform
so the products may change the available places to stay might
change the drivers can change but the consumer
always comes back to the platform because they can rely on it to meet
their buy-in renting riding needs there's tremendous value and power
in being this type of transactional platform
now to me public libraries behave a lot like community-based transactional
platforms they sit between the authors and
services and the patrons we don't write publish print the books ourselves
and while we put on many of the programs we also regularly bring in community
members elected officials authors to do the programs
and though the books and the programs change the library is a constant that
people can turn to in their community
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 and the reasons are obvious a patron
comes the library to look for a book they can discover something else the
library is offering they might be dragging along a kid
only for the child to discover a book or vice versa
and if a patron doesn't come to the library they can't see their neighbor
they aren't meeting on the street outside the library or in the parking
lot or enlivening the space or marking the library as a critical hub for the
community now i'm not suggesting that this floor
outweighs the value of e-books but if we are concerned about declining visits to
libraries what ebooks are not helping
observation 2 ebooks place pressure on collections budgets well my good
colleague bill kelly who runs our research libraries tells him talks
increasingly about how he's having to run two businesses on a single budget
continuing physical one and an ever-growing digital one
some of you may be in organizations that have allocated additional resources to
fund the expanding e-book services on top of your print collection and if
that's the case then disregard this point and meet the
observation three in a minute or two but
uh from day one of the new york public library
our e-book license costs were wedged into our single collections budget and
that budget has been largely flat for the past decade which means the ebook
licenses and audio licenses are coming at the expense of something else
dvds perhaps at first but increasingly it's from print books
and that means fewer printed copies on our shelves
this is particularly significant for the 50
of our readers who only ever discover their book by browsing
now we shouldn't be surprised if a reduced collection
means less rewarding browsing which leads to less satisfied patrons and some
choosing not to come back so absent a big part of new money for
ebooks i don't know uh how we resolve that challenge easily although i do want
to share a couple of things that we've done at nypl to stop it getting worse
the first is that we've now separated our print budget or our print book
budget and our ebook budget these are different businesses and we
should evaluate our ebook services as we do our physical library services rather
than just isolate the size and the marginal cost of the ebook collection
otherwise we're in danger of stripping our shelves of books
while retaining all of the surrounding overheads and other costs
the second mitigation is something we put in place on march 15 2020 that was
the first monday after our physical shutdown
we changed our ebook checkout and hold limits from 1515
to three and three now we've been thinking about that for a
while because we realized that when the library started offering ebook services
we simply imported our borrowing and holds rules from the physical library
despite the fact that the patron use cases were totally different
a patron visiting a physical branch might only come once a week or once
every couple of weeks they might be borrowing for family
members or neighbours they might be borrowing children's books
or there might be a student doing a report whatever any of those reasons
would justify a higher borrowing limit but the e-book service we provide was
overwhelmingly used by adults doing recreational reading rather than say
research for most of our patrons getting get into
the free wi-fi to download their next ebook was
actually closer than getting to their local branch
starbucks or wherever so what's worse
uh is that our holds limit we're encouraging patrons to play games they
were placing lots of holds in the hopes of finding something good
as it became available by lowering our borrowing and hold
limits we were able to accommodate during covid
over 150 000 new ebook users during these past two years without raising our
budget or taking money away from other services to retain those new users now
that the branches are reopening now on an average day our ebook users
are still up 20 25 over the pan over the pre-pandemic
numbers but our overall circulation and therefore our spending is flat
we suspect although we don't have data that this change may actually have
improved overall patron satisfaction because less game playing more reading
by the way echoing everything everyone's said so
far if you ever need an example about optimizing for circulation leads to
perverse incentives since the change we're serving more
patrons with more books at lower cost per reader but i still regularly filled
the question why didn't you make overall circulation go up
observation three e-books disconnect patrons from our staff and from their
neighbors
okay so mindful of time i'm just going to leave this one here for discussion by
others but if uh if one values one of the values of a public library is in
helping to develop and support our local communities by connecting our patrons to
each other and to our staff ebook services as we currently provide them
don't do that so
we observe ebooks lead to less foot traffic
budgetary difficulties patrons disconnected from the libraries
but what about all the good things we get from ebooks more users more reading
more circulation less hassle for the patrons
where the advantage of ebooks in this presentation
and doesn't all this offset the downside of ebooks
yeah maybe frankly i don't actually know
i think that's for you to discuss but i would point out
that the actual libraries that you all represent individually and collectively
do not deliver currently very much if any value through the ebook
services we currently pay for we all nypr included rely on vendors to
provide our ebook services our primary function in the library ebook ecosystem
today is to provide money yet we do some selection and we put in
book lists but i think the role that libraries currently play in reflecting
the tastes and needs of their communities and shaping their ebook
services pales in comparison to the service design and delivery that happens
in any one of the 17 000 branch libraries every single day across the
country so where does that leave us i think
there is a strong case that ebooks are an important part of
a robust public library service now and into the future i haven't talked about
it here but we know that some patrons with accessibility challenges
are much better served by ebooks and by audio books than print books
ebooks are probably the single biggest service innovation in libraries in the
past decade from the perspective of the patrons
but the current model of ebook service that
has evolved during the same decade is in tension with the physical library as a
community platform and if you believe that tim may have
identified a problem facing public libraries
then i don't believe that ebooks alone as we currently offer them will be the
solution thank you
do you want to shall wait here
thank you so much tony now we're going to have our panelist responses again
another two minute response from each of our
table panelists and then a two minute response to that from tony and then
we're gonna switch up the format a little bit i'll say a few announcements
before we go to break and um and then we'll continue so calvin
would you like to start us off again please
so that was interesting uh having been a digital officer at queen's library as
well uh you know i know tony so i actually
agree that ebooks probably is not the solution but it's something that we've
had to provide our diverse communities their diverse meeting their diverse
needs i think that we um as i mentioned
earlier you know what i've been able to do and i'll use some practical
experiences on the libraries that i've that i've led
it's really you know figuring out that this is a hard pro problem that's why
we're here discussing it right so there is no one solution but we've at public
libraries have had to be unique unicorns driving people in to the libraries in
different manners right so one of the things that i looked
at when we were having decreased um when we opened our buildings the
foot traffic was down right people coming in the building so looking at how
can we partner with our stakeholders to offer classes with the college of
southern nevada to bring a new people into our buildings so that
they can be exposed to the library so i agree i agree with tony ebooks is not
the solution but it is a way that we can continue to introduce people to the
library in different manners i mean that's again
the way the way the reason that i did the bus project in las vegas was to
introduce people who in the community were not coming into the library we
actually increased our library card holders in a month by 7 000 new library
card holders we also let the visitors in the community also access those ebooks
as well so again
um the the licensing models
they're they're no they're definitely no good we know that from the large
publishers but you also need to look at the increased number of titles that are
being published outside of those large publishers as well so that's another
opportunity for libraries also so i think i'm done
so i think what tony's saying holds a lot of truth when we're stretching our
dollars to provide all the services that we're
providing in our communities how do we do that with um
with lower budgets or smaller budgets our
book budget is much smaller than many many of you in the in this room um our
book budget is 60 thousand dollars our ebook budget is 30 000
but our ebook collection is
much bigger because i partner i partner with our neighboring libraries
i collaborate in any way i can to stretch those
dollars and that's what i think we have to continue doing in order to engage our
communities and be out about out in the public outreach is a really important
part of what we do every day i my goal in north liberty is for people
to recognize me when i walk out of the door
they don't recognize me in the library because i'm in my office all the time
but when i'm out in the community those people know me they know who i am and
they come to us looking for things and they ask us what what do we need well
let me tell you what i can do for you at the library you tell me what you need
and we'll make it happen so those are how we um continue to
thrive libraries are resilient and responsive and we always have been we've
been partnering since the 1900s early 1900s 100 years ago
duluth and butte um both partnered with their red crosses during the pandemic
during the influenza pandemic so we know from this pandemic and the 100 years ago
libraries reflect what their communities need and we continue to do those things
that's why we'll continue to thrive i truly believe that and i do think ebooks
have their place and i'm so glad to hear what you said about the e-books
tony and i don't i don't have any main words for you
i love what you said um ebooks do have their place and books have their place
and sometimes people want to just have the books in their home so they either
keep our books and they don't return them which is okay with me i'm okay with
that that's part of doing business or they buy them
if they can afford to buy them
hello okay now i have 30 seconds um so i'm
going to try to uh bridge tim and tony just a little bit
because part of what tim suggests in his
recommendation to buy more materials is that somehow we're not meeting demand
and i think you know i look at what we spend on extra copies and holds and all
of the rest and i'm i'm not sure that the answer is spending
more money on materials um you know the pandemic i'm going back
to that again the disruption has created so many other channels to
obtain content beyond libraries which i think is a big
hurdle for us moving forward and i mentioned last night i never envisioned
that we would buy four or five streaming services per month and pay i just did
not see that future 10 and 15 years ago when tony says
you know 150 000 ebook users during that period of time
that sounds great to me but one of the questions we try to ask locally is that
a good number so
compared to how much market penetration
you know how are we actually doing how many of you just curious
show of hands if you're in a public library do you know about how many
library card holders you have most of you do you know how many of
those library card holders have ever streamed an ebook
do you know that
show of hands a couple
so our selectors who buy ebooks didn't know that
and for us out of 650 000 it's 50 000.
so they say to ourselves is that a good number and
if you go a little bit deeper you start to see those 50 thousand
this isn't a big surprise but it's an insight about our work
you find that the people in areas where we don't have broadband service which is
about fifty thousand homes in central ohio
are not able to download those materials so it gives us insight into where we
might be headed
i i think the principle that we have around confidentiality of customer data
has held us back and we have confused that principle
with using deep aggregate analysis of the data to understand where our
opportunities lie and
i think we have an opportunity to make a lot of progress in that arena
yeah so unfortunately i think i agree with everything everything everybody
said that's not going to work well but i would say a couple of comments first of
all jenny it's uh um in particular but people exactly like you who think the
way you do and that the way you do it's a genuine honor and privilege to work
with you and i believe that i work in service of you
so carry on doing what you're doing and i will do everything i can to support
you speaking uh i think pat is right data analysis information um one of the
um things that i um i'm good at um is i'm willing to ask questions i'm willing
to interrogate something i'm not so good at the answers but i definitely know
when we've got the wrong answer i'm not saying anything here for this room but
i'm saying you know ask questions look at your data don't be scared to ask and
don't be scared to find an answer you don't like the look at and then you know
take action uh kelvin um thank you he was one of the
very first people ever to extend a welcoming hand to me when i first
arrived six years ago i've been watching your work uh from afar well not always
from afar but increasingly from afar and what i think about kelvin is one he's a
pioneer he's somebody who is willing to try a new service willing to take
something on but also what i've seen him do is he analyzes it he learns from it
and decides whether he needs to adjust it drop it completely or keep going so i
would say thank you for letting me speak today
don't disagree with anybody but keep up the good work
all right tony is going to lead our discussion
this is sort of what we had yesterday where each of the library practitioners
had 10 minutes to respond with more substantive remarks the format may be a
little different more of a facilitated discussion we'll leave that up to tony
and his colleagues but we have 30 minutes to go through
this portion and you can continue to feed questions to your imls notetakers
we will have the q a eventually um but we'll do a table activity after we wrap
up with the panel so tony take it away thank you can you hear me
so thank you all i'm going to do my best to open up a conversation from these
guys i think if there are questions from the floor please
make yourself known i think there are microphones that will roam around
um i'm going to start the first question unfortunately to you kelvin i hope you
don't mind uh i said at the mic uh this guy has a history of innovation and
doing new things and i think that sounds like a bold claim so if you don't mind
i'm going to put you on the spot i think you have a history i know you have a
history of rolling up your sleeves trying new things particularly ebooks
could you give us some examples of things that you've tried that have
worked some of the things that i've tried that
that worked and i've learned from as well as tony mentioned earlier so when i
was in broward county we put in a bookless library at the fort
lauderdale hollywood airport so it's still is still there between terminals
three and four and so the assumptions were uh before
you look deep dived into the data was that oh we're going to have everybody
that's traveling through the airport we're going to be poor right we're going
to run out of money and because of all of the people getting ebooks but what we
found from the data was that actually we had
more people
[Music] who lived in broward county actually not
only have any opportunity to get it a a
library card but also they were the primary users of the content only two
percent of the visitors who didn't live in broward county were actually using
uh using the service as well as not really using the content as they were
coming through through the airport other ideas i mentioned earlier was the buses
which is something that columbus will be doing soon
and so we have digital access to not just a library card but to content on
the 400 buses in las vegas so that was out of a partnership um you
know it's hot and dusty in nevada as you know
but we did pop-up libraries in broward and so i'm testing these types of
hypotheses and seeing number one who is going to be actually
using it is it going to be visitors and so i i typically open it up to everybody
right so that you don't have to you know you know
you can actually see are the people who live in the community
going to use these resources versus the the visitors so the same with buses we
open it up to the visitors same same results right minimal use of the
visitors really people from the community
leveraging those and so booklets libraries uh we have one coming um in
mesquite nevada it's a it's going to be an all steam related bookless library
location so we're opening that up as well so
um to tony's point i i like trying new things with with e-books e-resources uh
hospitals uh
seaports when i was in broward we put you know we had some
outreach at uh at the seaports as well so
um again nothing is beyond the imagination if you you know just it's
about experimentation and really finding out
how people are going to use the ebooks and what that traffic is going to be
like coming into the actual physical library
thank you so eddie if anybody has a follow-up question for kelvin if you can
um make yourself known uh i'll ask him that
in the meantime danny can i just ask you a quick question
so tim suggests that libraries should simply
buy more print books and pat answered that um i think quite um candidly what's
your thought i mean i agree with pat i don't think
that is the answer i think um what we need to look at is our model
and our brand like we said you know our what if you want to call it our tagline
at north liberty is experience your library and what i mean by that is every
person who comes in the door is their library and i want every person who
comes in to feel that they belong by nature
not because we're welcoming them but because it's the place for them to be
and to thrive and to do what they need to do
whatever that is and many of them are reading and many of them are coming in
to check out books and we have a pretty good model of
when i started at the library we never bought duplicate copies because we had
this tiny budget and we were afraid that would but now we realize that's not the
right model the right model is looking at the books that are going off the
shelves and buying more and more of those books to make sure that they're
going out and making sure that we're reaching the right people
so some of it is about how informed we are about our
communities and what we know they their needs are
um and we know in our community that people need
socialization they need to connect you know i think that was mentioned
yesterday bob brought that up in his you know that people are isolated and we
knew during the pandemic that people are isolated the beauty of a small library
in our community is we know some of those folks and who they were so one of
the first things we did was implement calling patrons weekly who we knew might
be alone and not have anybody else to talk to
and the response to that was not only fantastic from the people we called
because they were like you're just calling me to check on me
but from our leaders they were like wow you took the time to do that we worked
from home pretty well librarians can do that there were other departments that
weren't able to do that very well but we were
and a couple of our staff who weren't able to work as well from home
and were still getting paid every our city made sure that every employee from
our part-timers to our full-timers was paid when they were at home whether they
could work or not um but those those people were willing to make those calls
even though they didn't knew they didn't have to
just to keep you there for a little longer so tell me a bit more about that
calling when you said there were people calling in what what was that
our staff called our we identified patrons and we asked other people in the
community do you know somebody who doesn't have anybody with them that
they're alone during this pandemic that they're staying in an apartment by
themselves or what and we made those phone calls
we can't afford to buy we don't have a public transportation system and we
can't afford to buy vending machines to put books into so we
bought lockers we put them outside and we were hopping we were working in two
teams when our doors were shut we weren't really closed we were still
doing this work making sure that our community felt
connected to us in whatever way we could and i think libraries are about
connection that is to me probably the biggest thing we do
bridging and bonding like was um felton i think mentioned yesterday we're about
connecting people to each other we're about connecting people to us and we're
about connecting people to what their resources and what they need
so pat i don't want to um put you on the spot here but you know
this kind of the term floating in the air was our brand
is books everything jenny has said there says the brand isn't is not books it's
something else can you
pick up on that what is that where does that fit
yeah a couple of thoughts on this um first of all i think of what carmen
where's carmen this morning yeah what carmen did at highwood you
know it's a high highwood and community center i think that makes
so much sense and we've said during the pandemic that yes we're library in our
traditional business for a period of time here we're in the
business of community recovery so i'm not too worried about the covid
kit that we passed out making a connection to reading right now we just
had to do everything we could to kind of help the community recover
but i do have the perspective of small libraries and urban libraries in fact
bob putman's book our kids where he talks about the decline of his hometown
port clinton i was a library director in port clinton first one four years we had
13 folks who worked at that library
so the small communities have to be all of
that because oftentimes they are the only cultural institution to put all of
those things together so we can handle that i think on the
micro level that makes a lot of sense but the macro level about our shared
elevator speech about what our profession is all about
has to be different and i would say the shift that we have to
make is we've focused too much on the noun
books we have to focus on the verb reading
and in that regard we can make a library a verb instead of a noun as well
because and i'll tell you what you have to say well why is that i'm going to
relate this back to to to tim
as well because tim we're in danger of running out of
readers
so we do a lot of work in columbus around mapping
third grade reading proficiency why do we focus on third grade reading
proficiency because dr james heckman some of you read his work from the
university of chicago if you're not reading at the third grade level by
third grade you're four times more likely to drop out of high school
just let that sink in for a little bit and there's almost a one-to-one
correlation of the skills you have for kindergarten readiness
to third grade reading proficiency so it's not about starting at the beginning
of third grade it is those critical first eight years
of life that are so important
so we serve 10 school districts the largest is the columbus city schools
about 55 000 students and pre-pandemic their third grade reading proficiency
scores were 43
57 not reading at the third grade level by
third grade what do you think it is in the first
year of the pandemic it's 23
so we have more than three out of four third graders and they hold back one
percent so they're you know we're going to fourth grade and i get it how do you
hold back 5 000 kids right it's impossible to do
we have not only the opportunity i think we have
the moral obligation to help kids learn to read and try to own the out of school
time of libraries with not by ourselves but a
lead role in that space and sadly there's a lifetime of opportunity for us
that we can let the circulation part go make that self-service for those who
still need content but our focus has to be on building
relationships with kids in order to have them develop an essential life skill
of reading so yes of course
so one of the things that i've loved in the last couple of days and i'm going to
call out our friend rich over there for the d.c public because
you know i've been uh on cbs i've seen the commercial run a few times about the
kids and reading that's that's i love that uh so pat's right on and he um you
know i uh totally agree you know and pat and
i've talked about that for years and just preparing um and so we just
implemented actually some of the launch pads to help
you know to help kids because you know as uh as crosby mentioned about the
iphone right and the technology so how do you mix the technology in with
reading gamification also you don't need the internet
don't need broadband access and i'm focusing on pre-k to third grade so
that's some of the some opportunities for us as well so totally agree with
your problem okay we're just following on from that and it's actually a
question from the floor jenny so crudely should libraries teach children to read
yes and yes and no um
i think libraries need to work with the people who are teaching
our kids to read their parents
and their teachers their educators and then we need to work with each other
to make sure that we're doing the early literacy work in the libraries and when
i say work with each other i'm talking about what what kelvin and pat are
talking about the messaging that needs to come across the nation
we were i was talking earlier with john about this from every library
we need to find a way to have a national initiative
that includes all libraries of all sizes in all communities because
we can't put ads on buses in north liberty i don't have a transportation
system and i don't have the funds to do that unfortunately
our transportation system is i had a homeless guy come in a few weeks ago and
i called somebody at city hall said can you help me figure this out and she said
yep we'll get a voucher for him to get a taxi and we got him a taxi to a to a
homeless shelter to get started with the services that he needed we couldn't do
that but what i did was run in the back and get the snacks that we give out
every day to the kids and make him a bag with snacks and water in it
so those are the things we can do and he he might or might not remember that but
i sent him off with what i could provide and that's that micro level stuff that
we're talking about we do micro work in our libraries every day but we don't
think enough on the macro and the meso levels that social workers learn in
school which is why we need social workers in our libraries and why we need
to partner with so many other organizations to do what we're doing
but on the other end north liberty is the first library in
iowa to become a family place library so we were able to raise the funds to go to
new york city or new york long island to get the training
from center reach to be a family place library and we'll start that we've got
that in 2019 so that's been on hold for a while
but we will launch that in the fall we hope where we every for five weeks
families will come in and parents will be on the floor playing with their kids
they won't have their phones in their hands
they will have books
and wooden toys and all the things that kids need to
develop which literacy is about reading yes and it's about play
for kids it's about all the things that we're going to teach them so we need to
be the place where they they know they can go to learn
and we talked about this a little last night i mentioned this during a
conversation last night we need to teach kids to learn and we need to teach the
importance of reading to parents and children
so reading us as a component of learning rather than but it does feel like you
know the brand is reading rather than our brand
his books i don't understand literacy you know that there must be different
interpretations of that term but you know kelvin following on from that then
so we started with ebooks and i'm saying they dislocate the patron from the
library and jenny's spoken very clearly many times about how important the the
building is the library the environment kevin any thoughts on how you could use
ebooks to connect people to the library yeah so to to jenny's point um
you know i'm i'm larger so i can do the buses but i'll tell you you know uh
leveraging barber shops for example uh leveraging
laundromats like when i was in queens so there's ways coasters and bars yeah well
post death we did that in broward actually we had coasters that we put in
parks actually so so looking at those opportunities but you know literacy
through engagement right always learning and taking taking the opportunity to uh
you know to do that so you know i'm gonna take a you know another
another swing and you know at that and say
we talked to you know tony and i were chatting and i was talking about you
know marketing so my background is in marketing as well
and so that's why i use the outside ways to market the library to bring people
inside the library instead of you know putting all the emphasis on the people
who are already coming in the door how can i
expand that out or how can i work with different partners to do that for
example um oh um the seniors who have been uh
because of covet we all but
essentially seniors in vegas have a higher suicide rate i didn't know that
when i you know when i moved to vegas but apparently they do so we um
we've started a reading program
with a with an organization called three square
and so we've moved we've brought meal we're bringing meals and
reading together inside the library for example so those are some that's another
i idea to help bring you know people in and
you know focusing on working with um prison um
systems right the prison systems or organizations that help support you know
you know recidivism for example those are ideas
that that we're working on is you know as well you know we talk about reading
and literacy and learning and one of the things that i know
and i focus on is really dismantling what i call the pipelines to prison and
introducing pipelines to literacy education and success for our
communities so thank you
just kind of switching tack a little bit you mentioned data earlier and uh you
know again a question from the floor what are
the best ways to capture ebook data use and how might you do
drill deeper while still being mindful of privacy and you know respect you know
and other issues like that um
one more time how could we capture data use what can
we what could we know what might we want to do with with the data yeah so i
started at a pretty basic level of just saying well how many customers do you
have that actually have streamed or downloaded an ebook
you just got to go deeper first of all this is aggregate data
i'm not looking at what kelvin is actually doing i'm looking at
the people in kelvin's neighborhood and what they might be
looking at but [Music]
you know to say well how many have downloaded one book only ever
how many do one a month how many are in both spaces and what's the ratio that
we're seeing you know the the
question i asked you tony about is 150 000 a good number i mean it's positive
i'm not saying it's a bad number because it represents growth
and greater integration
but i think we often capture what happened
rather than setting goals out to actually say we're trying to achieve
that and i think we've been guilty of not connecting our silos
not connecting our public service people to understand what we're trying to do in
that space not having our centralized collection
management people understand what they might be asking the people in the
locations to do or remotely and then how are we connecting through marketing and
social media and do we have enough meetings where those three come together
to say we're trying to have a hundred thousand
ebook users by the end of the year what's that going to take instead i
think oftentimes we just capture it and say well this is what happened
so um but i just think it's it's being
creative it's being curious asking that you said you're not good at answering
questions but you're good at asking i think that's that's part of it because a
well-defined problem is half solved so kevin what every similar question
your data and questions you'd like answered so all what pat said but what i
would also add to that is
around the programmatic aspects as well so i would want to know for example
the that information that you talked about regarding who's using our you know
the ebooks but i i bring in the physical books as well and then also how that
ties in with programs because that's a essential
this essential work that we're doing also right and so you know but i start
really at the basics and really first try to find out
how many library cards do we have out there who's using the library card
who used uh you know we had asked as a question earlier like how many people um
know how many library card holders they have
but do you also know how many people used how many of those library card
holders actually used the library card in the last six months in the last year
it you know and so when you dig deep into that you know what i've found that
now three large library systems is it's a third of a third of a third right
so there's like 900 there was like 900 000 card holders at queens
we had about 300 000 people that actually used it
but in a year there was like a third of that that actually had even checked out
any material so and that day and i repeated that same
analysis for example in broward and then i've done it in las vegas as well so
data is definitely key to uh to how we you know can do our jobs even better but
then again digging deeper in that data and using heat maps for example and you
know all of those you know to answer and ask questions
uh tony one one more piece to add on to that i i don't know what you have all
experienced but again this great disrupter of the
pandemic library use is a habit
and the habit has been disrupted in the biggest way
and i you know what's really troubling for
us is the usage usage is coming back much faster in our affluent
neighborhoods but in the locations that need the
service the greatest we're having the biggest struggle
you know to the point of kids not coming back to the library and say what has
happened to that and what are our new strategies for how we're going to
connect and do we do we have time after this to or
is this it are we done afterwards we're on ambassador
we're on amber amber
but we're coming back we're coming back yeah all right i'll talk i'll talk about
that sort of programmatically some ideas later
okay actually and um yeah we've got just a few minutes left so jenny i'll maybe
give you a couple of minutes just to think you know is there one big thing
you want to land here is there one thought that has emerged from what
you've heard today yesterday i mean it's the same thought but i think
i mean hoping that this this convening comes as a place where we start to ask
the questions that we need to ask and those questions are how do we
leverage what's happening in libraries now or the
decline in circulation with but like in our library as kelvins
mentioned programs are increasing and we aren't getting the numbers back
of the kids and and that's something that's a whole nother thing we're all
crying over missing our kids um in our library but
but where do we where do we go now what's the brand and what's the model
that we need to create um i'm going to just tell you a real quick thing about
our library our library is located in a community
center that is 60 000 square feet which includes a recreation center two
swimming pools a communications department and before
and after school program and our library and it works that model works it's it's
not only a place for civic engagement i have couples who come in in the
morning and one sits down to read the paper while his wife goes upstairs and
walks the track um you know we do things like on we started with a monday morning
um we used to call it senior coffee hour now we just call it social hour because
it is not just seniors anymore it's people who want to make connections
and the group has grown in fact last week we had 24 people sitting in our
magazine area and they talk about politics and they're really loud and
they disagree and agree and then one of the
guys started bringing slides in and showing traveling that he'd done so he
was doing armchair traveling presentations we didn't have anything to
do with it we just provided the space so how do we as libraries be that place a
place of civic commons the place where people can connect and meet and bridge
those gaps and bridge economic differences and social
differences and equity differences how do we become that and the question is
answered in marketing it's partly marketing it's partly how we
train the people coming up i'm talking to nicole yesterday i said i'll
volunteer to talk to your class anytime it's how we bring new librarians in and
what what that looks like and it's how we make connections with those average
librarians and i'll say right here i'm not an average librarian i'm a leader
and we know that libraries aren't good at that we're
not good at speaking up about those things but i am a leader in my community
people recognize me and when i used to say i need to be at this table can i
come to this meeting and people would say who are you and where are you from
now they call me and say hey could you come to this meeting we need your input
and that's where we need to be so kevin maybe just a few last words
leadership so what does leading look like
leading is actionable leading is organizing
collaboration strategic vision vision and really execution that's what
leadership is to me like putting so uh you know our strategic plan that we
implemented in las vegas is all around action we actually call it strategic
playbook 2026. so it's based on getting things done and it's wrapped around the
community people
places partners and platforms so that's the approach that
that i've taken and leadership is um i'm the leader but certainly i look to all
the leaders within the organization at the top the bottom across the
organization and they all have a role in that strategic execution of that plan
thank you pat maybe you want to just bring this home
uh where do i want to bring it home well just find yourself
you're that kind of leader yeah i mean you know so leadership collaboration
what we what have we learned here you know what what is that what does that
look like it's a great interview question what's
more important management or leadership and the answer is what's more important
inhaling or exhaling right these are two things that absolutely go together but
you know we manage things and we lead people by creating a
compelling vision and the passion around a problem to solve that marshals all of
our resources and it's
what this group does all across the country in a profession
that i think with not without our challenges
but i think we've got a great future but i'll leave with uh with a quote that
some of us heard some of us here attend the the night
foundation meetings and they have the from the night ritter
newspapers now the the knight foundation and we're not a night ritter community
but when they call you in columbus in january and ask if you want to come to
miami for a couple of days you know i'm 100
uh every year but i remember the the ceo of the knight
foundation saying to all of the assembled librarians don't make the
mistake that newspapers did
we assumed permanence
i think that is right in front of our eyes what's happening
and you know i'm i still have
if my career is a runway i have more of the runway behind the plane than in
front of the plane yet on the other hand i think there's a
lot of folks saying man i got three years to that retirement
i'm just going to keep my head down i can make it we've got to confront the
blunt truth on this and really change what this is all about
and and accept that challenge and assume the
responsibility for it and have the courage to do so