There are seats for those who want seats.
I am sure milling around is acceptable as well.
I'm here to welcome you.
I'm Crosby Kemper, the director of the Kansas City public library.
You are here and thank you for being here.
We're honored to have the learning and libraries conference, honored to have all of you distinguished
guests in the library.
I would like to say a couple of things about the library and a couple of things about learning
in libraries since I have the podium.
A couple of things, I don't think we have a scheduled full scale tour of the library
so I just want to mention a few things you should see.
Obviously the 5th floor, this floor is worth exploring.
If the weather gets a little bit better, you might want to go off on our rooftop.
At 9 o'clock, the Missouri room will open, it's a beautiful room.
The third floor is our main reading room.
The grand reading room and we think it's fairly spectacular and on the second floor, we have
our children's library which we also think has something to offer and some color and
imagination.
You probably have gone through the main hall, the library.
Please go back to one north gallery, we'll see an interesting exhibit called imminent
domain.
A photographer took pictures of a neighborhood that was destroyed in building a large police
lab.
Kind of interesting.
We have a second floor gallery that we have opened with a local artist who is very interesting
and on the first floor, we have a long time publisher of our African American newspaper
the call, which during the hay day was one of the three great African American newspapers
read around the country and there is a very interesting legal story about her application
to the University of Missouri which was denied and the courts forced her to, the University
of Missouri to accept her and then University of Missouri, instead of actually taking her
as a student paid for her to go to the University of Kansas.
A fascinating thing.
And then our bottom line, what we call the vault level, this used to be a bank building.
We changed the vault in the lower level into a film vault and you should take a look at
that.
It's a screening room.
I do want to say something about learning in libraries.
It's the 50th anniversary of the report and some of you may have been reading about the
updated studies about it and the studies of family break down which as it turns out, they
were right, but he was right in a way that he didn't quite understand at the time.
Family break down is of course, not just in the black family, it's in the white family
and the Hispanic female as well.
Robert Putnam, Charles Murray have written books about what this means for us in essentially
creating an under class in this country.
There was talk about that in the 60s and we have ignored that until the last few months,
I think, but that's something important.
There's a brand new steri in Harvard about the neighborhood effect which relates to family
break down and some of the other issues but what is actually an extraordinary study because
it shows growing up in certain neighborhood regardless of class, eliminating class and
income and race and education levels, where you live makes it, if you are poor, makes
a huge difference as to what your life chances are, your future income, your mobility.
It's interesting, I would just note one thing about it.
The bottom city, he looks at the largest 100 cities and their neighborhood effects.
The worse neighborhood affect for your life chances is Baltimore.
The pew internet study has come out in April 1st, with the study of smart phones and there's
interesting statistics, 35 percent had smart phones, 64 percent as of the measurement
time of the current study have smart phones.
Black and Hispanic smart phone ownership is 70 and 71 percent, higher than white ownership.
Obviously it's related to education, 78 percent of college graduates versus 52 percent
of high school graduates, higher urban areas, 68 percent versus suburban, Latino, black,
and young people, in general, so particularly young Latino and black kids are smart phone
dependent and they have no other connection to the internet except the connection you
know about which is right here in the library which is interesting he didn't mention it
in passing.
This mirrors the Google fiber study of Kansas City, interestingly enough.
There's very high usage in the inner city of smart phones but here's some of other interesting
stuff from the report and it mirrors what we know in the library about this.
People are using their smart phones for job searching, but there is a decline and for
information but there is a as you get to more serious services, things like reaching government
services, actual education classes, for instance, or job application as opposed to job searching,
the usage of the smart phone declines for obvious reasons it seems to me.
One quarter of all folks have suspended service at some point which is also important and
that's important because a couple of statistics I'm going to give you in the Kansas City school
district that we know directly right here, our school district where the library is.
So they rolled out a 1 to 1 computer program this year.
After they rolled out the 1 to 1 computer program, very expensive, they discovered that
70 percent if they read the study, would have known this is coming but 70 percent
of the kids in the Kansas City school district do not have a home connection.
So rolling out that computer was fairly meaningless.
There's other things that have problems with it but that one statistic, 40 percent
of those kids have at least two addresses during the course of the school year.
This is mirrored in most urban school districts by the way.
Our superintendent by the way, you can see in the paper today has just taken a job in
Atlanta which is interesting.
This is also one of the problems that those who are in urban situations will know about.
He has taken a job in a much larger school district for a lot more money after having
just, in the last year achieved accreditation of the school district which was in accredited
for a couple of years.
He achieved that while reading scores and math scores were going down.
Inexplicable.
The last thing I want to tell you is this week in the library, we had someone this study
family scholarly educational success, 28 nations study that shows the most powerful correlation,
variable correlation in academic success is the number of books in the home.
That's a proxy for something and not the thing itself.
We can just air lift books in people's homes and expect success but it is a proxy for the
cultural affects of book learning.
The cultural affects of what she calls the idea of pure preference which is the act of
choosing a book, the act of choosing your first book which may be the most, while all
of these issues with neighborhood, class, family structure is limiting affects but the
most liberating affect we know is the choice of your first book and the continuance of
your reading.
The anchor institution in our communities that does that, actually isn't the school
districts today.
I'm not denying their importance obviously but it's the position of libraries to build
that culture, that learning culture.
If there's anything we're trying to do in this library and the library world is to build
that learning culture.
Libraries have a bigger and bigger role, with the roll out of the internet and smart phones
and big fiber broadband, et cetera.
The gaps are getting bigger, the achievement gaps are getting bigger, the access questions
are getting bigger but the most important thing is also getting lost in our debates
about computer learning and that is, we know that there's a certain culture of what she
talks about as imagining richness, cognitive school development and ultimately the creation
of an imaginative world for children and ultimately for adults that opens their minds to the world
and that's the single most important thing.
I think all of the research we're seeing leads into the conclusion that what you're doing
today is very important.
Thanks for being in the Kansas City public library.
Good morning and thanks so much to Crosby and his team for allowing us to have this
event here today at the Kansas City public library.
I'm Robin and I'm the associate director for library services at IMLS and I'm here on behalf
of acting director Maura who could not join us as well as the colleagues who you see throughout
the room and you'll meet throughout the day.
I would like to welcome you throughout the event and we're thrilled to have you here
and join us.
I want to express the gratitude for the time and the investment you have putting in here.
We know you have busy schedules and we're grateful you are spending it with us and participating
with us today.
I would like to say welcome to those who are using the live stream, we had 800 people last
year and more than 400 at the national digital platform convening which was held approximately
two weeks ago the DC library.
If you're remote, you can actively participate via twitter.
The hash tag today is hash tag, IMLS focus.
We'll be monitoring the tweets and fielding the questions.
We'll feed it to the moderators so you still have the opportunity to participate even though
you can't be in the room with us today.
This is the second of three such conveniences that are being held over six weeks this spring
with a goal of having a national conversation about shared priorities.
This is also the second year we're holding these conveniences.
We found it e norm lousily helpful last year to bring a group together like this and form
our strategic priorities and grant making.
This affects not just the national but also our Laura Bush 21th century.
We need to consider how we prepare the library staff to honor these learning experiences
through academic programs, professional development and continuation and research.
That's our focus of our afternoon conversation.
Your contributions today will help us do our work.
It helps in turn make us smarter and make more strategic discussions about the great
making in order to make to support the services for the American people.
So that's why we really have invited you here today.
We want you to help us think about what those priorities are.
As we look ahead to our 2016 funding, we actually take those recommendations and place them
into our notice of funding opportunity and I think you'll see some of the results of
the 2014 event in the 2015 notice of funding opportunities we had this year.
We're counting on your active participation and I'll reiterate that a little bit later
to make today's convening a success.
So we're focused today particularly on learning and libraries.
We understand it to encompass all of the things that libraries are doing today in the shift
away from a very book centric focus and to a knowledge and learning centric focus that
takes on the community needs.
The hands on manifestations such as making and other learning are but a few examples
of the kinds of learning opportunities being offered by libraries today.
I would also argue this shift has been coming quite quickly in the last few years and it
is not limited to public libraries.
In fact, last year our colleagues Susan who from the North Carolina state library has
said that we have been creating learning spaces and information comments and different kinds
of places and spaces for several years and an example of that is her own library.
So we have very much to learn from each other and I think you'll see that diversity reflected
in the room today.
Through discretionary program, with have invested millions of dollars through a broad umbrella
of learning libraries.
We have moved towards funding, learning based projects that have the greatest prospect of
having broad national impact.
We have also broaden how we have been thinking about learning.
Though in 2012 and 2013 we worked with the McAuthor foundation to help design a plan
and create learning labs across the country.
We're now focusing less on the space itself, learning spaces themselves and building more
on what we know and helping both libraries and the profession move forward.
For example, we're interested in professional development and training that focuses efforts
out ward to benefit the greatest number of people and libraries.
This is something to keep in mind as we move forward today.
So let me take a few moments and share some of the investments that IMS has made that
fall in the themes we are discussing today.
So in participating learning, making and learning museums and libraries, a project bringing
them together including the Pittsburgh childrens museum, the San Francisco explore, North Carolina
state, the Chicago public library and the maker education initiative.
This project aims to give professionals with a suite of tools and services, hands on professional
development experiences and a community of practice.
The project's website and online publication will share the frame work, maker space studies,
research and evaluation reports as well as resources for field wide replication.
In early learning, we have prescription for success and reach out and read.
This project will survey best practices in partnerships supporting early learning and
run pilots in three states, Connecticut, South Carolina, and Colorado.
For digital inclusion we have the open E books initiative.
This aims to provide museum and library professionals with a suite of materials and resources, hands
on professional development experiences and also a community of practice.
The projects website and online publication will share the frame work maker space studies
research and evaluation reports as well, also, field resources for field wide replication
and then finally, we have the adult programming and workforce development and the U.S. department
of labor and training have been working together to highlight effective practices in the workforce
investment system and public libraries.
They are also collaborating with the United States citizen and immigration services to
help libraries provide accurate and useful information about immigration and citizen
benefits and promote an awareness and ensure the integrity of the immigration system.
So with all of that in mind, I want to launch us into our day, we have a very ambitious
agenda and a room of deep experience.
Several people are here to recognize a few, we have the American association for school
libraries, the association of research libraries, the coalition for networked information, the
chief officers of state agencies, the urban libraries council, pure research, just to
name a few.
This is a final reminder.
I said I would reiterate this that we're really looking for active contributions and discussion
from each of you today.
Whether we're doing a presentation or full participation, active participation from your
chairs today.
Really quick housekeeping, there are charging stations for your laptops both under the large
picture here and at the back of the table.
The restrooms are out the door straight past the hall, we have food and refreshments availability
outside here.
We're in the process of setting up a small conference room in case you need to make a
private phone call and need a quiet area.
If you have need for that, please talk to the people in the back of the table.
Finally, if you need to leave and go straight to the airport and need to arrange for a taxi,
please see our friends and they will arrange one for you.
It's not an environment where you can walk out and hail a cab, one will need to be paged
for you, all right?
Final bit, because we're web casting today, I want to remind you please, both to use the
microphones.
We'll have people who can bring microphones around to you before you start speaking, please
introduce yourself, providing your name and the organization that you're representing.
All right, and with that, I would like to introduce our first session this morning and
to do so, I would like to introduce John who will be our moderator for the first session
and if we can have the entire first panel, join us up here, thank you!