Libraries Lead!
Libraries Lead! is a provocative podcast about all things information & library hosted by Beth Patin (Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse U), Dave Lankes (Professor, iSchool, U of Texas), and Mike Eisenberg (Dean/Professor Emeritus, iSchool, U of Washington). Information age opportunities and challenges affect every aspect of human existence. We wrestle with such topics as social justice, political unrest, mis- and dis-information, kids, family and adult living; education and learning; work, employment, training and jobs; recreation, entertainment, and play; disasters & emergency preparedness with a focus on libraries & information science, services, and systems. 4 segments in approx. 1 hour: WAZZUP, AI WATCH, MAIN TOPIC, and AWESOME LIBRARY THINGY. For Resources & References for All Episodes please go to: https://tinyurl.com/libleadresources
Libraries Lead!
Episode 5: Library Activism
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March 17, 2021
45 Minutes
Dave Lankes & Mike Eisenberg
In this episode, Mike and Dave start with a brief exchange on the changing nature of work and the need to help low-wage earners find out about high demand jobs, requirements, and opportunities for getting access to quality training.
Mike & Dave then pick up the conversation about education in the evolving new normal from episode 3’s insights from Colet Bartow, Teaching and Learning Senior Manager in the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Colet raised such issues as the increased interest in homeschooling or perhaps moving to a blended or hybrid approach to schooling, as well as the continued challenges of the digital divide.
Mike laments that education is still stuck in a “19th Century, industrial model of mass-production education with cookie-cutter classrooms, fixed schedules, bells, and a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Do we really want to go back to this “old normal”? Dave sees a need to experiment, learn more about, and share best practices on how to use the emerging online technologies more effectively with libraries and librarians deeply involved.
Also highlighted (as an Awesome Library Thingy) is Barbara Fister’s essay (from Project Information Literacy) that was picked up by The Atlantic about librarians confronting the mis- and dis-information efforts of Q-Anon and other conspiracy theory promoters by expanding exposure to skills and knowledge concerning social media, inquiry, and how this whole “information thing” works.
References & Resources
Miller, Elizabeth. (March 1, 20215:00 AM ET) "For Some Black Students, Remote Learning Has Offered A Chance To Thrive," National Public Radio: All Things Considered. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/01/963282430/for-some-black-students-remote-learning-has-offered-a-chance-to-thrive
Fister, Barbara (Feb 18, 2021) “The Librarian War Against Qanon. As “Do the research” becomes a rallying cry for conspiracy theorists, classical information literacy is not enough. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2021/02/how-librarians-can-fight-qanon/618047/
Fister, Barbara (Feb 3, 2021) “Lizard People in the Library,” Project Information Literacy, Provocation Series. https://projectinfolit.org/pubs/provocation-series/essays/lizard-people-in-the-library.html
Credits
Yoni Yemini from ACE Chicago Events
Hi, and welcome to Libraries Lead in the New Normal. It's our latest episode. This is David Likus, and I'm going to be here with Mike Eisenberg. I want to first begin by giving a shout out to Ace Chicago Events for helping to produce and be part of this. And Yanni, the amazing production assistant side of things. We're here to talk about everything libraries and particularly how sort of libraries can take over the world. It's always good world domination through librarianship.
SPEAKER_00How's it going, Mike? Oh, it's going really well, Dave. It's nice to be here. Nice to see you and Yanni. Um, the reason for this podcast, again, I like that world domination. Maybe we should change the name. But uh we realize that there's a new normal. 2020 was brutal. Uh, and it was also life-altering, groundbreaking, transformative, and we're just starting to see some of the radical things and changes that are taking place. And we uh are biased. We believe that libraries and librarians have a major role to play as society comes to grip with this new normal. There are new roles, responsibilities, and even beyond that, there are opportunities to really fulfill our core roles in information and resources and books and services and access and all kinds of things. In Libraries Lead of the New Normal, we'll cover such topics as the lockdown and isolation, social justice, political unrest, mis and disinformation, education, which is very big for all of us, digital and virtual work, uh, recreation, play, employment, and all those kinds of things. But again, our focus in all these things is libraries, the nature and role and scope of libraries, librarians, library services. Uh the podcast runs about 40 minutes. There'll be this intro, which we're just about done with, and then a what's up, a was up section, and then a main topic for the uh podcast, and then with something we call the awesome library thinky section, and then we'll close it up. So let's get right to it. David, what is your what's up for today?
SPEAKER_01Well, I've been up to some uh having some fun conversations with some good groups. I gave uh two keynotes because, you know, that's what I do. Uh one to the Brazilian Library Association and one to computers and library, and they shared a theme. What's interesting is both of the the conferences shared a theme of sort of making the world better. And um the the theme was talking about the idea that librarians can in fact be part of making the world better, but it's not just by sitting in their buildings. Uh, I think that's uh leading into our topic today. But one of the things that that I think we can be talking about is you know, there's a lot that needs to be fixed in society from you know racism and societal inequity and all of these kinds of things, but there's something that's central to the work of librarians, and that is this knowledge infrastructure, how people, the, the the people, the sources, the technology, and the policies that are in place for people to learn about their world and the world view. And that's something central to the work of librarians. And so we need to get out there and really be proactive in changing things like copyright and making it happen. And I've been was really pleased that I think there's a real hunger on the part of librarians to take up the mantle plate, man, uh take up the mantle and really be part of making this happen. We had uh a couple of uh grad students talking about their vision of the future, and I swear to God, Mike, we had we had six students talk about their vision for the future. The first one said libraries are going to replace um all institutions of education, and the last one, it's sort of built from there. The last one said libraries are essential to saving society as we know it. So I think I think we're doing a good job with the next generation.
SPEAKER_00What's up with you? Well, that's that's great. Uh I really I'm looking forward to talking more about that. And uh that's that's that's just the kind of radical change I like. Well, what's up with me is I became aware of some new thing. And you know, you're the artist uh in in the group here, and whatever, but I found out about these things called NFTs, uh non-fungible tokens, which are digital proofs of purchase for just about everything. And, you know, uh NFTs, non-fungible tokens, are connected to the the blockchain that maybe some people have heard about, which is a new way of record keeping. Uh a blockchain is like a digital ledger, and it could change the uh the way they do accounting and all kinds of other things. A record or an item, which could be a receipt or a contract or proof of ownership, is a block. And what it is stored and recorded and timestamped and encrypted, it can't be changed retroactively. So it's a really secure way of keeping records. Now, a lot of times we hear about blockchain in relation to this cryptocurrency thing like Bitcoin and Ether or Erethium, but um because that's been the biggest use so far, but that's not what it's all about, and we can talk about that another time. Non-fungible tokens are proofs of ownership, and ownership has value. You know, being able to prove that you own something like a baseball card or artwork or music or a book has value. Now, the most outrageous example of this, you're probably aware of it, Dave, is this artist called Beeple who just sold his ownership of his digital artwork at auction at Christie's for $69 million. Now, he was paid for that in Ether, in Erithrium, but he's already cashed that back into dollars. So it's real money. And he did this as a non-fungible token. That is, he has sold the proof of ownership of this digital artwork as an NFT. And uh people say, well, you know, what's a bit, you know, uh who cares who owns it? We can reproduce it and see it and whatever. The same thing's true of the Mona Lisa. We have pictures of the Mona Lisa and uh all over the world, and we all know what it looks like, and we can share it, and I could probably get one off the web right now and do it. But it's owned by the Louvre in Paris. So um this is an interesting concept, and it's potentially very important for libraries and librarians because proof of ownership in the future could translate into copyright and licensing and the use of all kinds of media, books and recordings, art, etc. So I think we should devote uh one of the podcasts to this whole area of NFTs, non-fungible tokens, blockchain, and the like. So that my what's up is an awareness of this wow, another world-changing event.
SPEAKER_01You know about these things, Dave? I do. Uh, one of the things that I find really interesting, it's related to that, and it's around ownership, but ownership of our own data. Um, and the idea, there's a concept called self-sovereignty. Self-sovereign sovereignty. I can't say that, but that's what it means. Sovereignty. Yeah, see? Good luck. Um, but the idea is that you own your data and you sort of let it out as you want. And the example is that right now, the tools we use to create our data or create data while we're using the tools, Facebook, Google, et cetera, they own the data and they sort of tell us what we can do with it. Imagine if your money was like that. Imagine if you, you know, you went to the grocery store and you had to have an account with the grocery store so you could use the grocery store money to buy groceries and then a different to buy you, you know, pay for your electricity, et cetera. That's crazy, right? We have money we hit we put into our account and then we release that money as we need for service. The idea is with using blockchain and these kinds of tokens, we can do the same with data. If Google wants to know our location, they have to get our permission and we have a record of doing it, and we can then turn it into microtransactions. And so I absolutely think that is a fabulous topic coming up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great, great. Yeah, it's interesting. My son Brian's been really involved with this. I asked him about it, and he said, Dad, I just spent nine months learning this. What do you expect me to tell it to you in five minutes? So uh it was it was interesting. All right. Well, we're gonna take a short break, folks, and come back with our main topic, which is uh what Dave said, it's gonna be activism today, and it's uh impact and librarianship. So, Yanni, we're gonna take a short break. Take us out with the music.
SPEAKER_01Well, what we talked about a little bit in the what's up section is that there's a lot of sense that libraries somehow magically make the world a better place, and the answer is they don't. First of all, librarians and people do that. The libraries exert gravity and shield you from the rain. Uh, but that doesn't necessarily just happen within the building. And so a lot of my the theme is to talk about the fact that librarians, if we want to make the world a better place, if we think that reading is a way of improving the world, if we think that literacy, if we're into the empowerment business, we have a vision of what is better and we have an obligation to go out and make it happen. That idea that, you know, we can talk all we want about education, but if we're not happy with the state of education and we're not out there advocating for and on behalf and with our communities, then we're not really doing our job.
SPEAKER_00That so, so we get into this. Aren't libraries supposed to be, you know, the the uh fair and equal uh and um provider and not an arbiter or uh you know to take a stand uh uh on certain things?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but you know what's interesting is the history, at least of public libraries, as was one of activism. Public libraries in the United States grew out of the self of the suffrage movement, it grew out of empowerment of women and the creation of childhood by create by passing and creating child labor laws, and then the idea of well, we had public education, and if we have public education for the youth, what do we have for the rest of society? And so we've always been a result of advocacy, even the literacy thing that we sort of hold as you know apple pie and basic to what we do. There was a time in this country, not too long ago, at the turn from the 1800s to the 1900s, when newspapers were writing articles about the pornography of the day being the literary novel. And how dare libraries carry this literary novel stuff that leads men, you know, leads boys to think beyond the farmhouse and leads women to think beyond their station. And it was advocacy that said, no, no, no, fiction's important, literacy is important, reading's important, this is something we're gonna do. And so while today we look at things as neutral and objective, and of course we do this, they've always started as someone saying this is the way it should be and having to fight for it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so are there any boundaries um in relation to this? Is it should libraries be focusing on just, you know, library stuff and advocacy for library stuff, like say literacy? I I get that. You know, I can advocate for literacy, I can advocate for reading, I could advocate for um lack of censorship, right? Uh for intellectual freedom and things like that. Is is that the limit, or do libraries go beyond that to things like uh social justice, which is something we've talked about before. Um and and you're you're closer to the ground than I am right now. Are libraries talking about this and thinking about this?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Um the there there is a wrestle. I think increasingly there's a realization that libraries aren't neutral or objective, but that just is leading to, I think, a very necessary self-observation and reflection within the field, going, all right, what are those boundaries? For me, the boundaries come from our mission to improve society through knowledge creation in our communities. So we're knowledge people. We're not out there with armed insurrection, and we're not necessarily out there doing everything, but we're helping people know more and make better decisions. And it comes from our values, our values, which have been, you know, forged over, well, technically four millennia, more or less within the past hundred years, on things like privacy, on things like censorship, on things like um safe places to explore dangerous ideas. I think those are the things we advocate for. And so there's a transparency to it. I mean, there's always going to be fuzzy edges, but one of my students I mentioned before, uh, they talked at this conference and they said it's all about the users and we should do whatever the users want. And and I have a that's where I to me that's the line too far. Um it's like you know, the customer's always right. Well, if they walk into your store and they pick up a $3,000, you know, computer and walk out the door with it and say they don't need to pay, that's not right. And so that idea that that really the communities they serve are coming up with what those limits are, but the libraries are active voices that speak with their principles to try and guide that community in that definition and that decision. We're not just waiting to hear what the decision is and running after it, we're actively part of the conversation. And I I know this to me, this hits to something dear to your heart, which is looking at things like the role of academic libraries in access to higher education.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I absolutely. Before I get there though, I want to come back to the thing about the the user and the customer and that kind of stuff. Because I think that's a that's a really important thing. You know, um, because I've argued with people, and I came from a school, I was dean of a school where the user perspective and you know, user-based design and all that stuff, I mean that's that's where it's all at, and it's all about the user. And I used to talk about the tyranny of the user, because the user isn't always right. And, you know, um, even as a reference librarian, um, I've heard the same question maybe a hundred times, right? And I may even know better than the user what the user is actually asking. Because I've heard that and I know their context. And I'm I'm not being and I'm not trying to uh uh be uh authoritative with them or something like that. But I know context and I understand that. So when they ask for something, let's say, related to uh um uh uh an automobile safety kind of thing, then I may know the the broader context of that. Also, if you remember Steve Jobs, who is really I think the greatest uh inventor of the 20th century, um created things that people didn't even know they needed. I mean, you know, the PC itself could be said to be that, but also the iPhone and and things like that. Steve's the one that puts things together. And if he had left it to users, we would have had a well, I'm not gonna diss another company, but you know, um that we so for libraries to to advocate for access, openness, for uh making some difficult decisions for not to be necessarily neutral um because um they really can't be, makes makes sense to me. And I I get that. But could you give us some examples of that that you've come across, and then we'll we can get to the the education aspect a bit, uh higher education, whether it's uh school, public, academic, uh corporate library, nonprofit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the two quick examples. Let me pick a school one and an academic one. Uh the school library example is um classically we we we try and prepare teacher librarians, school librarians, um, we try and prepare them to be partners in instruction with teachers. And the idea is that a teacher in an English class, a history class says, Oh, I'm working on a project, let's bring the library into it. And all too often that turns into they're studying the Civil War, go down to the library and copy something out of the encyclopedia on Abraham Lincoln. And a good school librarian's job is not to say, Well, here's the encyclopedia. A good librarian is to work and build the trust of the teacher to go, you know what we could do that would be even better? And they really do begin to up the game of the people they're working with because you know they're understanding the information literacy components, they're understanding the resources of it, they've seen it from multiple teachers in multiple settings, and that experience, they really become a partner. Um, and so it's not just that the teacher says, look, this is the assignment, go for it. By building up a relationship, they they should up the game of what that is. In an academic library setting, upping the game.
SPEAKER_00I I I I really like that before you get just to agree with you completely, just because the teacher comes and says, I want the kids to do X, the librarian has to process that and say, Well, let's wait a second. From an information perspective, from a knowledge perspective, from a contextual perspective, I think we really should be doing Y. And then in a gentle, nice way to guide that teacher to a better place. I love that example. Great example.
SPEAKER_01The second one is a higher education, sort of on a broader scale, and that is, you know, and this is where I get to play the dumb professor. I'm thrilled if I write an article and it gets published in a really high-class journal, and that's gonna help me get tenure, and that's gonna help me get reputation. On the other hand, what I'm doing is signing away my copyright to a publisher who's gonna turn around and sell it back to my university. This model of the reputation economy is bankrupting not just academic libraries, but academies in doing it. And what we've seen recently is both the University of California system has walked away from what they call the big deals, which is really big, massive deals with one publisher to provide these kinds of databases back. Uh, and we've seen MIT libraries push the idea of open access. Libraries, and I'll just Chris Borges is probably tired of me fanboy girling, fanboying her, which is the idea of really creating intelligent ways of doing open access. So they just came up with an agreement with Public Library of Science. If an MIT academic wants to publish in that, he can do it. If there are fees or fine, you know, fees, open access, the library will pay it because the library is saying we are perfectly willing to use our budget to make knowledge more accessible around the world, than to constantly make sure that our professors in our settings are the only ones that are being well served. So that's something where, you know, as a professor writing an article, I don't see direct benefit today, but there's absolutely a huge benefit and societal benefit and institutional benefit moving forward. So those are examples where you know their advocacy, they're pushing uh perspective, um, they're clearly have goals in mind, but it's very much in their lane to do it.
SPEAKER_00So the first example was, you know, uh right on the on the frontline, the everyday level of how a library or a librarian can uh take this advocacy role and the uh and expand upon, say, just traditional services. And the second one is really a little more of a long-term commitment to changing the infrastructure of the of the systems that we use and things, and not just accepting the way things are. And yeah, this whole scholarly publication thing, uh I mean, we've been talking about it for decades now. Uh maybe it's time. And you know, maybe I'll come back to the NFTs. Maybe NFTs and uh blockchain may be a uh a way to do that, because maybe that's how we wind up storing refereed articles that have value, um, and rather than having to combine them in things called journals. I mean, maybe we'll get there.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Because what we're what we're really talking about is one of the values that I think academic libraries, I would argue that public libraries, because we talk about the university of the people, um, school libraries certainly, the idea is not just to directly benefit their community alone, but there's a societal obligation that they have to counterbalance with, right? The resources they have might be great, but they still look at how they can leverage that for making society a better thing.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So let's switch over to the the education role. We talk about advocacy and not being neutral and everything else and just supporting, but doing something even more. You know, the library has always been a locus of learning. And it's written even into the public library uh goals and missions and values and all that, right, Dave? That that there's an education, uh education is a major part of it. You know, one of my you can't see it here, but on my top shelf, I have a full collection of Louis Lemour Western books. I've I'm a Western. I love reading Westerns and I collect Louis Lemour books. But if you look at Louis Lemoire's history and you look at his autobiography, Louis Lemour is self-educated in libraries. He went to libraries uh and spent you know years uh learning. And that's how he was a tremendous advocate for libraries and recognized it. And a lot of people, you find that with others. But but the formal role of libraries in education um and then advocating for education, I am really frankly disgusted with my profession, which is university education. Um, right now, because of the pandemic, we have had and the doing away of the SATs and ACTs as requirements for admission has led to an explosion of applications to the more elite, supposedly, universities and colleges. And they gleefully, you know, like Simon Legree, take great pleasure in reporting out that ha ha, where we used to admit 40% of applicants, we now only admit 20% or 10%. You know, UCLA, a public university which used to admit 60% of applicants, is now below 10% of admissions. And they they put that forth. You see how valuable and important and good and wonderful we are. And to me, it makes me sick to my stomach to say that wait a second, there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of young people that that deserve and want an education at UCLA. So instead of turning around and saying, yeah, isn't it great that we turn away more, UCLA should be doing everything it possibly could do to educate more of those and to create more opportunities for those students? And so this upside down, and I'll just say one last thing and then I'll I'll turn it to you, uh, because I know we we have to be conscious of the time. But the other thing that university has done is they've accumulated these endowments of billions of dollars and whatever. Is it a time that we spent some of those billions to lower tuition, to subsidize, to add more capacity to do all these things instead of just hoarding this? Because sometime in the future we're gonna need that money, you know, to build a new building and whatever. And with the new normal, we may not need that building. So I'm thanks for the opportunity to get that off my chest.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, it really does, you know, how do we put some reality to the concept of the people's university, right? It's it's it's that idea that that, you know, as a beneficiary of the system that we're railing against, and and I don't disagree. I I worry about the economics of it. Well, I worry about my paycheck. I worry about the economics of it because, right, we we saw we've seen attempts like MOOCs, we've seen attempts like edX and Coursera to try and democratize information. They have taken the probably least progressive form of education being the lecture. Not that I'm against lectures, but they don't serve everything. And they open it up to the world and they wonder, you know, all right, we let 10,000 people in the course, does that make people better? And, you know, there's something for said for sometimes 25 people in a class. And then you cut into one of my favorite, favorite pieces of macroeconomic theory. And I have like one of those, so it is my only theory of macro. Um, and that's Baumau's cost disease. And he always talked about the idea that if you think about, you know, uh uh Beethoven symphony, the year Beethoven wrote that, it took an orchestra to play it. Now, X number of hundred years later, it takes an orchestra to play it. And they haven't been able to play it faster, because that's not the point. They haven't been able to play it with fewer people, that's not the point, but they cost more to be, you know, to pay the bass guy and to pay the conductor and to rent the space. And, you know, how do we find the break? And I think to me, one of the ways, and this is of course, libraries, the solution to all things, are a really strong way of doing that because what we can talk about is imagine distributing this factor, imagining, imagine inquiry-based instruction where people are following their passions and they're getting credentialed for that. So there's some way of understanding that and being able to feel back to our blockchain. There's some way to audit that expertise and own that expertise. And I think that that really taking the edges of higher education and saying, oh, well, but there's also community colleges and there are also technical schools. And we just need to break those edges and say it is a lovely continuum from a library-based education built on passion, recognized by expertise for the autodidact, to the person who's going into medical school who you, by God, don't want to be educated solely by MOOCs. And this is once again where I think libraries look at pushing for open educational resources, putting for open access, now need to also talk about getting into the business of certification, i.e., diploma granting.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's not, and it doesn't even have to be diploma. And I think we've just I just had an aha moment, which really is the validation and credentialing and validation of learning through some kind of a token, through some kind of a blockchain token, which then what you do is you say if somebody has accumulated X number of these from wherever it is, and it's validated because those are recognized as valued tokens, then in fact they are they have a degree in so-and-so. And so the university and the role of that, and maybe the role of libraries as the aggregator of credentialing, as the aggregator of documenting knowledge. I I think there's something there. I I think we just invented a new business.
SPEAKER_01Uh well, not completely quickly before we can start getting the letters. Um badging started out as badging. They're now talking about micro-credentialing. Um, there are people trying to get at this, and I think that that once again, though, yes, libraries need to be sitting right at that table talking about making sure that it's not just universities figuring out how to give credit to Phoenix University, but it's truly an open democratic process.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And and but but also remember it's not just um universities or uh or libraries, it's also Amazon is doing this, you know, and uh Microsoft and others, they think that, again, you know, if they offer the it's it's not the offering, but the other side of this coin is figuring out the validation through demonstration of learning. And and that's really where the the tough part is, right? It's that evaluation, it's that whether it's testing or some kind of a product or or whatever. You know, my my friend Bob Boyko that you know is very involved with figuring out, you know, we don't want tokens that say, well, I took this course. We we really want as a token or somehow say that I passed this course or I I accumulated this particular amount of knowledge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think so. Just I know our time's up, so I'll if I may just end it with uh with uh one of my favorite quotes from a man I think who started large in both our lives, Jeffrey Katzer, who once talked as a professor, you don't pay me to teach, you pay me to grade. And I think that's the way we need to start thinking about this.
SPEAKER_00You don't pay me to teach, you pay me to grade, right? Well, Dave, could you just before we we do uh move on, could you just summarize I I don't know how you summarize our conversation, but but summarize this concept of the libraries as advocate, library role in advocacy and activism, and not just um, you know, the the the keeper of the world's knowledge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think this is a is a good assumption that if libraries say they're about knowledge and about learning, about literacy, then the idea that somehow that just happens in our buildings or that happens from the collections we put aside is no longer good enough. In the new normal, when we see people disconnected from our building, when we see people um stressing to access technology, when we see them in economic circumstances, libraries need to be active in finding new methods of going beyond our buildings to help people learn. And I think what we just talked about is help people document that learning in a way that they can turn into economic power, can turn into demonstrable expertise, and can turn into really authentic demonstrations of knowledge. And and so to me, this whole stream from libraries need to be active to into education, I think it's a natural connection.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I like it. Okay, well, we're gonna have to leave it at that. Um, people, if you have questions, you could uh post it onto our Facebook group, which is Libraries Lead in the New Normal. It's in Facebook. And very soon we should have a webpage and an email address. I think the email is gonna be info at librarieslead.org, but don't quote me on that yet. But uh we're gonna be uh uh promoting that too. So we're gonna take a short break and then come back with our last segment, which is our awesome library thinking. So uh let's bring up the music, take a deep breath, and get ready for the next segment. So, Dave, what's your awesome library thingy for this episode?
SPEAKER_01I think it was the first week I had mentioned something about Toronto Public Library calling up seniors and people at risk and making sure they were okay. I'm gonna pick on them again, but for a different circumstance. They have made data privacy and data knowledge a core part of their outreach to their communities. They are doing amazing stuff and not just making people aware of data use and who's using data and how they're producing it. They're offering courses in deep learning and building AI systems. They're providing practical expertise to their communities so that it's not just an abstract concept that Google and other people are doing. They can see, you know, the average Joe can come in, take courses, and see exactly what these tools are doing, how they're trained, what are potential pitfalls. And I just it's back to our previous conversation. I just love this idea that it's not enough for libraries to go, data's important, and your data should be, they're really getting to the point of saying, let's empower our users, not just with what they can read, but with what they can do with AI and deep learning. And I just I really applaud Toronto for thinking big. How about you? What do you got?
SPEAKER_00Good. I like that. Well, I got one in your backyard, the uh Charleston County Public Library. There was an article in U.S. News and World Report. The the headline just blew me away. Libraries have become hybrid healthcare hubs amid pandemic. Libraries have become hybrid healthcare hubs amid pandemic. And it's a great article that was uh uh done with the AP, but it appeared uh for me in U.S. news about the Charleston Public Library has changed the way that it does almost everything. Yeah, it changed the way that distribute books and the way uh it uses some of the physical facility, but you know, they've become mobile hotspots and computer lending, and we know about that. They've got career kits and Wi-Fi and stuff, but they've also been hosting vaccination clinics. Um, so they've partnered with the Charleston County Emergency Management and uh Feder Healthcare to host vaccination clinics at the library. Um the library set up a community garden and installed a refrigerator uh to offer free food for library patrons. They're doing telehealth, um, which is uh uh reaching out for rural and primary health care. So I was just blown away that the very kind of things that we talked about in our very first podcast, the Charleston Public Library is way ahead of me. And uh any of the ideas that I had, I I take my hat off. That if that's not an awesome library thinking, uh I really don't know what is. Just amazing. You know these folks, I'm sure, right? I do.
SPEAKER_01Angela Craig is director, she's been there not, I don't even think quite two years, but um, and before that, Nicole Davies, and they have been just on a tear. Uh Angela and the team she has, Darlene and and her associate director and their staff at the different um locations, they are uh a library system on the make. They're really understanding how to um improve communities and they're sharing that information. And I've been just we are really proud to to work with them. Um we're in conversations now to create a joint research center between the university and the public library uh to for just this kind of stuff. So, yes, we're proud.
SPEAKER_00University of South Carolina and Charleston Public. Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great, awesome. Well done.
SPEAKER_01All right, Dave, take us out. All right, so that concludes this episode. Thanks for listening. We're now our own podcast, and we appreciate those of you who have stuck with our evolution. We're starting to hit on all cylinders. So I want to thank Mike for, as always, being a good sparring partner, and I want to thank Yanni and Ace uh Chicago Events for helping us put on technically and yelling at me when I move my head too much from the microphone. Uh, and I want to thank others who have been part of making this happen and part of the conversation. Uh, so we're gonna continue to do this. Please listen to us and subscribe, whether it's on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get it. And we can always use rankings and ratings. We have a Facebook page, look us up there, and we're gonna get out a URL pretty soon. So world domination through librarianship continues as we talk about libraries leading the new normal.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Dave. World domination through libraries. Here we go. Thank you, everybody, and uh we'll see you at our next episode. Bye, Value.
