I want to welcome you to The Institute for Museum and Library Services webinar
on libraries and 21st century skills I'm Helen Wexler here at imls and before I
turn the webinar over to Mary Cho who's going to get us started I have a few
housekeeping announcements the webinar is currently in lecture mode which means
that the presenters can speak but all of the guests are muted when it comes to
the question and answer portion we'll unmute you and um we'll do that through
audio so you will ask your questions on your phone line please hold your
comments um your questions and comments for the question and answer portion um
and if you'll notice um a chat box that is at the right
probably of your screen and it maybe looks a little bit tiny if you want to
make it larger you can click on the bottom right corner of that box and
extend it so it gets larger the text however will not get larger so so get
your glasses out for that um speaking of the chat box if you have any technical
difficulties you can go ahead and um and post those in the chat box and we'll try
to help you out as we move along we'll also use the chat box to answer some
questions that might be posed by our presenters so stay tuned for that um now
if your PowerPoint is a strange size or not a good size for you and you want it
bigger or larger go ahead and experiment with the full screen button that's at
the top um on the right side of your screen or the fit to screen check box at
the bottom left um either of those might be able to help you out finally if
you're interested in getting a copy of this PowerPoint we'll have an email at
the end of the presentation and you can simply request it so now I want to turn
it over to my colleague uh Mary Chu here at the Institute of Museum and Library
services and I think we need the next slide for a list of our participants
Mary thank you Helen that's great hello everybody um on behalf of imls and the
whole 21st century skills team and especially our brand new director Susan
hildr I'd like to welcome you all to this session on museums libraries and
21st century skills Susan wishes she could have been with us today to be able
to do her first webinar welcome but um amazingly after 10 whole days in the
office uh her calendar is already starting to fill up and she was unable
to join us but I told her I would send her special
regards as we get started um we'd like to find out a little bit about who's
with us today and we have several quick polls that we'd like to have you respond
to you can do this online um and our first one is going to
have to do with what region of the country you're coming
from so if you just take a second and click that we should be seeing some live
responses um right while we're here and you'll have an idea Who's online with
you
okay great I love watching this in real time well it looks like we've got we've
got some expanse here um the Midwest so far is winning um those will continue to
come in and now we'll move on to the next poll which has to do with what type
of library or institution you're in and this is Library focused for the most
part um although we recognize that everybody who's there may not be coming
in from um a library uh but we just want to see what's happening
here oh nice oh we've got good State Library representation as well as public
libraries so look at those academics bless their
hearts very good and again we'll get those numbers they'll continue to come
in for us um and now as this one gets down a little bit to the nitty-gritty
we'd like to know how familiar you are with a 21st century skills report it's
been out there for a while and we've been doing various activities um related
to this initi initiative we assume that you've heard something about it or you
wouldn't even be online with us but um for some folks it's not going to be
something that is everyday terminology or even something that they've been
exposed to so yeah okay looks like that's our largest group
the ones that are not familiar with us so that gives us a chance to give you um
some background here and I'm going to start at the beginning although it will
be um a brief background here for us and what we're doing is we're looking at
Learning in the future um what is learning going to look like in the
future what is learning looking like in the 20 21st century
already and for imls this is a realm in which we have been dipping in for
probably a decade we started off looking at the 21st century learner I didn't
even work here and I attended an imls conference in November of
2001 on the 21st century learner and how our museums and libraries were going to
be part of a network that supported learning in the 21st century and about
the time I started here we were fortunate enough to be launching the
21st century librarian um initiative which again of course was looking at how
our libraries can best support that that learner and those
communities and several years ago we actually got pulled into this land of
21st century skills um kind of in coordination with a partnership for 21st
century skills which um was working with schools and business and was a major
initiative we felt that museums and libraries had had a major role to play
so as we move ahead to look at what this learning looks like we have a little
four question exercise for you and um we're going to ask you to type your
responses into the chat window uh you're going to send those messages to
all and I just want you to do a little bit of envisioning we're not going to
spend a lot of time on this this is just to get our minds in the right
place what is the world going to be look looking like 20 years or so from now
when today's kindergarteners those children who visit your institution
whether it's for story time or if you happen to be in a museum uh Children's
Museum when those kids have left school and they're out in the world what do we
think the world is going to be like um and specifically as you're thinking that
what what about the workplace um not just the world in general but but the
workplace itself so we want everybody to put a little bit of thought into that if
you can give us some of your quick ideas in the chat that's great um but after
we've pictured what that world looks like that will lead us right into our
question two and question two continues to focus
on these children of today and what skills will these children need to be
successful in the world that we are imagining 20 years from
now um when we look ahead what is it that
they're going to need to know how to do in order to be successful be engaged in
their community be productive citizens what are the skill sets that we're going
to need um and when I say we I mean those of us
who are currently in the workforce and I don't expect to be working in 20 years
but I'm sure that a number of the folks who are online will um so what skills
are we going to need now question number three is my personal favorite anytime
we've done this I love this one because it actually starts to encourage those of
us who are having this little dream here this little experience is to think kind
of a little retrospectively here what were the conditions that made your own
high performance learning experiences so very powerful think back to a time in
your own life when you indeed feel that you were extremely productive maybe part
of a high efficiency team but what were those conditions that made your high
performance learning so very very powerful I love this one because my mind
immediately goes to a particular circumstance and it puts me in the realm
that I I think I want to be in when I'm thinking about learning in the 21st
century so now we come to question four and question four is taking that
learning that we have experienced thinking about what made it so powerful
and looking at your own institution in which you work today and what would your
institution be like if it were designed around your answers to those first three
questions would there need to be changes Maybe it would be just the way it is
maybe you already create that kind of space that leads to Creative Energy and
learning in the 21st century and as you think of it I guess
I'd just ask you to have a little side thought and you don't have to add this
to the chat box but you certainly can um think about what you might do over the
next month or even two at home that would start to put your answers into
action um are there some incremental changes that you could start to make in
your institution so as we as we think about
these 21st century skills and the changes that we may need to make in our
libraries and and museums um we're looking at a world that
has changed we're looking at the whole phenomena of
globalization we're looking at technology we're looking at needing new
skills to compete um and I think we have another slide we
can bring up here that shows some shifts in the types of skills that are in
demand um as we look at what's happened here we're seeing and I know this this
the screen here is very tiny at least the font on it and you will have a
chance to go back and look at this later it also appears in the
publication but it's basically those routine manual skills that we're seeing
in that bottom botom red line that are declining and leveling off whereas it is
the the creative the non routine the interactive the um things where we're
working collaboratively um cognitive things that
are going up this is the rise that we're seeing these are the shifts that are
happening as we look at the skills that will help um position today's young
people and today's middle-aged people for success in a world that is changing
dramatically I think if we move on to the next slide here we'll be looking at
what um we've been terming as the four C's of course we're envisioning that
these four C's blend together with the three Rs and help to make a really
complete education but we're looking at Trends in
global awareness Financial economic business entrepreneurial literacy
there's a health literacy that we know is bubbling to the top Civic literacy
environmental literacy and of course all of these are depending upon a real deep
understanding and basic core literacy every time we have this
conversation somebody will be in the audience who will remind us and say wait
a minute if indeed we don't have that core basic literacy we're not positioned
for any sort of success but as we look at the four seas building on these
Trends and responding to these Trends creativity imagination problem solving
the ability to collaborate be part of a team skills at communicating written
oral and critical thinking these are the things that are going to be needed now
we're calling them 21st century skills but in reality every time I stop and
look at it I recognize that these are also skills that certain certainly
positioned leaders in the 20th century the 19th century the 18th century we can
wind our clock backwards and these are Universal skills but they are going to
become increasingly important um as we move ahead in the 21st
century as we move on to the next slide we're looking at some shifts in our
museums and libraries um that are occurring as we do this transition from
the 20th Cent Century to the 21st century what is the driving force behind
what's going on in our institutions we're finding a much more participatory
role for our audience it's not just content-driven anymore we are finding
services that need to be individualized need to be unique need to
be personalized in some cases need to be delivered on handheld devices we are
looking at things that go in multiple directions at once we are looking at
things that are taking place in Virtual space and we are looking at a mandate
for our institutions to be part of a community and part of collaborative
Endeavors so now I'm going to ask you to take a quick look and we're gonna we're
going to have another little um poll here as to whether or not you would tend
to agree with what we have described here here as being the shifts that
you're seeing going on do you agree that these are the shifts that are taking
place I think we should have a poll coming up here for you yeah okay um do
you agree that these are the things that are going on when you look at those
items listed in that second that right hand
column okay this is not Universal that's all right
and I do think that you know we have to recognize where we are in the 21st
century and we also have to recognize that what we're doing is we're doing a
little bit of prediction here so we're using our imaginations and saying this
is what we're seeing happening but they're not necessarily happening in all
places at the exact same rate of speed and as a followup to this we will
have in just a minute or so here or maybe even a second if they're moving
really quickly a second poll that will be asking whether or not that
second column is describing what's starting to happen in your institution
and again you're going to be able to say yes partly no and I would actually
expect that perhaps we're going to find in this instance that less of it's going
to be done um but then again that's one reason that you're here involved in this
conversation to think about how you play a leadership role in moving
ahead um um when I look at what we have done in this 21st century um skills
initiative at imls there are multiple project components and we have a slide
that just kind of touches on a piece of them there is first and foremost a
report and that's what a lot of the content in this webinar this first part
of the webinar is based on it's what we found we convened a meeting of um expert
members people that we felt were out there in institutions on the front line
looking at policy decisions um institutions that had already undergone
change institutions that were looking at obstacles and had some things to
overcome we designed um a self assessment tool that is um not only
embedded in the publication itself as a hard copy and that on the slide that's
the bottom thing you're seeing there but there is also an online version we
didn't want going to be using a strictly 20th century tool in order to encourage
you to be doing this self assessment for your 21st century skills we had a number
of conversations we had some focus groups held with Museum Community held
with the Library community we met at ala we met with State
Librarians um and we pulled together what we felt would be a useful document
our goal was not to have something that would be sitting on your shelf getting
dust and if we move on to the next slide here
it talks a little bit about what our goals were as we entered into this
initiative we articulated our goals as being to encourage libraries and museums
to be very intentional in their 21st century practice to enhance
understanding among policy makers and other stakeholders about the integral
roles that libraries and museums play in creating
uh communities where we could have an Engaged citizenry and a very competitive
and successful Workforce we were trying to assist in
the inventory of 21st century skills and what practices were out there that were
currently in use or should be invol evolving we also were trying to identify
goals for future operation and program improvements now I would Hazard a guess
that these goals that were our goals in this initiative
are also going to be very similar to the goals that you will have should you move
ahead with this initiative in your own Community you're going to be encouraging
you're going to be enhancing you're going to be helping to inventory and
you're going to be identifying goals for future operation as you work with other
community organizations um and help to create that
kind of a network where you are in your place now I can't be a librarian without
giving you a little suggested reading that goes along with what we're
discussing here and we have two different slides that touch on a couple
of um books that will be and books and Publications that will be supportive the
first one and it deserves its own slide is 21st century skills and um Bernie
trillings book here absolutely is it's it's based in looking at schools and 20
development in schools more than in museums and libraries but so much of the
content is very transferable and it is from this book that we took our Fork
question exercise we adapted it slightly but it was with their permission that we
said we wanted to use this to spread the message two other books that I am sure
many of you are already familiar with but you may not have looked at them with
exactly this eye Are The World is Flat and a whole new mind for both of these
they are looking at the skills the trends and the shifts that we're all
experiencing and the changes in the world that if we want to keep our
institutions vital we need to be responding to now imls itself is
encouraging proposals that come in funding
opportunities um that will be promoting 21st century skills and I have a slide
that should be coming up here that talks about the different programs in which
you will find um a good ground for submitting proposals that can be very
responsive to this entire initiative there's a place within the grants to
States program for 21st century skills and I'm speaking to all those State
Library folks out there within our national leadership grants 21st century
librarian program of course are native ha Hawaiian and Native American programs
in both of these cases 21st century skills absolutely come through and we
have a new program called the Sparks ignition grants um that are places that
where we're looking for creative ideas um a real Venture um an opportunity to
get something just started something that you just don't have that Venture
Capital to begin with now in terms of IM ls's next steps
um we're really in the midst of all of this this our webinars you're living
through one right now um we're doing some Community workshops uh we've done I
believe four or five already and you're going to be hearing from the host of one
of them shortly um we also have expanded web content we have a couple of other um
initiatives that are going on that very closely relate one is the imls MacArthur
partnership for learning labs this is um an upcoming National Grant competition
that will fund the creation of up to 30 learning labs in libraries and museums
across the country and then I amess was mentioned in the fcc's Broadband plan
and we are in the process of helping to create again with an expert committee a
framework for digital inclusion um this is a framework of what
principles elements and characteristics need to be in communities in order to
Foster digitally inclusive communities that respond to and make good use of the
roll out of broadband across the country that pretty much brings my
comments to a close until we get to the Q&A session we do have three speakers
who are going to come along right behind me um I'm going to list them in reverse
order and then hand things over to Mary whose name is up here already our three
um speakers will be Luis Herrera from the San Francisco Public Library and
Louise is the person who has indeed been a host for one of these workshops that
IMS has put on in a library with a community bringing together library and
Museum folks from the area along with other key Community Players we also will
be hearing from Jeff patchin Jeff is the president and CEO of the Children's
Museum of Indianapolis and he's particularly
appropriate person to have here because in Museum there is a very busy Public
Library branch which made him the ideal out of
the box person for us to bring on board um and then I that brings me to Mary who
will be the person who takes um over from me here Mary is my friend and
colleague the state librarian in North Carolina and the key partner on one of
our most exciting projects in the current year and Mary will be telling
you all about about that project and some other good things that are going on
Mary thank you Mary um this is Mary Boon as you have
you have just heard and I'm here to talk about one of the grant opportunities
that Mary Cho has just been talking about through
imls uh we at the State library of North Carolina are partnering with web
Junction on a grant program called project Compass we're actually in the
second year now but if we can go to yes here we have the first slide and this is
um the first year of the program was last year 2009 through1 web Junction
which I think many of you in the Public Library community know but for those of
you web Junction is an online community which promotes a learning community
actually working together to ensure that Library staff have resources and
training um and a wide variety of of areas and project Compass Grant was
actually awarded to them to work with us here at the the State library of North
Carolina because in the previous year in 2009 we had become very active in our
state in dealing with the job search requirements that public libraries
around our country are experiencing uh during the march of 2009
we actually carried out something like nine workshops across our state working
with Public Library staff so that they could become more familiar with the
techniques of helping online job searchers
with the resources that are available for that and working with Partners which
I'll talk about more later um we found that this huge demand was taking
Librarians further down the road than we usually go and interacting with patrons
normally we have a reference or an information inquiry helping someone find
a job online is something much more interactive also we were finding people
were coming into our libraries who were not traditionally heavy Library users in
fact many of these people who were unemployed did not have 21st century
skills at all which are necessary now in this our first online recession we found
that we were doing a lot of very basic training both in basic computer skills
and in computer searching in information literacy essentially so this first year
what we wanted to do with project Compass was to work with other State
Library agencies so that we could help them maximize the effectiveness of what
was happening in local libraries in their states as well and in the next
slide we will look at uh some of the content of this first
of all uh one of our major ways of carrying out this program was through
four National Summits and as you can see these were in Atlanta in Portland Oregon
and Providence Rhode Island and Denver Colorado through these uh Network um
Summits we were able to reach all 50 states and representatives from the
District of Columbia we were very pleased with that there was a great deal
of interest in this program uh one of the things that we were able to do is
talk about not just what we were doing in North Carolina we would start the
conversation that way but then people from all the other states would bring in
well we're doing this and we're doing that so it became an opportunity for us
to all learn from each other because there was a lot of very interesting work
going on all across the country as libraries were trying to reach uh to
meet this new demand one of the other things that been particularly
interesting is this second dot where it says promoting strategic Partnerships
with Workforce agencies we found that one of the most effective things we were
able to do was to develop relationships with Workforce people in our communities
the interesting thing is that this is really happened
at the national level at the state level as well as the local level imls for
example has created a partnership with the US Department of Labor's employment
and training Administration here at the state level
we're working at our Workforce Development Division and at the local
level we have libraries in partnership with the Employment Security Commission
and One-Stop Job centers I would like to make a note here that in one of the
comments that was written in the chat room earlier
Connie thank you Connie wrote more connected to agencies that serve same
populations that has been one of the outcomes of this program we find that
they're very happy to work with us because public libraries are open longer
hours public libraries teach computer skills public libraries are serving
their clients in a way that takes their services further than they're able to do
so this has really been one of the most important outcomes I think of this grant
program also now web Junction following these um
inperson Summits did online webinars and has resources on their website that
enabled another I think almost 200 people to participate in this program
and one of the final outcomes that was so particularly useful was that we
really got a lot of good press and we became well known in state libraries and
public libraries for the work that we're doing helping people really find jobs
during this recession in our state this knowledge went all the way up to the
governor who is very proud of this program and I know that in many other
states there's been even if it's just your local people who see people
standing uh in line waiting to get in the library in the morning when it opens
it's it's a new world for us in many ways and this has been very very
successful so successful that we now have a followon grant uh project Compass
2 oh before I do that the the next slide will show you uh a screenshot from the
web Junction web page where you will find a wonderful report about the first
year of project Compass entitled a year with project Compass libraries provide
Direction in tough times web junction. org and once you get onto the website
you can find Project compass and there you find not only this report uh you
will find a lot of these Workforce resources that been gathered there as
well so then the next slide will take us to project Compass 2 which is a followon
grant that we've just begun in this
year this year we're going to take the program to a different level last year
we were working with State libraries this year we want to work more directly
with libraries in communities so in this followon grant we're again um part web
Junction and and the State Library here in North Carolina
are again partnering uh we're developing a curriculum that will help libraries um
be able to deal with the unemployed in a better way than they may have been able
to in the past we certainly hope so this is going to begin just next week with a
train the trainer program we're going to hold that here in North Carolina we have
representatives from 10 states coming who will learn this curriculum and be
able then to go back to their own States and do programs at local libraries for
Library staff to help them work better in this area project Compass 2 shifts
the emphasis as you see from the State Library level to the actual um
individual Public Library level we'll um in addition because we're only doing
this in 10 states have um programs at conferences and uh around the the
country either at the state level or at the regional level and again web
Junction will will provide online programming uh on their website as well
as uh additional resources and resource sharing at web Junction now the next
slide really gets into the content a little bit and what we did here I know
that this is going to be very small type and I don't expect you to read
everything but you will be able to get a copy of this um after the webinar but
what I wanted to do was just show you what it looks like because what we did
is we started with the self assessment tool in the publication that Mary Chu
was telling you about a little while ago of museums and libraries and 21st
century skills in that um self assessment tool there actually three
areas the early stage the transitional stage and the 21st century stage and we
started in that format but we continued to evolve it over time until we've
reached a point where we have using the same framework still a variety of
different areas that we want to address you see the main topic areas on this
slide are Discovery and assessment Collections and training and learning um
we want people to dive down into this a little more with the end result being
that 21st century skills are among the things that come out of this if you if
we see the next slide we'll see this is a very wide piece of paper so I had to
do it on two slides you'll see um the last two areas collaboration and
communication again taking a lot of things that we learned at the State
Library level and moving them down to the local library level I also very much
like this um quote from Bernie trilling from the 21st century skills book that
Mary talked about a few minutes ago lifelong learning is not just an option
anymore it's a necessity smart is the new Rich that makes all of us very rich
I think those of us who are working in this uh in this area and those are the
things that I wanted to tell you about project compass and my final slide just
helps to say that uh it takes a lot more than luck to find a job in this world
today and we hope that um we and libraries of all types not just public
libraries can help um people who come in who've never touched a computer before
in their lives and there are plenty of people out there in that category we are
learning uh learn basic skills in using computers learn how to apply for jobs
learn how to start a small business learn uh some basic financial literacy
as well as information literacy while they're in our libraries so we've very
excited about this program uh very happy to be partnering with web Junction and
imls on this and we'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have later
and now it's my pleasure to introduce you to Jeff patchin the president and
CEO of the children of Indianapolis Jeff take it away
thanks so much that was great um my name is Jeff patchin president CEO of the
Children's Museum of Indianapolis I'm here in uh right now very snowy and soon
to be icy Indianapolis but I noticed that the folks from the Midwest have the
greatest representation today so that's really great to see all of you uh snowy
midwesterners hanging hanging in there the Children's Museum of Indianapolis is
one of the largest in the world uh it's one of the few museums to have a full
service Public Library inside the museum setting we're about 500,000 Square fet
on 19 Acres about 200 full-time 200 part-time staff uh 110,000 objects in of
our of our in our in our collection one of just a handful of Children's Museums
that are collecting museums our approach to learning is what we call Family
learning and it it focuses on the uh primary principle that it is children
accompanied by caring adults whether it's a parent uh an aunt an uncle a
caregiver and of course grandparents that are typically those folks who who
uh who accompany uh children to the to the children's museum we're a
fullservice design and build um entity in other words we design and build our
own permanent and and temporary exhibits and we also have a branch of our work
that focuses on International traveling uh exhibits as well lots of Partnerships
and alliances with science uh organizations scientists artists
humanitarians um such as National Geographic um Mattel
Nickelodeon uh the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt which of course
we're all watching very very carefully and we have worked very hard to try and
make this this shift from content to uh to audience in engagement and if we
could turn to the next slide that'd be
great I'm going to talk a little a little bit about how we've tried to
apply some of these 21st century skills to our to our programs you there are two
uh images here one uh in our infozone library and the other uh some
prototyping that we did for a permanent exhibit that will open in June called
National Geographic Treasures of the of the Earth but it reflects I think our
focus on audience engagement and whether it be adults children adults and
children together and of course school so we're very con we're very uh aware of
the 21st century skills and as well as all of the national and state standards
that are necessary to continue to uh engage in in in public schools and we
see this not only in the programs that we create in this two-dimensional
three-dimensional spaces but also in our infozone library because the units of
study that we create and the uh activity guides for for parents when they come to
visit are also resonated are also can be resonated and seen in the inazone
library in the next slide um we really by Design uh spend a lot of time talking
talking about cross disciplinary IM immersion and there are some photos here
of our uh immersive space called dinosphere which opened in 2004 and it's
an immersive space inside of with real dinosaur fossils from the Cretaceous
Period and a in a dinosaur lab um paleo lab that has real paleontologists
working with fossils and engaging with our with our visitors it it is a
wonderful metaphor for how we try and bring together the Arts and Sciences in
Humanities The Sciences are obvious the connections to paleontology real fossils
but also we have a the second floor of that exhibit is a Paleo art gallery and
we were able to receive a very large collection of drawings and paintings and
sculptures of dinosaurs from a pro private collector a number of years ago
and so we include those in a in an immersive space that allows children and
families to draw paint and sculpt their own uh their own images based on real
fossils and this dinosaur art in this gallery and of course telling the
stories of paleontologist and what it means to be in paleontologist is part of
the humanities approach so we really have this melding of science and art in
Humanities real objects real art and real stories there's lots of Hands-On of
course in the space there is a there is uh dinosaur dig there is an opportunity
to touch real fossils and of course again to talk to real paleontologists we
extend that experience in inazone in our library with a a considerable collection
of of books and CDs about about dinosaurs and paleontology and then we
extend that with family dig trips to South Dakota where we lease land on the
hell Creek formation which has is very very rich in in dinosaurs next slide
please glob Global awareness is also an important part of the 21st century
learning skills as well as social and cross-cultural skills and our
International Gallery called take me there which opened in 2009 uh it's a
collaboration with the tropen museum in Amsterdam which we believe does just an
outstanding job of immersing Children and Families in in other cultures and we
wanted to focus on five Global perspectives in this Gallery language
and communication Living Spaces the
environment which of course links to environmental learning the marketplace
which links to financial learning and the visual and the Visual and Performing
Arts which also ties to uh a dedicated space in this Gallery where you
participate in a traditional celebration in a modern Egyptian culture called the
sabua and it welcomes the newborn baby on the seventh day after its birth into
uh into Egyptian life the exhibit is filled with real objects and there's an
opportunity to meet fully themed and costumed interpreters who to speak
Arabic and help teach you Arabic from the time you uh enter that Egypt air jet
there um for your short 30 second flight to uh to to Cairo as you might imagine
we also happen to touch on the topic of religion in this exhibit and part of the
part of the facade one of the facades in the in the exhibit touches on uh
comparison of Islam Christianity and Judaism and we had a absolutely
wonderful outpouring from not only the Islam Community but also the Jewish
community and the Coptic Christian Community as as well so the exhibit
really became an opportunity for greater cultural understanding and
awareness critical problems critical thinking and problem solving the next
slide want to show you some examples of some some work that we're we're getting
ready to unveil this is this will be a new permanent Gallery that'll open in
June and it's a partnership with National
Geographic and it will focus on archaeology and it's it's this
incredible collaboration with some some of the National Geographic explorers in
particular zahi Haas who is again with the Supreme Council of Antiquities in
Egypt who has found a new entrance to the tomb of SEI the first so a third of
that a third of that Gallery will be a new entrance into uh the the get the uh
the tomb of SEI I first and help children uh uncover uh whose tomb may be
there and a uh the pieces of a sarcophagus that kids will have to help
put back to uh put back together the other third is a uh is a replica of the
Terracotta Warrior dig in Shion China and that's been a partnership with the
Terracotta Warrior Institute and Shion Municipal Museum in Shion China there's
some new science and new information coming out of that dig about how these
uh incredible terracotta warriors were painted and so children will have an
opportunity to not only dig for their own Terracotta Warriors and assemble
them and understand how they're conserved but also uh experiment with uh
how what color they may they may have been each portion uh presents a child
and family with some problems to solve um that
require require initiative and and some self some self-direction the last third
of the gallery is an underwater uh underwater uh excavation and Discovery
by uh National Geographic uh emerging Explorer Professor Charlie Charles
Beaker from Indiana University who has found the Shipwreck of Captain kid the
pirate in 10 ft of water in the Dominican Republic and so as we have a
lab in our paleo lab we'll have our dinosaur exhibit we'll have a wet lab in
this space as well that allow children and families to learn more about
underwater archaeology and of course we're linking this back to our info Zone
with books about seti the first books about Captain kid and underwater
archaeology as well as the Terracotta Warriors of of of
Shian the last slide is just an overview of how we're dealing with the humanities
and particularly the notion of leadership and responsibility which are
key 21st century skills this Gallery is uh it's been open for four years and it
it reflects um it tells the story of three three uh extraordinary children
who in life and death have transformed the world an Frank child of the 1940s
and the Holocaust Ruby Bridges child of the 1960s and uh uh segregation uh
victim of segregation and Ryan White um child of the 80s who overcame Prejudice
related to Pediatric HIV there are three history paths here uh the visitor goes
to three uh immersive sound stages where the the presentation can be uh presented
with a live actor or in a sound and light show or in what we call exhibit
mode next to this area is is an area called take a taking action where
children and families get get to exhibit leadership and take responsibility for
uh deciding how they're going to make the world a better place they can plan
uh what it what it takes to to uh to implement their Implement an idea they
can make a promise which actually ascends up into that tree that you see
in the middle of the top row of of images uh we have extended that program
to create the power of children awards where we identify three to six uh kids
from Indiana ages 11 to 17 each year who have done extraordinary on behalf of
others they received a $2,000 award to further their philanthropic work and a
four-year scholarship to Indiana University we again linked the power of
children back to infaz Zone with Rich stories about Ruby Bridges and and
materials about Ruby Bridges and about Ryan White and about uh Anne Frank and
and the Holocaust so that's an overview of of of how we've taken the 21st
century skills to create uh for us that it's almost a set of criteria for how we
create an extraordinary family learning experience that takes the form of not
only 2D and 3D exhibits but also programs in our infozone uh infozone
Library thank you it's my pleasure now to introduce
Lewis Herrera City librarian San Francisco Public Library where it must
be just sunny and warm thank you very much Jeff uh and yes indeed it is uh
it's sunny in the 60s so hope I don't make all of you folks uh too jealous but
U it's a pleasure to be here uh today uh to talk about the San Francisco Public
Library experience uh particularly as as it applies to the 21st century um skill
set and and Jeff I have to tell you that I was really impressed with all that's
going on in the children's museum in Indianapolis because a lot of that does
speak to the issue of Engagement and really having experiential experiences
here with uh these skills so uh last November the San Francisco Public
Library had the pleasure of hosting a conversation with Museum and Library
leaders in our city uh where over 60 leaders came together to share lessons
and promising practices about our role in fostering these skills what I found
very exciting was that there was a very strong consensus that the public library
was uh the catalyst the key leader and focal point in bringing together all
these institutions so together we developed
key strategies which I want to highlight during my
presentation the next slide highlights these key
strategies we talked about leveraging Community
collaborations this is what libraries do best so it's all about fostering and
facilitating more and more Community Partnerships um and working together
it's also about engaging learning networks uh to work with agencies that
share our mission whether it's schools whether it's parent networks or
nonprofits it's really about making sure that we tie into a broad array of
Community Learning networks more and more we're also seeing
libraries as gathering places and Librarians can play a crucial role as
facilitators in uh community convers ations so it is about facilitating civil
discourse then we talked about a broader expansion of the definition of
traditional literacy we usually think of it as as basic reading skills but more
we're seeing trans literacy mean that uh the impact of technology means that
folks have to be computer media and information literate as well as social
literacy issues such as the environment health and financial literacy which uh
some of my colleagues have already touched
upon last we wanted to focus on the wide range of Education to take into account
that we have very diverse learning styles whether it's because of
generational or age differences or social economic uh
diversity so taking these strategies we developed priorities for 21st century
skills and it fell into the next slide please
four different areas we talked about uh in our library uh developing a service
program that included service Innovation and Technology Community
Partnerships Community engagement and Workforce Development so in the time
that I have AED I'm going to give you highlights of the services and programs
that tie into these priorities but more importantly how they connect with 21st
century skills so when we talk about the the next slide
which is about service Innovation and Technology what you see under the slide
the next slide are screenshots of programs that we have
implemented here in the San Francisco Public Library we recognized the
importance of innovative service and the use of technology to meet the new trends
in Mobile learning we also know that in the report it talks about uh mobile
learning becoming more and more of a trend and also having access to online
training almost 247 was very important so um during the course of the prior
year a service Innovation staff team uh here in the library focused on user
needs in this Ming environment and we learned that mobile Computing is indeed
the fastest growing mode of accessing the internet especially for people that
fall Within div a digital divide so what we felt was important was
to create a multilingual mobile mobile web device that allows users to search
the catalog Library events programs and even email reference from your mobile um
phone and you see that on the farand right another Innovation was a creation
of an online tutorial on popular employment websites on the internet this
also includ ined a step-by-step process for searching employment
opportunities uh this online tool was developed also as part of an imls Grant
with oclc's web Junction as a key partner and what we feel is so important
and this has really really been a useful tool particularly during the economic
recession in high unemployment so it meets a critical uh Demand with more and
more folks having to apply online and and learn learn the basic computer
literacy skills uh this tool um is is a viable uh
contribution the library also partnered with the King County Library to develop
a US citizenship resource guide on the web which provides multilingual guides
exam practice questions and Community Resources for the US citizenship
examination uh the resource as you see on the
screen uh middle of the screen uh is in English Spanish Cantonese Mandarin and
Russian and has had a phenomenal response because we realize how
important this is to respond to the community need out there and the
demand the library also um created a laptop lending program uh for in-house
use and it also has a variety of mobile applications and to our uh enjoyment
we've seen this become the highest circulating item in our collections over
14,000 laptops were checked out just in the last six months what this tells us
is that it's it's not only expanding the access to technology but it's helping us
Bridge the digital divide and specifically helps to uh address the
information media and Technology skills as along with global
awareness next slide please in terms of Community
Partnerships we also realize that it's really important for libraries to
address uh collaborations if we are to succeed in 21st century skills
development earlier I mentioned that uh trans literacy was becoming an important
aspect in developing these skills and here in San Francisco we have indeed
fostered of cultural Partnerships uh one of the ideas that we've had was to uh
work with the Arts commission to develop a very successful writers core program
where we match uh authors and professional writers with atrisk youth
in our neighborhood libraries in our schools uh to develop not only their
creative Talent uh but also to express and develop basic writing skills uh this
program was recognized this year by the imls and First Lady Michelle Obama as
one of the Key Programs of successful programs uh in uh literacy
development as I mentioned trans literacy goes beyond reading and the
library's also taken a leadership role in advancing environmental literacy we
have what we call a green Stacks program so San Francisco there's a tremendous
amount of interest in sustainable living the environment
so the library wanted to play a key and and and focal point uh by becoming the
One-Stop web portal that features resources on Sustainable Building
practices uh and our Collections and programs that support that uh we're in a
very active Capital Improvement program and our libraries are uh either lead
silver or gold and all of this U plays into informing and educating the public
about the environment the next
slide speaks to the issue of community engagement uh you see here a variety of
of programs also that uh address basic scientific and visual literacy uh all
the way to communication and cross-disciplinary thinking uh all these
which are a range of learning and Innovation skills that are part of the
20 21st century portfolio this can happen by engaging
the Community Partnerships with nonprofits uh Child Development Centers
and parents for example have been Key to Our Success in our early literacy
initiative it's called the every child ready to read which many of us are
familiar in the public library um sector uh but here in San Francisco the library
increased the number of story times for children birthed through 5 years uh by
almost 200% uh by engaging uh
daycare centers um child care providers in the initiative as well as parents and
in our annual survey 95% of the adults who bring children to story time now say
that they read more often with their child check out more Library materials
and identify the library as an important School Readiness resource uh due to the
every child ready to read program you also see a huge uh humaniz
hand uh puppet here uh that's our libraryies tricycle Music Fest which was
tout touted as the biggest little music fest in San Francisco uh we had toddlers
shaking rattling and rolling around the city all related to music and
literacy and one of our newest programs that's been in place for about six
months is check out San Francisco uh family pass it's a partnership with the
library and the department of children youth and families that provides free
passes to 17 cultural attractions ranging from the zoo The Academy of
Science the Asian Art Museum a whole Litany of of cultural
organizations uh that's provided an average of, 1500 free passes each month
uh and again many of these children and families have NE had never visited the
attractions perhaps could not afford them uh but this partnership has really
made the library the focal point of creating that wonderful experience
throughout the city next slide
please in Workforce Development I believe that this is in
fact the most critical priority for addressing 21st century
skills public libraries are learning organizations and they need to invest in
enhancing the skills portfolio of their staff as well as in helping develop the
workforce in our communities the library has develop its
own leadership academy uh to expand the skills portfolio of our staff uh what
you see here is a variety of uh workshops through JPL which stands for
the next generation of Public Library leaders it's a multi-year strategy to
grow Future Leaders that understand the complex role of libraries in our
communities and how they can demonstrate leadership at the neighborhood
level this touches on a Litany of skills related to to Civic literacy local and
Global awareness and life and career skills such as adapting to change
self-direction crosscultural skills and all aspect of leadership development and
it really has created this kind of culture of Engagement and culture of
change within staff in a large Urban Library the other success um within this
Workforce Development is related to what Mary Boon earlier talked about in terms
of project comp us which was the um Workforce and employment opportunities
and libraries indeed the nature of work is changing and many are using computers
uh to look at career uh job opportunities last year we saw 500,000
hours of computer use in a library and 25% of the people using
computers uh here in San Francisco were using them for employment purposes so we
obviously saw the need for more access to computers to work on resumés fill out
online applications even learn basic computer skills the job Seekers lab that
we've utilized here uh provides one-on-one support to learn these
job-seeking skills uh and also to apply technology effectively in other words IT
addresses the key 21st century skill of information communication and Technology
literacy and last we have a Small Business Center that um is working very
very closely with uh entrepreneurs in the city uh to provide materials on how
to plan Finance organize and operate uh in the small business environment and
particularly when the U economic recession has had an impact uh this has
been a very important role that the library has played in business
development so these were a series of examples of how we're taking our program
strategy uh to address the 21st century skills uh but we've learned a lot and so
the LA the last slide uh speaks to the issue of what's worked for
us in terms of uh the library we feel that we are positioning the library from
a a vision an idea of working closely in the community to a strategy for success
and several aspects have kept us in check first of all we focus on on
outcomes and impact in other words what is it that we're doing what value do we
bring to um our community in the various programs and what kind of difference are
we making resources are are limited so Le leveraging resources and partner
Partnerships are extremely important I'm very proud to say that the city looks at
the library as a model of engaging Partners uh this includes other City
agencies nonprofits as well as the private
sector it's also important that libraries are quick to respond that they
create organizations that seize opportunities particularly with
diminishing resources and last I'll leave you with
the fact that it's important to share our stories to brag about what we do to
talk about how we make a difference and to be
assertive and strategic in telling the community stakeholders the key role that
we play and the value that we bring to the quality of life of our residents and
users thank
you this is Mary um I just I want to thank Mary Boone Jeff patch and Luise
Herrera for and all of you for joining us um
for this webinar and I guess um at this point I think I'm not sure exactly what
Logistics are working in the other room but I believe the um lines will be
unmuted and people will have an opportunity to call in with some
questions and whoever is the best person to answer will be doing that answering
so please um accept my gratitude for everybody's wonderful participation and
I hope we've sparked some curiosity and spurred some
questions