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 9: BACK TO THE FUTURE
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June 2, 2021
Dave Lankes & Mike Eisenberg
Are we going back to offices and city living or will a new normal emerge? Judging from the articles and posts, it’s not clear at all. That means it’s likely to be a combination of both depending on contexts of nature of activity (e.g., business), geography, and the economics (jobs, commerce, supply chain). With uncertainty prevailing, what should libraries be thinking about and planning for? As an added bonus, our production manager, Yoni Yemini, from ACE Chicago Events joins us to share his thoughts on how things are changing for his business.
In Wazzup, Dave talks about the challenges to libraries, communities, and library & info science education due to the continually changing Covid situation. Mike points out the information aspects of vaccination verification with examples from the EU and New York State. Dave’s Awesome Library Thingy was the Next Library Festival that was held on June 3rd, 2021, and Mike highlighted a NY Times article about museums post-covid, particularly the opportunities for new forms of programming and partnering.
References & Resources
Wazzup
Stevis-Gridneff, Matina. (June 1, 2021). "Seven European countries begin issuing a digital Covid certificate for travel." New York Times. online. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/world/europe-covid-certificate-travel.html
Otterman, Sharon (June 1, 2021). "Will the Excelsior Pass, New York’s Vaccine Passport, Catch On?" New York Times online: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/nyregion/new-york-vaccine-passport.html.
Main Topic: Back to the Future
Mahtani, Melissa (May 30, 2021). “Don't just go back to 'normal.' Post-pandemic life can be much better than that.” CNN Health. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/30/health/better-than-normal-wellness/index.html.
Tracy Moore, Tracy. (May 21, 2021) “I don’t want to go back to the office and I’m not alone.” Washington Post online. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/21/i-dont-want-go-back-office-im-not-alone/.
Dubner, Stephen J. (May 12, 2021). “The Future of New York City Is in Question. Could Andrew Yang Be the Answer?” Freakonomics podcast (Ep. 462). https://freakonomics.com/podcast/yang-mayor/
Awesome Library Thingy
‘Next’ Library Festival (June 3, 2021) http://www.nextlibrary.net/page/next-library-festival-2021
Farago, Jason (May 21, 2021). "10 Ways for Museums to Survive and Thrive in a Post-Covid World." New York Times, updated online May 24, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/arts/pandemic-museums-ideas.html.
Credits
Audio, Production, and Streaming Services:
Yoni Yemini, ACE Chicago Events
Welcome to Libraries Leading the New Normal, a podcast with myself, David Lankus, and my great friend Mike Eisenberg, coming to you to talk about libraries and how we can shape ourselves post-pandemic and think about how we can live with joy and vaccinations. Um, I want to thank uh our, besides our co-host, I certainly want to thank Ace Chicago Events for podcast production services and hosting, including recording, editing, and posting. Ace Chicago Events offers physical and virtual event productions of all kinds. Check them out at aceChicagoEvents.com. And we may be hearing more about that later. But I'm going to at this point turn it over to a long-term friend and a sometimes enemy, but we get over that at the end of these podcasts. So, Dr. Mike Eisenberg, how are you, sir?
SPEAKER_02Good, Dave. I'm doing really well. Thanks. It's nice to see you, and it's nice to be here, everybody. Uh, we're going to shorten up the intro and just say that Libraries Lead of the New Normal is about how libraries and librarians and the whole information field has a major role to play as society comes to grips with this new normal. There are new responsibilities and opportunities for libraries to fill its core roles of information and resources and services and access. And in Libraries Lead of the New Normal, we cover such topics as coping with the pandemic, social justice, political unrest, myths and disinformation, life of all kinds at home, at work, education, as well as things like uh recreation and also important aspects of human existence like emergency preparedness. Uh and the structure of the podcast has been the same now since the beginning. We do our what's up, which we'll get to in just a moment, and then we'll have a main topic, which tonight is going to be about the nature of work and is a new normal emerging, or are we just going back to the old way of doing things? And we'll talk about that. And then our awesome library thinkies. So let's get right to it. Dave Lykis, what's up with you?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, it's been working on a class. Uh, I'm teaching a class this summer, uh, and it's a class that we added to the curriculum this past academic year. So it's a core requirement for our library science students around community development and centering your library in a community. And um actually, in some ways, it's what has led to this podcast indirectly. Uh, when we first offered it in the fall of 2020, you may remember a little thing called the pandemic was happening. And so we thought that all the lovely readings and textbooks that we had figured out about how to serve their community and their physical facility was pretty much not having a good day. And so instead, this class has become much more of an investigation and development of what's happening. And so this is the third time in three semesters we're offering, and each one gets a slightly different flavor. Uh, the first one in the fall was very much of talking to library leaders and directors and thought leaders about what are we doing now that we're closed down. And in the spring, that became a so are you thinking about opening up? And I can imagine the summer we're going to begin to have the, so what's it like in a mixed environment with some vaccinations and some masks and things of that nature? So I've been spending some time um think, you know, looking at the language that I've been using and that others have been using as we just literally week by week changes as the forecast for the pandemic. And one of the things I was telling them uh in the introduction was um, you know, yes, a lot of us think it's done and it's over, and yet everything we're doing is still very much in the context of the pandemic. You know, even if we talk about returning to normal hours, we would never have said that three years ago. It's because there's COVID that there's abnormal hours. And so that's just been trying to get my head around how do you teach core skills in such a rapidly changing environment? It's been a lot of fun. How about you? What's up?
SPEAKER_02Well, before we get to me, can I just ask, is that kind of course, this is the University of South Carolina, um, is that open to general uh audiences that might want to take that? Can they register for online or is it on campus, or how are you doing it?
SPEAKER_01Well, right now it's an online program for our master's program, so a three-credit course. So anyone who would like to sign up for a three-credit course is welcome to join it. Uh, but but one of the things that um I'm gonna be designing a course somewhat like that for Texas, and I think it would be interesting to try and, as you say, open it up for other folks to come in and join as well. That would be interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, at Washington, we used to do what we called the airplane model that we'd have within the same learning structure, a course, we'd have some people that were doing it as a credit course, some people were doing it as an audit, and some people were just doing it as a certificate. And there were different structures depending a pricing structure depending upon that. So it's something to think about. Uh, and it uh it it's meeting a need. So uh in my what's up, uh I've been uh I came across recently in reading about uh vaccination certificates uh and passports, as some people call it, and the fact that the European Union is issuing a digital covert certificate for travel. That was in an article uh today in the New York Times, in fact. And this is an information issue, right? How do we validate that somebody has it? And there are the issues of uh is it is it valid? Is it a reliable source? Are people able to game the system and scam it? Uh which I don't understand why they would want to do that. Oh, I understand why they would want to do that from a uh uh being able to say they were vaccinated, but why don't they just get vaccinated? But that's that's a different question. They call it the digital green certificate, and they're using QR codes on your phones, or else you can get a paper format. I thought that was really uh neat. It's also free of charge. Uh it's supposed to be valid in all EU countries by July. So I thought that was interesting. And related to that is the uh New York State has a vaccining passport program. I think it's called the Excelsior Pass. That's Excelsior is the uh slogan motto of New York State. And they have rolled out already one million of those. Uh of course, there's controversy. Is this uh a restraint on personal freedom? Uh can businesses require people, uh customers as well as employees to have the passport? And what they're talking about is um uh whether you uh have the vaccine and can, in fact, prove that, whether or not you've had COVID, or if you've had a test within 48 hours. That's kind of the way that the Europeans are doing it. So I thought that's really interesting that this is all coming about. I personally favor this because I think it's a public health issue. I don't see it as a personal privacy issue. Uh I don't know if you have a comment on that, but that's I think an important uh information event that's right on the cutting edge. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we have a student who's graduating this semester uh from our undergraduate program at South Carolina, starting her own business around blockchain and doing blockchain work. And one of their early plans that they're working on and trying to get connected with Homeland Security is setting up vaccination passports that would use blockchain to ensure the authenticity, security of them. The other side I come at this is actually from my wife who's a travel agent. Um, and something really interesting is happening around the politics of it, not the not the technology of it. And that is that Florida, there's an executive order from the Florida governor that thou shalt not have vaccination passports, and uh is threatening to um charge every business $5,000 ahead that requires them. Well, this gets really interesting because one of the major industries that that works out of Florida is the cruise industry. And yeah, during COVID, they all moved out into the Caribbean, they're all moving back now. Um, but CDC and national guidelines say the only way they can take people on is if they can demonstrate that they've been vaccinated. And so it's gonna be a really interesting uh showdown. And I I think actually it's not gonna be a showdown. I think the the um I think the cruise industry is gonna have a nice side conversation with the with the governor to try and find a a uh face-saving way out of this one. But um, yeah, it's it's it's a real interesting topic.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it it really is. That's a perfect example. It's very relevant here in uh Washington state and Seattle as well, as we have all the cruises going up to Alaska and Canada. And while they're talking about reopening, there's the problem, little problem of a foreign country called Canada, which has very different requirements. So yeah, but of course, in liberal Seattle, we're very much in favor of the passport or validation certification. People don't like the term passport. I don't know why. It sounds pretty reasonable to me. All right, well, that's good. A lot going on. We're gonna take a very short break and then we'll come back with our main topic, which again is are we going back to offices or are we going virtual or what? So, Yanni, take us out and then back in, okay? So we are back, and we're going to our main topic. And the topic is are we going back to our offices and city living? You know, a lot of people moved out to the country and to more remote areas and telecommuted. Uh, and judging from the articles and posts that I've been reading, it's not clear at all, uh, which might mean it's a combination of things that are going to happen. But uh I, you know, I was listening to a podcast uh uh this morning that well, interview with Andrew Yang, who is uh running for mayor of New York City. And he says that it's really important to get everybody back into their offices. He wants incentives to do that, he wants kids back in school five days a week. And um yeah, I I I don't know why he's doing that because there's a big commercial real estate uh uh uh infrastructure in New York City, and without people in those buildings, there's a big tax problem and other related programs. But um I'm really not so sure. Uh haven't we learned anything from the pandemic? Are we just gonna really go back? That's why I I labeled this Back to the Future question mark. So, Dave, what do you think? Are we gonna go back to the way it was in terms of the location of work, living, schooling, entertainment too? I mean, are we gonna really go back mostly to movie theaters and stop streaming with Netflix and related type services? What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think it's great that we always uh manage to choose a small topic to cover in about 30 minutes. Um I think that the the short answer of this is it depends, which is a useless answer and yet always the correct one. Um, and and I think that what we're gonna find is hybrids. You're gonna find some places where it makes sense to go back, you're gonna find different areas of this. I think that the real question is is what you brought up at the end of Back to the Future. Have we learned nothing from this? Because I would really love to think that this is a chance for us to rethink the work-life balance um and the role that work plays in it. Um, one of the things that, you know, my wife works from home uh and she's like, well, when we move to Austin, I'm definitely finding a co-working space. I'm like, you've got the dogs. What are you worried about? Sounds he goes, no, I'm worried about being with people. I'm worried about interacting. And I think that that's gonna drive people into these kind of social situations, whether it's New York City, whether it's an office, whether it's a school, I think there's a desire to have a social connection. Um, but what I think is is what we've sort of discovered, and the reason I'm never gonna be able to afford a house in Austin, Texas, is people said, I need a social connection. That doesn't necessarily have to be in this place with this group of people based around work. It can be in a place around family, it can be a place around friends, it can be a place around, you know, multiple work and different environments. And I worry that we're going to not look at the advantages we gained in sort of new possibilities for social interactions and just say, oh, we're all going back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's not just the uh the social interaction as well. Uh I I look at some of the side benefits in terms of traffic. Uh, you're gonna go to Austin. Welcome to my world here in Seattle with uh the commutes and traffic that uh when during the pandemic, I could get downtown in 15 minutes and find a parking spot. And now we're back to a 40-minute commute just to get downtown and no parking. And what does that mean for the environment? What does that mean for the whole nature of the way we do things? And so it seems to me that maybe we we could pull back a little and not have this major push to go back to exactly the way things were, that maybe there is some kind of a blended or hybrid approach to this that might be better. I'll also give an example at the University of Washington, my old school, we have a major space problem that we've grown rapidly and we need a new building. And of course, those kinds of things have been put on hold because of the pandemic, as well as it takes a little time to raise the $150 million it would take for a new building. But really, do we need a new building, or do we need to kind of encourage people to think about well, you come in one or two or three days a week, and that we share offices. And I'm not just talking about faculty, I'm talking about staff and support services that we learned during the pandemic that we could do some of these things very well, if not even better in some ways, and that shouldn't we be thinking about that? Uh, but let me ask a uh a related question because you talked about the homework balance. Um, when people start working for home, does the work environment impinge on the home environment?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I I think absolutely. I think when you end work and when you start work, that then becomes then a matter of discipline and not a matter of traffic and scheduling and managers. You know, to me, it's it's I think the bottom line is where's the value here? And you're bringing the library side in here, because that's the other question. Is if people are returning to the city, returning to the workplace, returning to movie theaters, returning to libraries, question mark. Um, and I think that you know, we've certainly seen people want to, but the question is who has to be there to provide what value? If people simply want to get together in a building full of books and such, then we could have libraries, just librarians distributed in their work around the country as well. Um, if we think that there's direct human interaction is a value, then we're going to tell certain people, no, you need to be here. And I'm thinking that what we've seen in academia, you and I both have seen this, is I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to get back in the building at undergraduate education, get my kid back in a classroom because online isn't valuable or is as valuable, et cetera. And and I think we're jumping to that versus spending some time saying, wait a minute, there's value here. When when um on when library science education went predominantly online, but when it went initially online, there was a huge question: can we teach this stuff online? Is it just is an online degree as valuable as an in-person degree? And that took a decade, more than a decade to make that case. And and I'm going to Texas that doesn't have an online program, but they know it. In other words, they say, well, our value is different because you know, we're sitting in a state with two online programs, et cetera. But, you know, it forced, even if you don't have an online program, it forced every library science program to ask the question of should we, will we, and what's the value? But that took, like I say, a decade to do. And now we're talking about, you know, do we have the clarity of two months worth of thinking to understand what the value of distributed online work is? Um, and I and I actually here I think libraries are making a lot of assumptions about the new normal is the old normal, about librarians in a building, serving a space, building a space. But you see, Google said, what, not till next year. Um, was it Twitter? Who said basically, don't never need to come back again. We're fine with it in this mode. And so I think there's some corporate folks that are leading to it. And it has interesting labor implications because you have these national and international companies that used to pay you based on where you lived, really where you worked, um, because they were the same thing. And now they're like, all right, so I pay you a San Francisco salary, but you're living in Missouri. Is that okay? And and what we're finding is for the person working in Missouri, they're loving it. And for the people who lived in Missouri before they moved there, not so much because no one can afford a house now. Sorry, I keep going back to my problems.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, you you you put a lot out there. And I wanna I want to back up on a few of them. Uh, I'd like to start uh with uh library science education, which I think is a great example because library science education, as some of our listeners may not know, has been way ahead of the game with moving to online learning options, way more so than most other fields. Uh yes, we have the University of Phoenix is in the world, but library education, your mainstream, your top schools, like Illinois, like Syracuse, like my own school in Washington, uh yours, uh South Carolina, and others, we all have online modes. And I uh I was involved with that. So I just want to tell the story of why we moved to online. We used to have, we have a very large and very successful on-campus program, a full-time day program. It's two years, and we have plenty of applicants. But we also had an evening program that people would come in after work. The problem was in the evening program, you never satisfied anyone. Somebody wanted a class on Wednesdays, other people wanted on Thursdays, some people wanted it two days a week, some people wanted it one day a week. If you were offering one class this term, you weren't offering the right one. Plus, the commute, I keep coming back to the commute in Seattle, was horrendous. So if somebody was living on the east side, they would still have that uh 45-minute commute to get to the university, and then they had to pay $10 for parking and all those related aspects. We switched the evening program to an online program, and it just exploded. The demand was fantastic. We invested in instructional designers and in support people to help our online, so much so that, in my opinion, and I was the dean, our online program in many ways offered a better education in the face-to-face. Because in the face-to-face, students would come one day a week, two days a week, and that's about the only time they interacted with faculty, but with an online faculty, they were interacting every day. And they were also very involved with each other in peer learning and peer support. So I think from an education perspective, that you're absolutely right that we need to explore better ways to do this. And by the way, today, the University of Washington's uh Masters of Library and Information Science program, I believe we still have uh uh more students in the full-time day program, the uh the face-to-face program. But I think we have almost as many in the L Online program. So, and we have about 300, 350 students. So that's that's that's quite a nice number. I think that's That's a good model for other units on campuses. And I also think about it maybe in terms of K-12 education. And I don't want to get to focus on that. But then if we take that to the workforce and what you were talking about, you use the term, and I like the term, uh, distribute distributed online work or distributed hybrid work. And shouldn't businesses been thinking about that? And shouldn't we be improving the tools and the support services for that? Isn't that what we should we be thinking about instead of trying to get everybody back into their cars commuting into New York City?
SPEAKER_01Well, and it's a cultural shift. I mean, that's you know, in all of these situations, the idea is quote unquote, we know how to do this when we're in person, which is oftentimes a way of saying we've always done it this way in person. Right. And uh the the culture of, you know, I remember, I mean, so here once again, uh South Carolina's online education 100% online. Just to say as an example, the university has a workforce. A lot of that workforce of a university is dedicated to a physical facility and maintaining a physical facility. And so when COVID hit, they had to come up with all these policies that said, okay, these are the hurdles that I'm going to put in place to try and create a level of trust and really surveillance, to know that that person is doing their job. And, you know, the to shift from I can sit and watch you do your job, or if you're in the building, I assume you're doing the job, to this is the outcome I need, go make it happen. Right. That shift, which we read in all Harvard business reviews and all the journals, is a massive cultural shift in terms of leadership, in terms of management, in terms of organizational structure. The tools are there. I just don't know if the trust is there. Um, because yeah.
SPEAKER_02Employers, trust, you're right. Because the employers, in some cases, don't trust that the workers are going to be working their 40 hours or whatever they're supposed to be doing, rather than focusing on, wait a second, what are you supposed to be doing? What are the and what are the metrics for doing that? And should it matter exactly how that you fulfill those? Or is it really that we we move to a different, different kind of model in terms of the nature of the work? Is it again, uh you and I both talk about this in terms in relation to education, uh, but are we starting to break down the factory model of work that our society has developed throughout the 20th century? Which is you go to work, you put in your eight hours a day, you know, you take your lunchbox, you get your lunch break, uh, and you now the tech industry, of course, exploded that. And the way they did that was by providing food and all those things at the place.
SPEAKER_01So you take it in 24 hours.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. What I'd like to do, David, and um I'd like to involve Yanni, our uh production and uh uh streaming manager and guru in this, because Yanni has been directly affected by this. He and I have been talking uh about the nature and the management of his business, and that he's been moving more to a streaming and an online services for events. But but Yanni, surely we're gonna go back to having weddings and uh confirmations and bar mitzvahs and things like that back in the physical world. We're not gonna do that stuff online anymore. Uh aren't you taking a big risk in switching over to uh focusing on online or uh streaming services? What are you at A Chicago events thinking about and planning for?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so first of all, thank you so much for having me here. I really appreciate it. Um one thing that COVID did that is great, and this is what a lot of people don't understand COVID created a new service to the event industry. So, for example, if I wanted to do a stream and I told somebody, okay, um, your grandmother lives in the other side of the world and she cannot come, I could have a stream and have her see this wedding and everything, and it would be like, I don't get it. I don't get it, I'm not doing it. It's a lot of money, I don't need it. But now, because of COVID, because of people, everybody knows what Zoom is. A lot of people know what Cisco is, and there's all kinds of other streaming platforms. Everybody understands the whole value of it. Okay. So selling this service is really easy now because I don't have to explain what's the benefit. It's like, okay, um, I have family that lives in a country that COVID is still very high there, but they cannot come here. Can you provide this service? I don't even have to offer this. They come to me and they ask it for me. Um so yes, I think that this is still gonna be, I think this is actually gonna be even bigger. Even more than that. You know, think about you know, you wanna invite guests to your wedding, and you say, Okay, I don't have a budget, I have so many guests and I have so many friends. You could say, okay, I'm just gonna invite a hundred people, and the rest of them could just be online. And they save a lot of money on weddings or bar mitzvahs or birthdays or whatever. I mean, you know, my son's first birthday with it online, and it was so much fun, it was so easy and everything.
SPEAKER_02Um, so yeah, I now I want to ask though, if if you're one of the 100 versus one of the streaming guests, do your is your gift can be lower because of that, or do you have to give the same gift whether you're online or in person? That's a tough one. I'm I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Uh how uh uh what about the uh the systems? Are you saying that we do have the systems available that you can offer to clients that would provide uh a really meaningful experience, or do the systems still need to evolve more?
SPEAKER_00Well, the systems still need to evolve more, but like I have very advanced software and hardware, and I'm a capable of providing high quality of streaming that involves that includes also customer service and tech support and so on. Not everybody provides that service, but they will because of people like me that provide this kind of service, the demand will, you know, continue. And then somebody says, okay, I got this. Well, I want you to give me what a Chicago Events provides. I want you to get the same kind of level. Um as we know, you know, Zoom is still not high quality.
SPEAKER_02It's very convenient, it's very easy, but it's still not that you're you're talking about the the video um image itself and the s and the audio in Zoom. Right.
SPEAKER_00Because a lot of people when thinking people are thinking about, you know, adding video streaming to their wedding, uh they think, okay, so I'm I could cut the videographer out. And this is why I'm trying to explain to them listen, no, this is not a videographer service, this is a streaming service, but you're still gonna get that 4K, you're still gonna get that high resolution because I will provide that for you, and that's why you're gonna spend a little bit more money with my company. Um but yeah, so and and talking about videographer, that's another thing that Zoom and talking that's about Zoom second, you can record this. So you also get a recording of the Zoom wedding that you have. So yes, it's not videographer level, but you still have a very cool, you know, gift and and memory of your wedding that you could see your guests from, you know, wherever they may be on the Zoom recording that you get to save, you know, for the future. Think about you looking in in I don't know, in ten years at the Zoom people that were on your wedding. That could be kind of funny, right? The sitting one of the houses and everything. That would be, oh, I remember I used to live in that house, you know, I remember that living room. Um so it's a different experience. Yes. So to your question, I think that this is it this is gonna be necessary, it's not going away, and it's gonna be even bigger. I mean, people are gonna find more solutions for it to do all kinds of cool stuff. Um, if I could add one more thing, for example, I'm doing a video recording um this weekend, and uh there's gonna be a producer that is from South Africa. So I'm doing the recording here in Chicago, and the producer is in South Africa, but I'm not streaming. This is not a live stream, nothing. This is just a recording. But the producer for South Africa wants to see what I'm recording, wants to see everything from using Zoom. And I'm live streaming to them so they could, you know, see the whole recording and give comments whatever they need. So I see.
SPEAKER_02So that's interesting because what you're again, it's what Dave was talking about with distributed online work, right? Yeah you've got a a uh a a video producer and uh and director, whatever in South Africa doing something in Chicago, and so it doesn't really matter exactly where you are.
SPEAKER_00And I mean, let's look at this broadcast.
SPEAKER_02I mean That's true.
SPEAKER_00Nobody's in my studio and we're providing very high quality of recording.
SPEAKER_02Right. Dave, Dave's in South Carolina, and I'm in I'm in Seattle, and and that and and also we'll both be moving around uh over the next year in different different places. Dave, do you have any questions for Yanni?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Yanni, um one of the things one of the things I think is gonna be uh interesting is um something was happening with work before the pandemic, and I'm curious of your thoughts about it, which is the gig economy. Because you know, you're working, you're your own employer, you're your you know, your your small business, etc. And um, you know, I think we're talking to this point the idea of whether we move back to the city or back to the office, assume that you had an office to begin with. Um, and one of the things that I'm I'm interested in getting your feedback on was when COVID hit and when the feds began providing unemployment insurance, when they began providing PPE, or not PPE, but um the the small business loans, et cetera, they very specifically supported gig workers and small business workers and individual folks, um, whereas before they wouldn't have. And so I'm wondering, and and not asking you to disclose your finances by any means, but I'm just wondering, do you think that that's going to have an impact where you see this trend of the gig worker and and the independent um small business growing larger?
SPEAKER_00Um, first of all, unfortunately, I wasn't able to benefit from that. I wasn't making enough money and I didn't have employees. And I think one of the um things that they said, if you want to get, you know, a loan or something or get some help with your business, you have to have employees, you have to make a certain amount of money. And that kind of sucked in my case because my business is a new business and somehow I survived. Um I I don't know, it's kind of hard, like well.
SPEAKER_01Let me rephrase the question. Which is you know, we're here we are talking about going, you know, you're in Chicago. Um, and there's I'm sure lots of reasons to be in Chicago. But if you're in the streaming business and if you're able to do these kinds of things, do you then have the opportunity to move out of the urban core?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. And that's that's the goal that I want to do. So, for example, I have um friends that live in Bay Area and they have a company and they had a production company, they had a huge one with like 20 employees and everything. They had to fire everybody because they were almost out, and they transformed the whole business to online, and they're providing right now online streaming all over the world. So they got to that, they sold everything, they had like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. They were able to sell everything and take all of that money and invest that into streaming, professional streaming software and hardware, and advertisement. They did a lot of advertisement all over. Um, that's my goal. I'm not still in that level, but I am getting there. I am noticing getting noticed, you know, around America and so on. Um, so yes.
SPEAKER_02That's a real that's a really good example how a company used the the lemons of the COVID lockdown and experiences and the shutting down of all events. And so they shifted their events company to a fully online mode, and they're gonna continue with that. Do you know will they be getting back into the face-to-face business at all? They're just gonna let that go.
SPEAKER_00That they let it go. They said, and I'm going back to that.
SPEAKER_01But did they move out of San Francisco?
SPEAKER_00No, there's they're they're actually there in Berkeley. They're there. Um that's I mean, everywhere in Bay Area is high rent.
SPEAKER_02Um but but and and that that's something I uh I I want I want to talk about. Uh we only have about five minutes left and uh in in in this segment. But uh, and that is Dave has raised it a few times because he's looking for a house in Austin. Um you live in Chicago. I I know that you live in Chicago primarily because it was more affordable for you to start a family in Chicago than either in the Bay Area or Denver or someplace else. Um and Dave talked about whether it's Missouri or Arkansas, or people can live wherever they want if business moves to a more hybrid type model, so that uh I would think that rural areas would would benefit greatly, rural, suburban, from the a new normal in the nature of work and school and even um social life.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And if I would say one more little thing, if we want to improve something that will make my company be able to be anywhere, is those the internet connection because that's what we rely on.
SPEAKER_02Bandwidth.
SPEAKER_00Bandwidth, reliable bandwidth. And I think this is something that I did talk with ATT and I took with Verizon and I told them, listen, you do not have strong enough hotspots. I need a strong enough hotspot for streaming and so on. So if I think that that's gonna be the next step.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, that's supposed to be the inf infrastructure aspects. We'll we'll see whether that that comes to pass or not. Dan, do you have anything to say about oh, the the uh geography thing? And then I have one last thing I wanted to bring up, which is the role of libraries in all this. And of course, we have three minutes to talk about that, but we'll have it, we'll have another one. I'm just I'm just kidding.
SPEAKER_01And actually that was that was the thought that struck up in my head is imagine that you are a rural public library, and suddenly someone like Yanni walks in and says, So how's your broadband here? And has a totally different level of expectation. What happens when people move out of the Bay Area to go live in the and I I think what was it? I got Pittsburgh mad at me last time or Philly. Anyway, you know, they go to they go to live in, well, I'll pick here. Helena Montana. Helena, Montana, and they sit there and they say, This is what I'm used to in at the San Francisco Public Library, at the Seattle Public Library. This is what I'm used to in terms of living in that area. You know, are we gonna see uh an interesting pressure being put on on rural libraries to provide different types of services?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about. And I go back to the uh the the recent episode that um actually we haven't quite posted it yet, but we will, with the Charleston Public Library and the amazing range of services that they are offering, uh, and the kinds of uh whether it's helping people to work out their housing problems and getting service or a food bank or broadband, uh, all those kinds kinds of things that libraries can do. So it could be another golden age for libraries in supporting the new normal uh in work, in education, in recreation, um, in our society.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, I think we'll we'll leave it uh at that. We'll I'm sure we'll pick up this topic uh a number of times. Yanni, thank you very much for your input. That's again, Yanni Yamini from A Chicago Events. And Dave, we're gonna take a short break and then we're gonna come back with our awesome library thingies. So stay tuned. Take us out, Yanni. And we're back. I thought that was a really interesting conversation. Thank you to Yanni again, and thanks, Dave. And the audience, our loyal listeners, if you would like to uh send us email at infollibrarieslead.org or contact us through our Facebook page, uh, our Facebook group, that would be great. We'd love to hear from you about what you think of these things. Also, our resources are on there. So, our last segment is our required last part of the podcast. It's called the Awesome Library Thingy, our final segment. So, Dave, what is your awesome library thingy for this episode?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's going to a conference that will be over by the time you hear this podcast, but there's a reason I'm bringing it up. The other thing I've been doing this week is preparing a talk for Next Library. And actually, it's a conference, and now they're calling it the Next Library Festival. Um, and the reason is uh this is the second year they've had to go uh on virtual online, and they've decided to do a 24-hour conference, meaning they're starting from, you know, they want to get everyone in the world to participate. It's a strong international conference. It is an absolute blast of a conference as well, because it really is the innovators from around the world, not just in libraries, but um related areas. Their themes, this this go around are democracy, creativity, and playful learning in libraries, and sustainability. And they've got um all sorts of speakers, including Rolf, uh, I think formerly now of University of Washington, distinguished practitioner. Uh, but they've got all sorts of folks. Um, I'm going to be talking about um how library networks need to look like uh library communities like our libraries need to look like their communities and be more about networks and less about hierarchy, that kind of stuff. Um but um and they this group comes out of the Rhurst Public Library, which is arguably the most innovative public library in the world these days, certainly a trendsetter. They have people on their board um organizing from MIT, they have folks from libraries, they have folks from all across the spectrum. And it's just a place where the most creative and practitioners and scholars and people who are really interested in cool, neat, and workable solutions come to talk and share. And uh, I mean, it's it's like a library jam session. And so if you, I'm sure there'll be um recorded videos and things you can see from this year, but uh keep an eye out for it for next year. Uh, it is a well worth uh attending and keeping an eye on. Well, so what what creative thingy do you have, my friend?
SPEAKER_02Okay. Uh just to let people know that you can get to their website at nextlibrary oneword.net. N-E-X-T-L-I-B-R-A-R-Y dot net. And yes, I looked at the advisory board, and there are some amazing people on that. Uh, it's a it looks like a wonderful, amazing event uh and June 3rd, and I'm sure it'll all be available and recorded for people to use. So uh I'm Going to not cheat, but extend our scope just a little. And I want to talk not about libraries necessarily, but about museums. Because uh on May 21st of this year, there was an article in the New York Times about 10 ways for museums to survive and thrive in a post-COVID world. And it just knocked me out. The University of Washington, the museology program, museology, is closely affiliated with the information school. And there is no set professional degree requirement in the museum field the way there is in the library. While there are some masters of museology programs in the country, uh it's not a requirement to work in a museum. But it seems to me that the connection between museums and libraries is so strong. Again, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, which is our federal agency, encourages working together. And it just they just fits so well together. And I thought what was great about it, if you substitute what I'm about to say from museum and say library, I think it's it's very relevant. And one of the first things that was said in the article, it was a Jason Farago, F-A-R-A-G-O. I hope I pronounced his name right, terrific little article, and we'll put this on our website with the uh resources for this podcast, that a museum exists to preserve and display objects and images. Again, the collection. It reaffirms that the collection is a museum's reason for being and its potential is never exhausted. And one of the first things that's happening in post-COVID museums is they're rediscovering their own collections instead of bringing in other collections. And I thought that was an interesting aspect. They also were talking about imagining new and interlocking forms of programming that go well beyond the gallery or the museum's walls. And they say that an added bonus is that such programming is cheaper and greener. They also talk about, I think number four on the list of 10 things, was to partner beyond the art or the museum world. Certainly that's something that I believe in. And museums partnering with libraries and libraries partnering beyond the library walls is something important. They talk about community, and that community is more than just a marketing term. I also talked about how everything is digital and that museums are digitizing large parts of their collection, but everything doesn't have to be high-res, that you can do this in a graphic format, but it doesn't have to always be at the highest level of resolution. And then the last thing they talked about is education and the education role of museums and how now every museum exhibit, every museum experience can be an educational experience. Interestingly, one of the first groups of people in the museum world that got laid off were the museum educators, because whether it was a Museum of Modern Art in New York to other museums, they laid off the people closest to the public because there was no public. Every exhibit should be a Zoom classroom, a podcast lecture, a Twitter thread. So I thought that that was just a terrific article, and I thought it was a terrific connection for an awesome thingy library and museum. What do you think about that, Dave?
SPEAKER_01No, I think we need to do a session on museums because I think we should bring on Nina Simon, who may take uh strong issue with the idea that a museum's resetra a collection and objects. Um she's running something called the participatory library, and this is based on lots of years of experience running museums. And you know, you look at science museums, things of that nature where they may have artifacts, but a lot of it is the interaction that they're having and the tools that they have. Um so, so one. Uh the other one is is though, one of the that I heard something they were talking about museums as well, uh, and they were talking about some of the precarious nature that museums are in. Many people, you know, when we think of museums, we think of that big place downtown with the columns. Um, but this is off of the American Associations for State and Local History. Uh, and they say, you know, it turns out that well over 50% of library of museums, pardon me, museums in this country operate on $250,000 or less annual budgets. That if you look at small institutions, organizations with less than $50,000 budgets represent 18% of museums. You're talking about because because while we think of the big science museum, the big history museum, you're talking about, you know, the the um the gage house in in Fayetteville, New York, representing a suffragette that you could come in and you could study that information. There's the um, you know, the small forts there are the outside areas where literally I'm in Lexington, South Carolina. There's a Lexington, South Carolina library, and it is actually just a massive field with buildings built, you know, the original buildings that that were here in the 1800s when they're saying the the place. And so it's a real interesting, it'd be really interesting. And and Nina Simon is pushing really hard to make sure that libraries, or sorry, it's just instinct. Museums are participatory places that that they are trying to do all of those things. And she would be a great person to come and have a conversation with.
SPEAKER_02I agree with you completely. I went to Grant Cottage last summer, which is where Ulysses S. Grant uh passed away in upstate New York near Saratoga. And it's an amazing small museum uh and historical place. And it was so rich. They actually still you know had the bed that he he died in, but they also had the uh the medical aspects and and contraptions that they were uh he was uh being uh treated with, I think. So all right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01My son, I just really quickly, my my son and I were headed to look at the University of Alabama two years ago, and he decided the way to make this fun driving through that part of the south from Columbia, South Carolina. He found every he found the world's largest office chair we had to take a picture of. But what amazed me is in the middle of like I don't even remember the small town's name, you could stop at their historical museum and see Hitler's typewriter. And you're like, Hitler's typewriter somehow got from the bunker to Alabama uh in a small historical collection. So anyway, that's just fun.
SPEAKER_02I I'd rather go to the blues trail in Mississippi and Alabama to uh to be able to follow the great blues musicians and stuff, but uh there there's there's another roadside attraction everywhere. So well, well, thanks, Dave, and thank you to Yanni. Dave, why don't you uh take us out then?
SPEAKER_01Only to say thank you for everything. We had a great conversation. We're always interested in your ideas. What else should we be talking about? Do you want to come join us? It could be fun. You too can yell get off my yard with Mike and Dave. Uh, I want to once again thank thank Yanni of uh A Chicago Events for not only helping produce this, but now he's a guest and uh fantastic individual. So please look him up if you're interested in doing anything with streaming. And apparently you can even do it from South Africa. So that's great. Um please subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. We are we are desperate narcissists in need of validation. So please go to Apple Podcasts, go to Spotify, go to everywhere and subscribe and let us know what you think. Show us up on Facebook, send us the email, and we appreciate your time, and we will talk to you soon.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Bye Dave, bye everybody. Thank you.
