Free library. Org. To them freelibrary. Org. I am a librarian here and i am excited to introduce john palfrey who is the leading scholar on issues of emerging media and authority for internet freedom, transparency and accountability. He is the head of school at phill phill Phill Phillips academy and the board of directors at the Digital Library. His latest book, bibliotech argues for the necessity of finding and using the reservoir of online systems and the adaptive roles of libraries teaching this skill. It is said he challenges us to keep the library relevant as an information resource, archive, Community Gathering and a cornerstone of democracy for informed citizenry. Please join me in welcoming me john palfrey to the free library of philadelphia. Jennifer, thank you so much for your kind introduction and thank you andy and all of these who welcomed me to the free library of philadelphia. I could not be happier to be here to talk about this book. The amazing history philadelphia has from the library with ben franklin, a bostonian by birth and his role of shaping the libraries in this country and right here. I think we are at a historic moment when it comes to information, knowledge, and libraries. And i think this spans across education, journalism, and libraries. I think they in an interesting way connected and hinge on the same questions about whether in the digital age we can make institutions affective. I think there is a risk they may not be. Part of what was driving me to do this project and work on this book, bibliotech, was a series of conversations i have had over the years with people that surprised me on this question. And they are gone through this way five or six years ago, ken being the head of the library, the harvard law which in academic was the biggest one. I was a law professor by training. There are lots of great librarians there. It wasnt a dangerous situation but it was surprised where people were surprised why i was working in the library. I had the same conversation a whole bunch of times over and over again at a backyard bbq or Cocktail Party where someone would say what are you up to. I would say teaching at a law school but about to start running a library and they would look at me funny and say why would you do that. You are not a librarian and i would say it is true, not trained as a librarian but think they are important. They would say you are the digital guy and now we have google you dont need libraries and you will shutdown the libraries and i would say no, i think they are more important by every. But by then my friend is off in another direction and i would never be back to make the case of why libraries are more important, not less so in the age of google. I decided to write a book and it is more important than every to have libraries in the digital age. I happen to believe it. In some respect i was inspired by this picture which comes from the image evolved we have at harvard law library. I doubt anybody in the audience is going to guess but this is the private library of william junior. He was a law professor and became a Supreme Court justice. This is his private library in washington, d. C. I like the picture for a lot of reasons. It just appeals to me. I love the idea of sitting in that chair in the middle of this room and thinking about mr. Justice holmes writing his opinions and for law professors you know he wrote wonderful opinions and he wrote clangers as well. No doubt he was inspired by all of this knowledge surrounding him in the form of the books. You can imagine him standing up and grabbing a book off the shelf, reading it and sitting down and writing more opinions. And today and the principal of the high school Phillips Academy with kids between the age of 1418 and i think about what kind of a learning environment are we creating for kids like the particular environments here. What would it be like for these kids to have a place where they would be inspired the same way mr. Justice holmes would be in this particular moment. I am imaging it will not look the same. Maybe they would be inspired. As a library director, and thinking about the kids at andover, it is clear when kids go into this, they dont do a lot of this. At harvard law and the library at hoour high school the tables are full. They are not taking a lot of books off the shelve. They have computers and might have a book they were assigned but they are not there for the stack. So the question is if the point isnt to be a collection of books for these kids, how do we make just as inspiring and wonderful case when in fact much of the location is not located in this physical form. The reason to come to the library is not necessarily for the physical object and i think that is an important challenge. The other part is there is a public view that libraries are not as necessary for a variety of reasons. This is a recent quote i happen to find on the amazon page for the book i wrote and it is just somebody who happen to comment and didnt like the book for a variety reason, but one was he disgreed about the premise of the libraries and said they were on their way out and being squeez squeezed financially until they can no longer provide service. It is not uncommon to be in a town or city and see the pressure on libraries. At a local level where most of the funding comes from we know you have to make a decision between supporting the fire department, police department, schools or library. And my via is the money is show short to support the library and the payback is great it is crazy to cut libraries but we know that pressure comes every year on libraries. I was so glad to see that the Pen Foundation supported this library with 25 million. The biggest. But that is private flan stepping forward. You look at the state level and there is a lot of pressure on libraries. I gave a talk about this book in kansas city at the wonderful kansas city Public Library. The governor of missouri was making a plan to state the funding for libraries and 75 young people went up and did a sitin in the Governors Office and was thrown out by the state police which was dramatic and exciting but it was a showdown about state funding for libraries. And a junior at our high school is one of the kids who was involved in that protest. I was very excited she was acting with such civil di disobedien disobedience. And at the frivederal level president obama, who i respect very much, included cuts at the federal level. We are pressure on libraries and at the same time more need than over for their services. How do we make a positive argument for libraries in the digital age . I think that is important for our democracy. I think it all goes back in some respects to why we had Public Libraries, Free Libraries to begin with. A lot of the history dates back to the middle of the 19th century. A most important part about it in my view is if you can see just above the door are three amazing words which are free to all. I still get chills every time i see them. The idea you should have an institution when the whole point saying no matter how much you have or the education level you should have access to the knowledge that is necessary for your to be informed and engaged and delighted in the democracy. And the fact that this seemed radical in 1850 is amazing because now it seems obvious. But the movement for Public Libraries kicks off at this moment. I realize that is why i should have had the fifth picture, the free library in philadelphia. That is a few years later in history but growing from civil pride and importance. The carnegie libraries as well are part of that. There has been an incredible expansion in libraries and we are at another moment where we have to think about the next chapter of Public Libraries and libraries of all sorts. The reason i think it is crucial is increasingly the knowledge we create and cuerate in society is not to say we will not have books. That is not the argument. I think this particular technology is a great one. It is Great Holding the material in this format but when we create information it is provided in additional format but three these devices that are mobile and cloud based. Crucial to part of this story is also those who hold the knowledge in the cloud are private actors by and large. If you look at the names in any image of the cloud it is almost all private companies. There are not public spaces online in the same way we have public spaces in the analog world and physical world. I think that matters. I think it could matter because if we dont in fact keep information in public hands, knowledge in public hands and provide access on a free to all bases in the digital era i think it could make problems worse between the haves and have foughts. Nots imagine a world in which libraries only have meter access to information held online when people who have access to funds can buy whatever they want and bring it on their kindle. That is not a great outcome for libraries. It is not a crazy potential problem. A few years ago in particular, those who worked in libraries know there have been a series of tussles between publishers and libraries about trying to figure out the bases on which we will lend electronic books to individuals. Just out of curiosity, if you were to read a novel would prefer it in a printed format . Very Strong Majority of the crowd. How many people prefer an ebook . I would say it depends on how big the book is. I would say that is about a quarter of the audience. How many people are more or less agnostic and happy to be in either format . I am in the third category. At night i like this. But on the plane it is much easier to have all of the books on the kindle. It is a wonderful thing except when the battery runs out or you are taking off or landing and not allowed to use it. It is people who the growth is in the third category. People who actually often like digital books as well as physical books. People who buy a lot of digital books buy a large number of physical books. The habits are changing. At the same time, publishers are worried about what their Business Model is going to look like. Many publishers have not allowed libraries to license on the same terms as physical books as ebooks. Particularly the most valuable and sought after books. Off the bat, librarians are in a difficult position. In a digital era can they do the same things they did in an analog area. You think about the role of a librarian of bringing physical objects to a place and lend it out. That is wonderful and important. Once they bought the book under u. S. Law you could tear it up, give it to someone else, sell it at a secondhand bookstore and librarians have broad rights to do what they want. In a Digital World it is not so. Librarians go from being owners of the physical material to leasers of the material. If they stop paying the licenses to the book sellers, the to publishers, they might not have a collection. It is a very different world. And some of the contractors have been annoying. Some say you cannot read it allow if you have an ebook form. One was an early agreement between Book Publishers and libraries and in that the libraries were told you may lend it 26 times if you buy it. If you purchase it you may lend it 26 times on the premise the goes away after that. So hard to imagine. A physical object would have gone away. That rule has not held up particular as the way books are sold. But you see the problem. Librarians may be in the position not to do the free lending. That is not a great version of the future to me if, in the digital era, there is no potential for broad access we have less access for the public on a freetoall bases and we need to figure out how to head that off. The exciting part, from my perspective, is we are at a moment where we can design a Bright Future and we can imagine a different kind of a future to build from. This image shows the building of Boston Public Library and you can imagine a similar image of the building of this particular structure here. Why i like this moment is that i think we are, as we were 150 years ago, at a moment where we can figure out what we want to future of libraries to be when it is combination of the digital and analog. I think we are at a moment where we can step forward we can create something vastly better that builds upon the best of what librarians have done and public and private libraries and what is happening in silicone valley and on the web that has brought us very broad access and exciting developments in technology. I think we have to think like designers and have to build like innovators in new and exciting ways. I often think about this particular design which is the building that i worked in at harvard law school. This is the side elevation of lang dale hall. If you imagine what it was like to build a Great Library like this. You imagine process people went through. It involves bringing together architects, teachers, librarians and imagine a space for teaching, for people to come in ask do work and think about these environments. I think we are at a similar moment where we need to bring together the information architects of the digital age with the librarians and users of today along with people who have designed physical and Digital Spaces and i think this is a moment where we can make something that is really, really exciting. If you scroll back a little over a century you may any of the language in the charter for the free library of philadelphia. There was a commitment on the part of the city to build the free library for the people of use of philadelphia, general library that is free to all, same language above the Boston Public Library. This is the moment to pivot. Building an institution and a set of systems that will support the public in a similar way only in a digital era. Several years ago, a group of people came together and this happened at an institute in cambridge, massachusetts, where a group of 40 people made a commitment where they wanted to build something that will be a platform for open distributed network of online resources to draw from universities, archives, museums and educate and empower everyone. This sounds like a crazy, naive thing to say on one level but it sounds like a commitment that would support them in ways that are designed for the digital area and connect the digital and analog. You might say they sounds but what do we need to create such a thing. We need to setback and say what are the elements of the libraries in the digital age . What do we need to create that will be supportive of libraries . Not in any case of replacement of what happens in a physical space like this but something that is going to support it. I think people that serve the libraries whether it is research or public, and ultimately i think it is about training and development of humans. It is thinking about libraries in structurally a different way. One of the arguments i make in the book and think we need to pivot toward is stop thinking about libraries as individual n institutions and see them as platforms. I think this is important tech nilogical speak. I think in this moment, one thing libraries can do best is draw on other aspects of innovation in our society. I think there has been so much amazing developments whether in silicone valley or places with very large commitments to rnd in the Technology World to develop things that libraries havent done yet. I think if we take those same techniques that made the internet and web so powerful and apply them with the kinds of skills and commitment librarians have i think we can make something terrific and do it in a collaborative way. If you think about libraries not being stand alone institutions all trying to collect the same objects in a competitive way. And i know when working as a librarian at harvard there was a sense if we had the biggest stack of books we had the best library. I think that is an old way of thinking. Rather how can we collaborate to serve the communities we have. Thinking about the digital Public Library of america, we thought about building a platform that will support all libraries and be something that will bring both materials together, but also to bring people together in a way that is productive. This is, i think, the most technical my slides get for this presentation. What it is describing is an open system with lots of open codes th that technoligist can share and anybody can export that information and create different forms of it to serve particular communities. So four years after that commitment to make an Online National library, which we have, it can be found online. If you have a smart phone urics go to dp. La and access the digital Public Library of america. It has contributions from 1600 institutions and more than 10 million objects all curated by librarians. The National Archives have material, and the smithsonian and the big Public Library in new york, and the university of virginia digitalized hundreds of objects and any library or person can take those materials and download and do whatever they want with those particular materials through this website. And ultimately we are seeking to build something that will be a truly national resource. You can see from this map that the map of the country is filling up. The notion is for every state we hope to have a hub that will allow people to digitalize material and share them. A third of the country is now covered. You will notice pennsylvania is a hub in development. We are hoping that before too long this library and others in the state will have a mode for digitizing the unique resources here and sharing them on a National Level. This is an example from massachusetts lit up in the red color over there. In massachusetts, the way it works is there is a statewide system run out of the boston puplic library called the digital commonwealth. There are 351 cities and towns in that. And what we want to enable and do enable is for any institution, if you are a local society or a little school, you can say come to our Historical Society and bring the things you think are unique and scan them. Then the librarians do the critical work of adding meta data, catalog records effectively, and then that goes into the state wide system. The massachusetts digital commonwealth and with the digital Public Library of america and then in the National System so these little collections that are all around the country can be pulled up into the this National System and accessed from anywhere. You can imagine it is an exciting idea. That the Cultural Resources and Historical Resources from all around the country can be accessed in the same way. You might thing that is what the web does anyway. It turns out the way we have been digitizing materials is actually hard to access things that are held in different hands. We spent millions of dollars digitizing aspects of the harvard collect but it is hard to find them. Before too long the digital system will have a scan a bego system. And the idea is we would get win begoes and outfit them with scanners in the back and retired librarians or Library Students or volunteers driving across the country in the vans and pull up in town and say bring out your scans and people would bring out you you netwo unique paragrap books and they would get scanned and the person driving figures out the meta data. So it writes itself. I have written a letter to the head of the win bego company who hasnt replied. We might have to call it the airstream if we cannot get those to work. But you get the point. There is, i think, across the country an Amazing Store of knowledge. And there is no reason it has to be cooped up local. I think we could have an extroidinary resource that would combine great libraries like the free library of philadelphia and the National Archives and Harvard University and university of Pennsylvania Library with all of these other collections. You can imagine the new knowledge we would create if in fact we had those materials together. It would be like creating the Digital Library of alexandria people have imagined. I think it could be insight. It would not replace libraries but supplement libraries. It would be something that be be helpful for taking advantage of what is in other hands and amplify the work of other libraries. I think the idea is to improve upon the facts that have been wonderful in the analog area. One of the fears i think many of us is we transition from the analog era to the digital era and we will lose some of the ways we learned in the past. One of the areas is serendipity so you may have an image of going into the stack or column number and you would see the book you are after and see all of these other books someone put over there and other books over here and as you walk out with your arms full of book you came out with nine books but only had a call number for one. This amazing idea of getting into a space and the information is well organized and if you are a little curious you cannot help but learn these things. You might think the same way about the New York Times in the morning or the philadelphia inquire. The notion that when you read a story that is here. You didnt know you were interested in the stories laid out but clever journalist provided information in a way that serindipity informs you. That could go away. If you took the books off the shelves and didnt have facts. You might lose all of what was kind of around the book and that is one fear. Another fear people have is that maybe what would in fact be presented as the other things in the serendipity environment could be created by a private environment. If you think about where many of the recommendations come from these days it is very different than having people who are scholars in the field and knowledgeable librarians thinking about a rrraying the information for you. This is just one tiny example of that called stack view or stack lite. This is an application that has been built to work with the digital Public Library of america and meant to address the question of serindipity and saying can we create a digital browsing environment that is different but positive. So the example that is up here is of somebody coming, in this particular schuss case, the harvard collection and searching on gravitys rainbow. Think of a graduate student doing this search and one of the interesting things is there is not a lot of libraries. There is a main one and 61 branches and you have the Library Company of philadelphia and drexel and penn and lots of different libraries. Ultimately, there is actually not one stack. So we love this idea of s serendipity. But you could create the infinate stack showing all of the ing things available. There is queens, brooklyn and new york public in new york so you could show everything available. If you did it well, you could use the meta data the libraries have and relay information that is clever. The ways these books are is based on circulation data. It looks at the book is says how many times has a particular book bip cibeen circulateed been circulated. You would go into a library and wonder which version of the iliad should i read and you would find information presented this way that you would not find starring at a bunch of books in front of you. You would add a lot of intelligence making the browsing experience more poplar without what amazon or anita haidanetflg to sell to you. It will not have the musk or smell but anyways, if we were to unleash this, you have to think about solving problems people have in communities and i think this is happening in the best of libraries. Peis i think this isni happening in digital libraries and in physical libraries. I think its about creating infrastructure, additional and for sure will support whatsng happening in physical spaces and connect those two in interesting ways that align what libraries do with what communities ultimately need. Es here in philadelphia think you guys are doing this incredibly well in incredibly interesting way. The 21st Century Library initiative which i know isli resulting in a transition ofbr many spaces that are here butren also doing a deep inquiry into what are the needs of this particular community and what are the needs of philadelphia that we can meet in different ways in the Digital Space as well as transform physical space and calling upon foundations like the foundation i work for the Knight Foundation to figure out how do we transform libraries in a way going forwad that are incredibly powerful and useful. Ultimately i think part of whata we are going to find is we need not just the Digital Space and digital exciting application bue we still need amazing physical spaces. We need places that inspireamac people to bring us together, to bring us into an environment that is connected around ideas. F this particular image is from a place outside of boston called the Adams Library which was the president ial family the adams. I think think is one of the most beautiful every spaces out there that think would be a shame iff we didnt have these inspiring spaces so i just want topiring underscore the point that its about combining the best of thei physical with the best of thecah digital ultimately but i think what will bring people into these beautiful rooms is not just the architecture. In some ways this image made to think of a museum or it makes you think of then historic space what you see on the table or ree reference books. Some of the things libraries have done to draw people into ad space for instance for reference those things are going to goreer away. Aregreatest references going to be wikipedia and are going to be things that are on line well curated not to say that wikipedia is perfect but absolutely has the potential to be the best encyclopedia in the history of the world so i think for libraries to imagine ways to acquire. And build those on line spacesoi as amazing as possible but not rely on things like reference to pull people into the o spaces ai in the past. I do think to take an image froo a Library Company photo itsant also important to recognize the amazing preservation role libraries have. I made an argument mostly about access to information but i also think its crucial to remember the essential role that libraries play in our societyl that is to say preserve ouray t cultural and historicalhat rec. One of the experiences i had as a libraryon director was being n very surprised, multiple locations publishers actually came to me to ask for access toa physical books they had a cousin wanted to digitize them. G why are you coming to me . Im a library. A say we own the rights to the books t but they dont hold any versionr of the books that we published. Thissi was in multiple instances and part of it was because they had acquired companies have gone out of business of publishers have big rollouts of otherf companies. Forprofit companies have a crucial role to play in ourfo knowledge economy absolutely but they are not the longterm players who should be preserving our culture. Inwhvi fact public institutionse libraries are so ensuring an additional environment and analog environment we have institutions that are going to be here for hundreds of years like the free library of w philadelphiae and the Boston Public Library or the Big University libraries. We need those players to be in the same business to ensure that we actually have historical and cultural records over time. At the same time i think we ihould do t this not just in lol context. I have argued primarily that labor should be serving local needs and Community Needs and i think thats so but i also think we can do this in a globalk environment in way that is very powerful. Wew create great local institutions and state institutions and as we build a national Digital Library system i think we should do so in a Global Environment and recogniz that if we imagine a series of digital libraries on a nationalr scale we can also match them sae connecting to one another so the very first thing in creating tho digital Public Library in america we did the First Agreement with the system in europe that is taking on the National Libraries cropping up around europe and making sure that when we digitize material and they digitize materials we have a similar system so somebody could search across syose systems. The point is not tost make everyone of these nationalea thgital Library Systems the same but to make them similar enough and make them interoperable subeight Work Together and to demonstrate the first examine it lead created was not just a National Exhibit for the u. S. Butter looked at the progress for somebody going from the old world to the new ended to collections from places and showed how they could be interoperable. I dont think we have to build a Worldwide Library or they think that would be impossible. E we would never agree and thinkbu about how the united nationil wk and how slow that goes but iim think instead ofpo having 200 libraries the same around theord world at a National Level we can agree on certain things to make sure that somebody is ssearchig across them can find the information they need so aion Global Vision can be when its highly interoperable and interconnected but without being the same. We can have diversity in other words while also having the benefit of interconnection. Wiou this is a map of utopia. Inte my sense is up course that it would be great for us to have the utopian library of the future. Im not naive enough to think that is so but what i would urge us to do at this moment, this historic moment is actually think about what they think of the future libraries and to seek to build toward that rather than to have various forces pressing in on libraries. Ther tha my view is if we can imagine what would be an incredible democratic version of Digital Library and analog world andf build toward that as much as possible but that would be the b sound is way to go in the sound is way for democracy. As we proceed a think its crucial that be done ini th collaboration. In i think this is the key to success for libraries that we dont compete as institutions but agreed to Work Together and actually think a great deal turns on this moment tradedtogeh great deal turns on our ability to figure out how to createometg something that is a system asf opposed to a series ofand standalone institutions and if we does do some completely convinced we can create a Library System that is greater as a whole than some of its parts and im totally convinced that rather than having a system that will exacerbate the gap between the haves and the havenots we can create something thats vastly morenoto effective for democracy than system we have had in the past and i hope you will join me in helping to build it. Me thank you so much. [applause] i also hope if you have questions or disagreements ortin other things to say yous will lt us have a mic come over to you skd ask away. Just one question, someone told me in england when someone takes out a book the author always get Something Back for that and i know with the internet one of the biggest problems is that people who create the worker losing money. Its a super important question and whenever it ecosystems we create or systema we create its essential that authors get paid for their work. I think it would be a terrible system if somebody ter couldntr to make a livelihood as an author. I believe librarians and libraries can be a huge support for that so the collection budgets for libraries supported by public funds i think should continue to be joined so no version of the feature in my mind should be one which authors are not paid for their work. I think publishers should be f paid and should have a role in the system. I just think it needs to be ones where there is a public option at some point. I absolutely agree library should be compensated. Library should compensate authors and i dont think it should be on the terms of what b thera publishers are asking for but a sustainable basis. I think you could imagine aheer Digital World in which inpube otherrs words it might look geti get the lads 10 times in theity philadelphian someone elses but its length out 100 times i would be paid less than a person read a popular book that would be fine. A series of systemsd designedlr called alternative compositions and i think thats part of therk moment we are in now. It will be Business Model that could sustain libraries and allow them to lend out works ong thebe same sustain authors and publishers in a great way. Nd one zone in which i think we should change the model thoughie is i think we should go to an open access model for scholarly works in general. Go many people here may work in aoe University Setting and some universities when you publish an article particularly one page for through federal Research Dollars that are article out to be made available on the web. I feel very strongly that those materialscc particularly by pubf funds should be shared. Who would that undercut . There are some forprofit overtures that would make less money in that environment but i think its good for theuld democracy and good for scholarship. Utway im an academic librarian and my question is about copyright. I guess i have, it sounds likei an incredibly noble project and m ready to sign up. Thedealing with our open access policy there are two giant stranglehold and one is copyright in dealing with copyright. Think that put handcuffs onter. Scholarship and access to materials and the other is the consolidation of media outlets, consolidation of publishing consolidation Television Radio and all of that so how is that impacting what you are doing and what are strategies . Le its a great question. And many of the conversations about the future of libraries theres an elephant in a bremens very difficult topic. Lets take for a moment your question about the journals and open access publishing in the t consolidation of a number of publishers. One of the big concerns right cow of course is the cost of getting access to some scholarly journals which can run in theit tens of thousands of dollars a year for a subscription with a relatively small and growing Smaller Group of publishers. There some valueadded ivies publishers to be clear but in most cases the talent is out ofs the university or the community and in fact the entire process is in some cases that way. Think about this, if you are in a field in which you are writing a scholarly article indicated rant of a Public Agency oritment Research Institution where youm get it from a private foundation you do the work yourself in a wr published article. A who is it that is reviewing thae articlevi . Arti its one of your peers. Its peerreviewed by another academic. D by often its a forprofit is publishing it they say who is actually paying for licenses to the publishers . Again is the Academic Library so what is created is this very strange environment in which the talent that created is the te author in this case a professor, paid for by the university. The talented edits in peer reviews it is in fact another professor at another university. The talent who acquires it is ai librarian of the Academic Institution when making the money is the forprofit publisher. This to me is a crazy arrangement so the key in that whole particular zone is in the first instance for the academic to say no we wont publish in this way were at a minimum we will publish it this way but we will require that a version ofae this be able to be made open access. El the institute has been helpfulmn in this respect. Some universities and harvard is one of them and harvard lawence school and area schools have said we require faculty to publish this way so i would hope every university and every Research Institution would take this pledge the open access pledge. It doesnt say you cant publish further forprofit journal but t you are always agreeing to mag a version of it available for free on the web open access in theeri vin vinmack is if someone can afford tens of thousands of dollars for the journal they dont have to. Ght its completely consonant and its only about making a pledge and standing up and saying we gn are only going tog license a certain version to the publisher so thats entirely possible. Th the place where its tricky as in books which is particularly for the books that are in the modern era and the books were nobodys going to an rate to publish it open access where theres need to get compensated to make their livelihood. As a professor i didnt need any money and dont get paid money to write this journal articles. Thats a slightly different arrangement and the thing that would require a different way to address it that you point to the the topics that theres much more we could do consistent than what we do today. My question is how do you the Digital Library encourages Digital Education in general if it would be downright would create creativity and teach intellectual integrity. In if i understood the question correctly it goes to how we can teach creativity and inea celestialti vigor and so forth s this new environment and as an educator i couldnt agree with you more. Ree th part of what we need to do is to ensure that her students are encouraged to think in a very ti broad way to think in a creative and innovative way. One thing that we often imagine is that her kids are able to do this intuitively that they know how to work that iphone better than you do when they get it or they know how to use the labweb. Better than you do because theys are a kid. Fi they actually need literal support to figure out how to uss it in more sophisticated ways and actually thats one of the reasons i think human beings librarians are essential to this whole picture and thats sure whether its the digital environment or the analog environment. I had an experience during the writing of this book. I went to different libraries in seven different places and i was at the local library and i sat there and it was a day in which a bunch of students came in thee middle of the afternoon andr, ty streamline me into the scene area pay the kids were doing a project on velocity. The character said what does terminal velocityph means and he had absolutely no idea but i was thinking the library and is over there definitely knows what terminal velocity means and more berkeley that librarian could teach you how to find it withiny the library. That would be a much better answer so i think humans within the digital environment or theca physical environment is crucial to this question of being creative and innovative. I just think sometimes the role that librarian is going to shift into the digital area to do dift things several Different Things to the guides in the past. Thanks for your interesting discourse. Thank you for coming. To thank you very much. I want to inquire with there curtailing in the eradication oc wablic schools, libraries, i wanted to asntk you, did you fid any information on the future of Public School libraries would look like . What a great question. I think in the context of my studyli i talk to people who worked in School Libraries ines there are such inspiring people who work in these libraries and tho if you think about the scale of School Libraries in that states they are on the order of 100 something thousand, 125,000 libraries. Ri. More than 100,000 of those are h School Libraries of the bulk ofn the libraries are Public School libraries. One of the things you can find in the survey in the data is that schools that have great School Libraries have higher performance academically among their kids. You can make an argument that this is only a correlation and not causation is hard to provero causation but at a minimum its a strong correlation. If you are running a school whys in the world would you cut the School Library out . Its not a lot of money and often its a person who can plaf a lot of roles in the school ana can actually do a huge amount of huaching that is really important for kids. These are some of the best teachers and school. We have an Amazing Library and those librarians are some of the best teachers on our faculty. Why in the world would he cut them out of the out of the equations equation some acute supporter and theres no question the School Libraries have a major role to play going forward. On librarian. C this is being recorded for booktv. So im a High School Librarian and we are kind of at this pivotal part. Im in new jersey but i think we have asked to become the leaders in technology in our schools. We we have asked for more and more technology and we have finally gotten it and now we have been turned into computer labs fortur standardizedne testing testing t down for weeks in new jersey for the parks testing which has become so we tried to become al and they are either proctoring exams were we are not proctoring the library is shuttered because its filled with student serviceuse taking digital test that used to take a day on paper and now takes with a high school of 2200 kids takes weeks for the first half of park i dont know how we can advocata better to maintain that role int the library and there seems to be not just new jersey with standardized testing testing, te libraries morest toward, how wet kind of bind her role and keepe our foot in the door. Foo the best resource is a library and the advent of Technology Turns us into a computer lab forces are library. You raise an incrediblyom god point. Partly what is going on here is two things. Sounds like the story started out really well which was he made a good argument and you had leadership who supported you and the transformation was well underway in the same time versus Freight Train running for the story which is this commitment of standardized testing testingg over the School System and not good way to be clear. Next week coming to our school we have a woman who has writteno a book called the test and she coming to talk about this and its a great book. Its vastly better than my lookt and you should read it. It looks at this question of whh are we so committed to standardized test and it looks set the park test and the othert i go with it. Its a very critical bookes also it gets at some of the societal reasons behind it. Anyway having her come to speak might be a way to do it. Theres also something deeper that we were getting at and something i fear for all kinds of libraries which is if libraries turn into nothing more than a Community Center where only as a venue to have theif fence or something that is unrelated necessarily to traditional work i think thats actually a loss. Keeping a connection to what yo do so well as teachers and connectors but kids do ideas isd so essential. I hope during the other 50 weeke of the year or whatever it is that you are able to make thataa caset but i completely see the tension you are pointing to. I think it really goes to this notion of figuring out what the role is that as a positive version of librarianship that people can understand immediately and see theme valuef the connection to what kids do. E one particular thing if you are thinking about those tests incom specific is at least the common core itself is a whole lot around to givet skills but who . Better teaching is better teaching that the new guys . If you have to embrace the testo serve coops and one might say we are the best future feature of this. Thats more of a strategic question for tactical question then necessarily resolving a problem. We have time to evaluate sources and things likehi that t its a real challenge when the g resources get locked. You are crucial. Indeed we are. We would like to have things going elsewhere in georgia. The time. C lots of teachers and families would agree with you w and makig an important argument separately. Yes sir. Im a library in too. A friendly crowd tonight rated. I was curious about the metadata you are using. What classification system are using . I salmon must be standardized. C so there was a really fun to year period that was going across the country and say if we are going to do this how do we come up with something thats simplified. The idea is to have something that is standardized enough that allows for that accessibility of her time knowing that we are not going to know exact weight whats going to be needed. Amazingly enough the group came together around a data model and we agreed with the data model and i was a little bit surprised that it worked out okay but it has and expect over time therell be continued negotiations related to that. We have to come to common agreement around licensing so when you have materials for you accept them and thats a similar challenge around standardization of these things have these great committees to work on it and if you are interested we would love to have you be a part of that. There is one more. I lived in middletown just south of the Philadelphia International airport and im on the Library Board and we struggle with our borough. They pretty much funded us the same amount for many years am i a grateful to get it but we do a lot of fundraising to keep the library going. I fear for the kids of today because there making so many cuts in education. The arts have pretty much disappeared in Public Schools and i think our library does a pretty good job with having art programs and things like that for the children. Do you have any advice for Board Members and what kinds of arguments can we bring to the table to help us convince our Public Officials that libraries matter in the community . This is a perfect one to endb on because as i write in the first chapter the book i wrote the book not for the library bui i actuallyte wrote it for other people trying to make the casek and very specifically included for people like you who are Board Members and people who are in decisionmaking postures around making budgets whether its ls schools like mine are t managers or whoever may be who is trying to decide on a budget. Thats exactly the point of this book and i hopese it proves to g useful to you and i imagine and borrowed from a local Public Library if you dont wish to buy it. H you can use an independent bookstore to buy it. Ry. It is the cor e of my argument that these are extraordinarily important cetaceans to democracies and i think port towns shorte of money for the return you get i dont have the economic model but i actually think it would publicly he made up or they think we all know the importance of the libraries to our kids, to tour seniors and people seeking jobs to people trying to do creative and innovative things. I think in so many ways libraries and particularlyh Public Library server core function in our democracy and right now we are expecting libraries to do things they have always done better in a physical and analog way and we areings ta expectingt libraries to do coolm and innovative things. To and we are giving libraries the same amount amount that we have seven the math doesnt add up. We still have to have collections of me to have moren research and development today. H i think towns need to step upe and individual citizens doingmo people like me need to write t checks or print out the libraryl and institutions that make granted to do that. I think this is a moment whereat we need to put more resources into libraries to get over this transition and to take advantage of whats in front of us. Bless you for being on our Library Board and i wish you great luck with the borough fathers and mothers oversee that town to the free library ofmoth philadelphia thankwh you for the chance to be here. Have a great night. [applause]