Ex Libris

(din of traffic) (car horn honking) (people chattering) My foundation, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, is actually trying to raise consciousness that there are many, many more people who are not religious in America than many people realize, including politicians realize. So you'll see politicians on television in their so-called debates sucking up to the religious lobby and forgetting that the non-religious lobby is at least 20% in America, which is as large as any particular religion, and yet it gets ignored because it's not vocal enough. And so we have, my foundation, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, has a campaign called Openly Secular, which is an attempt to raise consciousness of the fact that there are lots and lots of non-religious people in America, far more than politicians realize and far more than each other realizes.

INTERVIEWER

In an interview recently, you said, quote, "I don't think I'd call myself combative. I think I'd call myself a lover of truth." And I'm wondering, what is your truth? When I appear to be combative and strident and shrill, which I'm often accused of, the reason is that I'm stating simple facts, and sometimes simple facts are disagreeable to people. For example, a few years ago-- about 20 years ago, actually-- in The New York Times, I wrote, "Anybody who claims to be a young Earth creationist is either stupid, ignorant, or insane." Now, that is a simple statement of fact. That's not a polemical statement. (laughter, applause) But you said, which I like... But it sounds-- it sounds polemical because we've all got so used to thinking that you just don't say things like that about, about religion. And I must add at that point, of course, that sensible religious people have no problem with evolution. It's just, it's just the fundamentalists, and for them, the problem is usually not actually insanity or stupidity, it's usually actually ignorance. And ignorance is no crime. We're all ignorant of all kinds of things. So there's no crime to be ignorant of evolution, but you just shouldn't be quite so loud-mouthed about it. You also said this thing, which I want to sort of go into, which is, "Science is the poetry of reality." Which is a beautiful way of putting it, and I'm wondering if you could just talk about that further. I mean, just, you write in a very poetic way. You're influenced by music. You're a lover of literature and then also, just as a science. I mean, there are so many things feeding into that idea, I guess. I suppose I would take the ideal role model for this, somebody like Carl Sagan, or his modern-day successor, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Carolyn Porco, who see, look out at the cosmos, look out at the universe, as poets. And why not? I mean, who could not be moved poetically by the sheer size and scale of the universe, the sheer number of stars? The same thing happens in biology, in my own field, when you think about the prodigious, stupefying complexity of a single living cell, let alone a body consisting of trillions of cells, when you think that we now understand where all that complexity came from. We now understand that it came from gradual process, incremental natural selection, lasting over hundreds of millions of years, culminating in creatures like us, with brains big enough to understand the whole process. And we in the 21st century are privileged to live after Darwin, after Newton, after Einstein. And therefore we are privileged to get that into our heads in a way that our ancestors couldn't. Who could not be moved poetically by that? (phone ringing) Good morning, thanks for calling Ask NYPL. How can I help? Oh, the Gutenberg Bible is temporarily unavailable for viewing. I see you've got one book on hold called Working with Bereavement. I believe that the issue is that you are very close to the limit of 50. Yes. We still do have old books showing coats of arms from Europe and things like that. So let me go through the list again. You have Is There All... Is That All There Is?, Washington, DC, Plants of Power, The Meaning of Life, The Marriage Benefit, Between Panic and Desire... Okay, it's about the geography and geology of New York City back in the earliest, before-- before the Dutch arrival, okay, in the early 17th century. So you can return your books to any branch of Manhattan, the Bronx, or Staten Island. You cannot-- you can't return your material to Brooklyn or Queens. A unicorn is actually an imaginary animal, okay? He's not, it's not a creature that ever existed. No, I don't speak Spanish. You need someone who speaks Spanish? Hold on. The first appearance I have of it is in the year 1225, okay? And it's got the opinion of one ancient monk that... I'll sort of have to translate this from Middle English, which I'm a little poor in. But he's sort of saying that man is a wolf on the outside, but inside himself, he's a unicorn. And they spell it with an E. (phone ringing) (people murmuring in distance)

MAN

What you have is a question that you want to answer. You want to basically find the place of origin for Hermann Herzog. What town, because... Where did he come from in Austria? Right, because I've connected in the Jewish genealogy group, JewishGen, with the person who does all the Jewish Herzogs in Austria. Sure, uh-huh. She just needed a town. She just needed a town, okay. So she's, she's-- because she's a Herzog, she has actually found all of the Herzogs. That's her specialty. Mmm, oh, okay-- oh. So I was, like, I just... So you just needed a little... to narrow it down to which one. What I'm going to say we should do is take a look at the 1910 census... Okay. And get that information about immigration and naturalization. What I would do next is, is do a complete document sweep and get everything you can find that might give you clues as to where, when he came in. If you can find those naturalization papers, if he's accurately remembered and described when he immigrated... Mm-hmm. You might be able to then go back to Ancestry or Ellis Island... the same lists... Right. And then browse by the ship. Check the dates of the ships coming in and see if you can find him in there. Would I have to go through a whole year's worth of ships? No, because hopefully he's remembered the correct date when he came in. This is the right year, because you know, the census, they just ask whoever answers the door. But I'm, I'm hoping in the naturalization record, he may have correctly remembered the date he came in... And the town... The day and, you know, the day and month. Okay. And I mean, there's probably... In the naturalization papers, the place of origin might be in there, as well. So it's... I can't see naturalization papers online, though, right? Ancestry has some. We have a database called Fold3. Oh, right. I'm going to put you on Fold3 next... Okay. And see if you can pull something up. (muted chattering) (echoing, indistinct chatter) (camera clicks) It was Andrew Carnegie who invented for this institution, and I think, more broadly, the idea of public-private partnership. Indeed, this institution, despite the word "public" in its title, is the quintessential public-private partnership. Literally half the funding of the New York Public Library comes from the public, particularly the city, and half comes from private sources, including people in this room. And it's private philanthropy that launched the pilots that we then assess, again, using private sources, and look, and look for other private associations to partner with. And what's been fascinating to watch is the way in which those private investments-- hi, Alberta-- those private investments have now inspired the city, as public funder, to provide the largest single increase in city funding to the public libraries in history. So, and, and one of the things that you're going to see is, now with the city back in in full strength, or close enough, that will also inspire more private philanthropy to keep that cycle going. That's one example. A second example is on the issue of internet connectivity. Three million New Yorkers are not connected at home. They are in the digital dark. We could have all the content in the world, but if you don't have connection to it, it does you no good. And this is how people are learning and engaging in the 21st century. So again, we went, we found private philanthropy. We started a 10,000-household lend of internet into people's homes, and that has in turn inspired the White House and the FCC to consider moving billions of federal dollars through the FCC to get at the digital divide problems which keep 60 to 70 million Americans in the digital dark. So, again, an example of the way in which private philanthropy can move public investment. Lastly, last example. I've already said you could have all the content in the world, but if you don't have connectivity, it does you not much good. We do not yet have all the content, all the quality content that this institution represents. We do not yet have it all available. The vast majority of the books, archives, images in this building and throughout our system, and indeed throughout all libraries, is not available online. That is the Holy Grail of the 21st century. It's what this technology wants to make possible. It means we have to digitize our collections. It means we have to make deals with publishers and authors to pay fair compensation for use of copyrighted materials. It means we need to create a platform that would enable people in New York, in the United States, or, thinking about Paul Farmer's great work, anywhere in the world to be able to get access to this content. Private philanthropy will make that possible. When we're talking about philanthropy in the 21st century, at this moment in history, inequality is the elephant in the room. I believe that education, the access to information, is the fundamental solution over time to inequality. And I think its power cannot be underestimated. (siren blaring in distance) (keys clicking) (chair squeaks) (coughing, chair scraping) (chattering) (cars whooshing by) (leaves rustling) (car alarm sounds, beeps) (engine revving) (children chattering)

WOMAN

Okay, let me see how yours turned out.

CHILD

I think mine...

WOMAN

Oh, it worked, look. Now let's add some color in there. So what are you going to write in yours?

CHILD

I hardly ever write in mine.

WOMAN

What are you supposed to write in this? This one says 70 divided by one. What do you get? 70. Good. So press "okay." (chattering) Want to read about the monkeys? Okay, let me see how yours turned out. I think mine... Oh, it worked, look. Okay, let's add some stuff in there. Eight? You stopped at 39, right? How many-- so this is 39, how many fingers are here? Five. Mm-hmm. Five? Let's see. Oh! How's it going, Ravi? You like the book? Yeah. Awesome. When you're done with that book, we've got to do an activity, okay? This is-- you know, this is every day I give you the paper with the activity, right? You mean like that? Yes, like that. Take your time, finish reading. The most famous crime-fighting dog in the country. Country. Good job. How did he fight the crime? What made the burglars pass out? The breath. Good. So you can put that they fought in the war. So you can write about that. Thank you. But I don't have enough space. You're going to have space, don't worry. And you can always just turn and write on this side, right? So just start. Write that sentence that you just told me. F-I-... No, no, F-R-I-E-N-D. D-S, not D-E-S. So you need to erase that and write that over, please. Ted got a red rock at the pet store. What do you get at the pet store? What is a pet store for? A fish. Okay, so that makes better sense, right? One, two, three, four, no? This one. Are you guessing? Yes. Should we be guessing? No. (cars rushing by)

MAN

And one of the things I really found fascinating about your book is the way that you delineate a kind of attention between princes and clerics. Ah, right. Right? And there's a kind of a, a sense that some of the... friction between political leaders who are slightly more secular or secularly oriented towards the accumulation of material power, wealth, military power, and the way that that ends up being in conflict with religious leaders in the region. These are two groups of people that, for the most part, by the middle of the 18th century, cannot stand one another. (laughing): Okay? Ruling political authorities and clerical elites are at odds with one another, and this is in part because at the end of the 17th century, there was a revolutionary movement directed by clerics that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade at that point in time. And when the... the ruling hereditary kings were able to successfully make common cause with the French slave traders in the region, and expel those clerics that wanted to end the slave trade, those kings, they visited a painful retribution upon all of the clerics that had been involved in the uprising. And they violated centuries-old taboos about not enslaving holy people. So they had, you know, people that were Koran memorizers, religious scholars, and they, they rounded these people up and they sold them off into slavery, and you've got accounts that come, you know, from French slave traders like Jean Barbot in 1681 where he says, "I think there was somebody like this on one of the ships that I filled in Gore." He said, "This black priest was aboard, was aboard my boat "for two months before he spoke a word, "so deep was his sorrow. I sold him in the American islands." (chuckles sardonically) So the... the clerics weren't used to this sort of treatment. Kings violated, you know, traditional protocols by enslaving clerics en masse, and so this leads to really heightened tension in the 18th century, but it also leads to a situation in the 18th century where the clerics are politically weak. And it's part of the reason why the slave trade becomes so extensive from the region. Right. And there's all kinds of critiques that come from the clerical class now about this, essentially that their rulers in this society who are people that call themselves Muslims, they don't identify with any other religion, but they're trading their own citizens, Muslims, for rum, and guns, and nice cloth. And that's the kind of thing that is going to lead to a really powerful and bitter critique on the part of the clerics. This is a notion which is very pervasive in a lot of the scholarship, that slavery and Islam somehow go together. Yeah. Either that there is a, there is something in the faith that licenses it, that with the spread of Islam goes the spread of slavery. There's your local story, but I also get the sense that you're telling a much bigger story about how we think about Islam, how we think about slavery, and what their relationship is to each other. So, the short answer is that we were told a lie by late 19th- and early 20th-century orientalists who suggested that... that slavery and Islam were coterminous, and this was part of a very motivated attempt both to denigrate African societies and Muslim societies. And, and to monopolize claims on freedom and emancipatory thought within a Western post-enlightenment tradition. So that Islam and African society become coterminous with slavery and despotism, and the white people are to be given credit for everything that was ever liberatory or emancipatory in human thought. And so the way in which we approached the question of the relationship between slavery and Islam was not historical. It was polemical, and people refer to particular canonical text, not the Koran itself, almost never the Koran itself, but to later legal text to paint a portrait of an Islamic law that was accepting of slavery. Whereas once you start to scratch the surface of the actual legal opinions, you realize that nobody agreed about anything, and there were people that never accepted the idea that any enslavement could happen beyond the time of the original wars that the prophet himself directed. And that he himself had freed any person that he had ever owned during his life before he died, and that there was a very powerful thread of antislavery thought within Islam that was being systematically downplayed. So what I was doing is trying to tell a historical story that gave expression to some of that intellectual ambivalence about slavery within Muslim societies and to see that people actually found resources to think against slavery within conventional Islamic thought. This revolution in the Senegal River Valley was framed by a series of conspicuous incidences of enslavement of prominent clerics that increasingly radicalized the society. Clerics traditionally in this region were people who never held political power, they were generally forbidden to bear arms and they did so anyway. They taught themselves to do it, because they said, "If these are the kings that we've got, then no more kings." They not only tried to abolish the... first the slave trade, then the institution of slavery itself, but they also abolished monarchy and introduced a kind of form of clerical republicanism, and that's where the first Atlantic revolution idea comes in, is that this is not just a revolution that is about defining the bounds of liberty in the same way that the American revolution or the Haitian revolution or the French revolution is trying to define what liberty is. Even if we end up selling out pretty hard on the whole slavery thing, in this particular country. But it's also one that, that is seeking to put an end to monarchy. This is an Atlantic revolution because some of its agents and lieutenants get exported as slaves, and they end up spreading word of this revolution in slave barracks. But it's particularly regrettable insofar as this story demonstrates that some of the genealogies of the values of liberty and emancipatory thought that we hold dear, were articulated not just by the, the ancestors of the European population in this country, but by the ancestors of the African population as well. And that they were articulated in terms that were thought through with respect to the Koran rather than the Bible. They were thought through with respect to the Atlantic experience of being the victim of the slave trade, rather than the Atlantic experience of being the progenitors of the slave trade. When groups come to power that are opposed to the Atlantic slave trade, the Europeans, while they might not be able to go in and force of the slave trade, they're perfectly capable of arming and providing logistical support and providing gunboats and soldiers to parties who are interested in continuing the trade. And that's what they do. Clarkson refers to this in his letters on the slave trade. He said the policy of Europeans in Africa is to... is to make, is to subvert the just principles of government and turn kings into wolves instead of shepherds amongst their people. And so the... if you want to just think about it in a word, the European policy in Africa is "feed the wolves, starve the shepherds." (sirens blaring) (cars rushing by) This is a really special library. This library is part of Lincoln Center. So, we share its mission of presenting artistic excellence of the highest caliber. We're also part of the New York Public Library, so we share the library's mission of being a warm, welcoming place that's committed to education and committed to nurturing everyone's individual passions and curiosity. And we like to think that we're a great marriage of those two missions, the mission of Lincoln Center and the mission of the New York Public Library. And this recital tonight really represents that well, in my opinion. We have some wonderful pieces of music, especially terrific work by the amazing composer Ned Rorem. Carolyn is an incredible pianist, a great artist. She's performed in many of the... our city's great performance halls, and she's also, I think, a wonderful embodiment of that welcoming, generous spirit that the Library tries to embody as well. (playing delicate piece on piano) (piano playing continues) (piano playing continues) (piano playing continues) (piano playing continues) (song ends) (cars rushing by) (muffled music playing in distance) (car alarm blaring in distance) (chattering) There's so many more jobs than just running into a burning building and saving somebody. Like, there's a lot more to our job than this entails. Because we also have fire inspector. That's basically you're working in a building, you're starting in the 40s, moving up to $80,000, and basically, when we come to the building, you meet us out front, and you tell us where the alarm went off, and you basically tell us the outlay of the building. It's, it's like a hidden gem job. Like, I know the three people I helped get that job, they thanked me to and from, because it's great hours, you're working in a building. You're not a security guard, you're just basically doing the fire panel, and you learn the whole outlay of the building. And EMT, EMS guys, it's great. And from EMS, EMT, I don't know if you're interested in the medical field, I know people that become nurses. I know one person became an orthopedic surgeon. So I'm not saying you're going to do that, it's how much you like medical field, but it's a great stepping stone. It's unlimited overtime, it's a pension, you're on a bus with a partner, we call it a bus, an ambulance, and every day is different. A lot of ones I talk to, they love their job. Because, every run-- I delivered a baby, which was amazing. And, you know, it blew my mind. But every day is different in the fire department, too. But I'm just saying, there's so many civil service jobs out there, I don't think people realize how many jobs we have to offer. You know, my dad made me take-- I took sanitation, cops, corrections, he made me take all eight tests, and I did three of them. I was a correctional officer before Wall Street, then I became a cop, then I became a fireman, and this is the best job. I'm not just saying it because I'm a fireman. But there's so many outlooks out there. Like, you guys got to look for it. Like, the library offers you so much to do, but come see me at my desk, and I'm going to give you a piece of paper, write it down, too, to remember it-- NYC.gov. There are hundreds of jobs on that website. We're looking to get strong women into our industry, into an industry that women aren't necessarily a big part of, but we're trying to get them to be a big part of. That's where the nontraditional part comes in. Because necessarily you won't see a lot of women on the construction site, but that's what we're trying to make it, so that more women are there, more women get the opportunity to do these things. Because we really do want women in the program, and the companies that we work with, the unions, carpentry, electric, millwrights, bricklayers, anything-- all the unions you can think of, local unions. So, it's not just one field.

WOMAN

Who wants to be your own boss? If we can't get a job, and we have a hobby, or we have something that we like, why not go to small business administration to help you get started? We'll help you with your marketing. You'll have a business counselor, you can go back and forth, as much as you want. This is-- "I want to start this, I want to do this. I want to put it in writing." Because everybody... ideas, and it's in the head, right? You've got to put it in black and white. I'm a border patrol agent stationed here in northern New York. I started my career in Arizona. Um... If your mind is sharp, your body is tough, your soul is driven, you're built for the border. The United States Border Patrol is focused 24/7 on securing our borders and safeguarding the American people from terrorism, drug smuggling, and illegal entry into our country. Agents are built to protect, it comes as second nature. Uh... We use age-old techniques and also cutting-edge technology, from, like, drones up in the sky to, you know, horse patrol units, to boat patrol units. Um... You know, we have a lot of tools to get the job done. The border patrol agents honor their heritage by protecting the American... by protecting America today. I am the associate director for the New York Public Library's TechConnect department. So what we do is we actually offer free training, free classes in technology. Over 100 different topics. I have two positions, one is a full-time instructor position. The other is a part-time lab assistant position. I pay way more than minimum wage. Why? Because I'm looking for people who have some really good technical skills.

MAN

We are here today so we can offer jobs to 17 to 35 qualified individuals. Um, you know, basically, you all know what we do. We do defend the country. I'm here for active Army and Army Reserve, 17 to 35. We are always hiring at Morris Heights Health Center, and we always have opportunities, whether it's for administration, whether it's for marketing, whether it's for healthcare, customer service, clerical, you name it, we've got it at Morris Heights. We do have a table where we're providing free screenings today. We're checking the blood pressure, we're checking the sugar, and we're also doing rapid H.I.V. testing today, completely free. Did you hear that? Free.

WOMAN

The idea of Gotcha Techs has been to help the community in ways that we are here working with the public library. So, don't think because you don't have skills currently that you can't attain those skills. Because we also work with and promote the library's program, which is the TechConnect program here at the library. It does a lot of training to help lift your skillset. (papers rustling) So we're going to pause for a minute. (indistinct chattering)

MAN

We've got people who are working right now who are not job-ready. The trend is, people are getting jobs based on who you know. So, one of the things I want to do is I want to continue to add value to people. It doesn't matter what kind of jobs you've had, what kind of experience. If you're eager to work, I can work with you. Hey, you might have the education, you might have the experience. But the question is, are you going to be a good fit to work here? They're looking at your personality. And the first five minutes of your interview will determine whether you get the job or not. Now you need to synchronize your responses with your body language. "Are you a people-person, Ms. Rodriguez?" "Yes, I'm a people person." "Mr. Torres, why should we hire you?" "You should hire me because I have... I'm very enthusiastic and I have passion." That's what we want. We want your transferrable skills to be transparent, so people can see that passion. What are your top three assets? You need to bring that out in an interview, okay? Otherwise, they won't see that. You know, an interview's like a cat-and-mouse game, right? "Tell me about yourself." "Well, I'm only going to give you limited stuff." It's a cat-and-mouse game. No, you've got to be brutally transparent. You want that job? You've got nothing to lose. Be transparent, be honest. Right? What have you got to lose? (cars rushing by) We are in a transformation of our branches from the wonderful but passive repositories and spaces to education centers. Right? That was my commitment to the board. The other commitment I made to the board is-- and we will do this to the extent that we can find the resources to do it, we will not steal resources from elsewhere in the system to do this, I'm sticking to those commitments. The... what I, the way I read that, it says, we have to maximize how much money we can get or use from the city to do the middle band, so the... not just drop-in, but not as intensive... Right. Yeah. And the most intensive band, even if that means changing our model of delivery... Right. To fit RFP and the city's agenda. Yeah. Right? Yeah. If we want to do more than that, it will be dependent on finding the private resources to do more than that. Right. Right? In a sense, we should set our educational priorities, and then let our scale decisions be guided by the resources we can find. And the... With the first priority being redirecting and locking in city resources. So maybe another way to look at this is to say, we need to be sustainable in these two places. I'm just trying to say, where is sustainability key, right? Because we can't predict where the city money is necessarily going to go every year, right? That's very unpredictable. And so is the development resources. So we're financially unpredictable. Does that make sense? So if we want to make sure you're committed to some sort of sustainability, are we saying that that is in the early literacy, and this second band, right? And is this a wonderful thing to have, but when you can't afford it, that's what you get out of it. Except to the degree we can shift to the city's programming... Right....to meet this, because the mayor is committed to additional afterschool. Right. And if it means... that means we're doing five-day-a-week instead of two-and-a-half-day-a-week, less kids, the same facilities, that's a good outcome, as far as I'm concerned. The... so... yes, in general, I think that's right. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to continue to find private funds to do more, right? Right, yeah, of course. But I think it's really important that private fundraising is a reaction to our priorities and plans, rather than that we are given money that tells us how to do programming. So I think that's the first thing we all have to agree on... Right. Because I think in the past there has been some, like, somebody wants to do something and we're like, "Okay." You know? No, no, absolutely. And we are setting those priorities... Right here....with the banding. Right, okay. Yes. I understand that, right? The... And I think we, if we can focus on what is, I mean, we have the capability to, A, find donors that are interested in the things we're doing, but also turn donors that think they want to start new programs and have ideas away from those ideas... Away. And into something that's a more sustainable, strategic program. Agreed. But one of the ways we said that was sustainable is invest in this, it will demonstrate to the city that they should invest now, and then money flips over, which is the process we're in the middle of... Right. Which also requires some, some tweaks of our policy choices, which is fine as long as we're still doing what we want to and believe the citizens need us to do. I mean, the way I think about this on a macro scale-- Iris, tell me whether this is cockamamie or not, is, since 2008-- cut, city cuts, learned massive efficiencies, you know, with thanks to Christopher and everyone in the branches. Now the money is moving towards restoration. Rather than use those resources to sort of simply go back to our previous practices, some of which we learned were more inefficient than they needed to be, to use that reinvestment for two purposes. One, additional time, that just takes staff, et cetera, of all kinds. And, two, additional educational programming. Is that... that's my general-- and to the degree that private money helps to seed that and add to that on top, that's great. Remember, this is a public-private partnership. So we use private money to try to jumpstart public money. Now, let's use public money to try to up the ante for private money. That's how this builds, right? (quiet hum) (phone text tone) (phone text tone) (phone text tone) (coughing in distance) (machine hums quietly) (clicking) (phone text tone) (clicking mouse) (whispering) (cell phone ringing) (phone text tone) (coughing in background) (keyboard clicking) (chair scraping on floor) (machine dial clicking quietly) (humming) (fire engine honking) (fire engine honking grows louder) (fire engine honking grows faint) (cart rattling)

WOMAN

So, hi everybody, thanks for coming. This is my favorite day of the whole semester, coming to the picture collection. And I'm going to hand it over to Billy, who's going to explain how this particular section of the library works, and how we will be working here, finding our inspiration. Okay, so, welcome. This collection opened in 1915 at the main library across the street, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the one with the lions. If you think about what was happening in New York City at that time, 1915, so like right at the tail end of the immigration explosion, um, and if you think of how that affects absolutely everything, from businesses to advertising, and artists having new jobs, or more jobs, so lots of artists at that time period, if you think of the environment they were working in, they had lots of things, new jobs, advertising. Instead of going across the street with very specific needs, you know, "I need a picture of this 'cause I have an ad that's... the deadline's tomorrow." And we actually have examples of the things people were asking for. We kept journals at that time to see what they were asking for, in case we had it or not. And some of this stuff was really, really specific. Like, "I need a picture of dolls being carried into France by an Italian in the 18th century." Like, you know, I don't know what the person was working on. A lot of the times things are just simple. I need a picture of a giraffe, or a picture of somebody holding an umbrella. Sometimes it's really complicated. And that library has millions of pictures. They've got lots of stuff. The problem is, the way it's organized, it's by creator's name and title. So if it's a picture of a giraffe, but taken by a particular photographer, or you know, it's a printmaking, you know, an etching or something, that's how it's organized. So if you go in looking for something based on a subject, it's hard to find. So what they slowly started doing is collecting stuff by subject heading. So when somebody came in looking for pictures of fortune tellers, or pictures of people in raincoats, or pictures of people seen from behind, there would just be a folder, and those things would be in that folder. And a hundred years later, we're still here. So yeah, so the past hundred years, every single working artist in New York City probably used this collection. In the '30s, Diego Rivera, when he was doing murals, had a little incident at Rockefeller Center, some of you might know about. And later that year, he was doing labor union hall murals at the New Workers School. He sent people to this collection. Joseph Cornell lived in Queens on Utopia Parkway. He used this collection constantly, if you've ever seen his boxes in his collages. Most of the images in those boxes were, like, sourced from the picture collection. Andy Warhol stole lots of stuff from us. I'll stop a little bit, I'll let Jay jump in, and if you have a question, just ask. This is the world's largest circulating free picture file. And, as he was mentioning, this is a place that's meant to be used by people who make things and think of ideas and are artists. You don't need to wear gloves, you don't need to make an appointment, we don't keep things in plastic bags, like baseball cards or old comic books. You're encouraged to use what is here. So, as an example of what you see around you in all these files, this is a file called "Dogs in Action." We have lots of dog files. There's dogs by breed, there's just dogs in general. This is "Dogs in Action." Look at the range of pictures there are, and the different styles. There's a person having fun with a large dog. A dog that fetched the newspaper. Digging. Leaping and wet. Somebody trying to pull a dog's jaws open, maybe to give it a pill or something like that. A pit bull chewing a ball to pieces until there isn't anything left of it. A dog jumping out of a bathtub, from an ad. A dog, again, flying through the air, all four feet off the ground. And, again, tug of war with a piece of clothing. So, besides this being a file of dogs doing stuff, you saw the different range of pictures there were. Photos, drawings, prints, all different sorts of stuff. Different moods, some looked threatening, some looked silly, some looked happy. That's how this can be useful for you, because you're into drama and the stage. And what we have here is mostly arranged by topic. As was mentioned before, we have pictures of atomic explosions, pictures of shoes, of pickles, of umbrellas, all different sorts of things. There are very few pictures that are by mood or type. What the librarians here do, what the person at the desk does, if you ask them a question, they say, "What comes to your mind when you think of this?" If you can tell the person at the desk what you're thinking of, we can tell you the places to look to composite that. It's very much about inspiration, and about how we translate that inspiration into pictures of specific things. So what you see around you, all these files, each file is one subject or one thing or one occurrence or one happening. It's basically split into two halves. This wall, famous people, A to Z by last name. Royalty in the corner. They have their own because they're exclusive and don't want to mingle with the common people. And then there's everything else, A to Z. All these things that we've described. And the things that we have here, the hundred years is important, too. Because it's not like we started a year ago and just looked for all these things and filled up the files. We have been clipping the pictures for a hundred years as these events were happening. So there's not only the interest of actually touching something that might be 70 years old, these are advertisements from that time period. So you get to see the typefaces they used, you get to see how they could reproduce color, how they portrayed women, minorities, things like that. You can see the look of different things changing through history as people's attitudes and the technology of reproduction has changed. So, it really is like looking back in time. A lot of the '50s and '60s stuff here is from the '50s and '60s. There's stuff from the 1900s. I'm going to give you time to go around and look for the pictures for your specific scenes. And if you want to share the folder, that's fine, but have your own pictures. So, you have your own inspiration, your own research. (quiet chattering in background) (rustling) (inaudible chattering) (giggling) (papers rustling) (quiet hum) (distant clanging) (coughing in background) (creaking) (chattering in background) My grandparents were all second-generation New York Jews. They were not immigrants, they were the children of immigrants. And I was very interested in the journey that they took, right? I mean, we talk a lot about the immigrant journey from Eastern Europe to the Lower East Side, right? But we don't think as much about what it was like for their children, who had the opportunity to become more American, and yet they were still very much tied to their parents and to the culture that they had grown up in on the Lower East Side. And so my first book, I mean, my dissertation and then my first book, was about the depiction of second-generation New York Jewish life in vaudeville, and in silent film, and in Broadway theater, and in music, and comic strips, and comedy. And then I realized, after I finished writing that, there was a whole aspect to it that I hadn't explored, which was, where did all of these scenes in film and theater and comedy take place? Well, they almost all took place in delis. (laughs) There was something about the deli as a location of New York Jewish life that had never really been analyzed. And then I said to myself, "Well, let me try to figure out, how many delis were there?" And where were they located? And what was their function in terms of the social and economic life of the Jews during that period? The delicatessen, and the food that was served in the delicatessen, become important not just for Jews, but for the identity of the city as a whole. I mean, we think about New York as the Big Apple. But I don't think most people, when they come to New York, start eating apples. (laughing): It's not the first thing that you want to eat when you come to New York. Right? People want to eat a pastrami sandwich. And, you know what's interesting about both of those, and I write about this in the book, that, again, they're both symbols of carnality, right? They both have a sexual undertone to them. I mean, the apple, obviously, right, from the bible. And the overstuffed, or in Yiddish, ongeshtopt, pastrami sandwich. There is a kind of very crude sexual imagery. This was the time after the First World War that Jews are moving out of the Lower East Side, they're moving to the Bronx, they're moving to Brooklyn, all the places that we said before, right? They're moving uptown to Harlem, which was a very Jewish neighborhood in the years between the wars. And they are beginning somewhat to move more into the mainstream of American society. It's still a very, very anti-Semitic culture that they're living in, right? 1920s is probably the most anti-Semitic decade in American history. You have the rise of the KKK, you have Henry Ford, you know, in the pages of the Dearborn Independent, who was constantly fulminating against Jews and saying that they're destroying-- you know, he's a follower of Adolf Hitler. I mean, really bad anti-Semitism. There's a red scare, which is often associated with the Jews, right? But Jews are finding a niche, at least in the New York economy, partly through their involvement in the entertainment business, because Jews are very, very heavily involved in entertainment, right? At a time when it's seen to be quite disreputable to be making movies and to be involved in the theater, and so on and so forth. And they also are moving very much into food-related businesses. And, of course, they're very involved in the garment industry, right? And they have a sense of popular taste and what people want and what people are-- are looking for. So, World War II-- "Send a salami to your boy in the army." "Send a salami." Why are you sending a salami? This gets back to this whole theme that I've been talking about, right, of sexuality. Why are you sending a salami? There's a reason, right? I mean, it's this sort of phallic symbol. And so, if the whole point is that you're sending a salami to give your son a dose of virility so that he can defeat the enemy and return safely to the bosom of his family, right? I mean, that's the whole point of it, right? I mean, subconsciously, right? There's a lot of subconscious symbolism that I'm trying to suggest is going on here. What's happening after World War II is Jews are moving out of the city, they're moving to the suburbs, right? And they're no longer congregating in delis to the extent that they used to, because they're not living in close proximity to one another and to the neighborhood deli anymore, right? So you have shopping centers, but how many delis do you need in a shopping center, right? Jews are much more part of, or want to be much more a part of the fabric of American society. So the food doesn't go away, but where is the food being sold now if it's not being sold in delis? Supermarkets, right? (playing ad jingle on computer) For that old-fashioned flavor That all the folks favor Try Hebrew National Meats They're a treat, to be sure, 'cause the beef is so pure In Hebrew National Meats You'll find corn beef, and roast beef, salami Pastrami, and wonderful frankfurters, too They are surely delicious And purely nutritious, those Hebrew National... (fading): Hebrew National... (footsteps approaching) (footsteps echoing)

ELVIS COSTELLO

My mother sold records while my father tried to make his way in jazz. He had a certain charm, and he could sing, and therefore he got a job with a number of dance bands. And the year after I was born, he got a job with the Joe Loss Orchestra, which was probably the most successful dance band of its day. Can we hear him singing? We can hear him singing... With that, that one moment. Do you want-- do you want to see, so those of you that watch the television may have seen him singing... Yeah, but it's all right, they can watch it again. It's so, it's so... it's so extraordinary. Well, there's a little story behind this particular little clip we're going to see. You've got to understand, the bands of the 1950s were well-suited to play the music of the day. It was Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray. When beat music and rock 'n' roll came in, they weren't so suited to it, so they had to find work for the saxophone players and the trombone players. While the singers could be quite adaptable, they were having to cover records out of the charts that were not necessarily that suitable for this lineup. And then I suppose this happened. (music emanating from computer) (singer trilling)

ROSS McMANUS

Whoa Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Whoa If I had a hammer

BACKUP SINGERS

If I had a hammer

McMANUS

I'd hammer in the morning Hammer in the morning I'd hammer in the evening Hammer in the evening All over this land All over this land I sing about danger I sing a warning here I sing about the love between my brothers and my sisters All over, all over this land Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa I've got a hammer I've got a hammer And I've got a bell I've got a bell And I've got a song to sing all over this land All over this land It's the hammer of justice It's the hammer of freedom And to talk about the love between My brothers and my sisters all over, all over this land Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah! All over this land Ooh, all over this land Ooh, all over this land... Certainly there is a... there is a slight family resemblance. (laughter) Only around the eyes, not around the feet. Er...

INTERVIEWER

I want to read something that is actually quite smart. I think Greil Marcus, beautifully in an interview, characterizes this moment of revenge and guilt. He says, "Elvis Costello was someone "who you'd better not cross. "He was someone who was, "as he said in his first interview-- "and I really do believe this is the key to his career-- "he said the only emotions he understood "were revenge and guilt. "Whether or not he's recording with the Brodsky Quartet, "as he did on The Juliet Letters, "or whether he's simply standing up "and singing 'Tramp the Dirt Down,' "which is a song about "how he wants to dance on Thatcher's grave, "I think he has always looked for the most effective way to make trouble." (laughter) Do you think that's true? (chuckles, clears throat) (laughter) (chuckling) Which part of it? (laughter) Any part of it. Yeah, I think he gives me way too much credit. Um, of course, it's... Professor Marcus, you know, it's his job to create a thesis like that. That's what he does. He writes very, very long and intricate books explaining the connections between various political and cultural movements, and the vividness of that, to him, I won't deny, except that he's covering a period of about nearly 30 years, 25 years. And there was any number of people in my, to myself... I know it's very convenient to put these labels like punk or new wave or angry or, you know, political. But each song has a different occasion for me, and there are different means, and there are different motives. And there are, I hope, different results if you listen to them. And on different days, you can sing them with different inflections. I have sung words that are heard in "Tramp the Dirt Down." I sang it on the night the miner strike collapsed in, in, in sketch form, and at that time, I would agree it was probably pretty aggressive. And then the tune that I ended up using alludes to "Isn't She Lovely." It alludes to "Isn't She Lovely," Stevie Wonder's melody. That was a joke. But there's a joke carrying a song with all these brutal and disappointed images of what that particular time let loose in people. The desire to step on your fellow countryman to get ahead. And I still feel that way. So I get... I sang the song up until a few years ago, and people said, "You can't sing it now, she's dead." I think, we especially have to sing it now that she's dead. Now is... (laughter) Not because, not because, no, no, she's a human being. She actually died, you know, in dementia, which I literally wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. But what she let loose in the country, I cannot forgive. So that's my opinion. And in a democracy, I get to say what I feel, and I get to sing it as well, just as politicians get to say it over and over again and get paid to do so. (brakes squealing, chattering) (chattering) (horns honking) (horn honks) (man's voice echoing) (distant chattering)

MAN

If we want as a society to take advantage of all of these great technological opportunities, we have an obligation to, um, help those folks who are being put in a worse position by modern technological change. I think the city understands that, and they're doing a plethora of activities. It isn't unified and it isn't working towards a coherent goal. Other cities have, um, created... so this is the indicators from Seattle, um, created sort of positive visions of what, uh... what an inclusive city could look like. If you read those documents, it becomes very clear that the library is actually maybe the most crucial institution, because we're a community hub for people who don't have home access. We're a place where people get exposure who don't otherwise understand it. We're a place where people can learn skills, where kids can do homework after schools. I think there's an opportunity to bring together the sort of full scope of people involved in making sure the wires are in the ground, there's affordable internet, there's community hubs, there's digital skills, to develop a series of indicators on and goals for what an inclusive New York City would be, and that we could... that could be helmed by the mayor's office, but that we could provide the convening space and help them unite a bunch of their activities. That would rationalize a bunch of the projects they're doing, it would give us a way of continuing to shine the light on those who are being left behind, and, um, and also, you know, highlight the central role the library's playing in this space. Uh, again, it's a thing that other cities have done and that New York is actually just kind of behind on. And actually people come to us all the time, so people talk about us as an anchor institution in the community for digital inclusion, not just digital access, but access being, like, the lowest common denominator. It's actually what do people do with it. Not everybody goes to a WeWork, but they could go to their neighborhood digital incubation center. They could go... and, you know, people talk about it, not only, certainly for the people who don't have computer access, but also for everybody. The fact of the matter is that, you know, technology is moving at a pace that we're all going to have to keep up with, and it's about how we think about it. And so exposure to all those kinds of tools but also to a community of experts. So it doesn't always have to be us. It could be bringing in a lot of others. And so the conversations I've had, many, many conversations that Luke clearly has had, sort of indicate that this is a great opportunity for us. What if we convened everybody in this space at a giant conference at SASBY to articulate what along all, you know, what do we want in terms of people having fiber to their buildings, in terms of community spaces where they can go online, in terms of digital skills. We could, you could then commission CUFF or somebody could commission CUFF to do a research, a basically baseline data on where we are as a city that would highlight the gaping holes and where New York is behind the times. We could then, six months later, convene another big meeting here at the, um, at SASBY to identify low-hanging fruit and develop strategies of which we will certainly be key players, because of our, um, of our assets. The, that might give the mayor something to... a way of talking about his, all of his projects. It would certainly develop us as a central player. There's like three different pieces of narrative that we use that this stitches together. One is the most arresting figure that Tony uses is, you know, one in three New Yorkers don't have access to broadband at home. Like, that gets any audience's attention. The second historic one that we always love is, is the Carnegie point, is that Carnegie sought to create a library within walking distance of every New Yorker. So this is a way to kind of embrace that heritage and say... and I love the way, just from a two-second look at what Seattle did, is to say, "Okay, neighborhood density, how many public access spots are there?" It's a way to kind of renew the Carnegie idea in a digital fashion. And I think the challenge would be how do we, we want to position ourselves as helpful advocates yet... for the city, um, you know, but a little distance from it. This isn't a... it would be a partnership, but... and it's not, this wouldn't be the first time the city wanted to plant a million trees, and they did a tree census before that. And now, you know, last week they planted the millionth tree. For the library, with CUFF or whatnot, I think it's a super-brilliant idea to say, "Here's what the digital... "is one in three a real accurate number? "How does that go up and down every year? Here is what it looks like neighborhood, region by region." You know, so, I do think this is the logical next step and our bona fides are there based on everything, but also on the 10,000 lends that we will have completed.

WOMAN

I just want us to make sure that we don't lose sight of what digital inclusion is, that it isn't just about broadband. And I don't mean to make that something minor. It's not, it's huge. But that is honestly simply just not enough... Mm-hmm....and I don't want this to... a lot of people are doing the broadband wagon, sorry. So it's what's, what more, like what kind of society... so I just want us to be...

MAN

There's the quantitative story and there's a qualitative story. Well, there's a skill, there's a "How do you function in society?" I just want us to be aware of that, yeah. Okay, we're coming to that. And then it's changing, right, so the free computer you get somebody in 2015 isn't going to be relevant in 2020. The bandwidth we secure for them now will be outdated as the internet changes. And the skills that you learn today won't, um, uh, be sufficient in a couple of years, which is why the role of a library will, if we want to be in the space, will be continually important, because there will be a different set of people continually left behind. So it's not that broadband isn't crucial or this wasn't a good attempt. It's just that it's a... if we can widen the focus and set the end goal on engaged internet users, we'll see there's a lot of different ways that we can make a difference and are already making a difference as a system.

WOMAN

Look, this project succeeded because it got us to this point. It was awesome, right?

MAN 2

Agreed, agreed.

WOMAN

Yes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Books at Noon. Today I'm pleased to introduce Yusef Komunyakaa. (applause) I wanted to ask you if you see yourself as a political poet?

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

Do I see myself as a political poet?

Um... WOMAN

I mean you use, I mean, there have been, you know, you used your experience in Vietnam to talk about, you know, and you've used issues of race in poetry, so I'm wondering if you, as far as sort of the spectrum of poetry, if you see yourself as a political poet? Well, I think language is political, and that, that's what I use as a tool. I think it was, um, Richard Wright who said that he wanted to write sentences, language that functioned as a club. I don't necessarily believe that. For me, I don't think the surface, the surface of the poem, the politics are not on the surface of the poem, but I think since I use language, the politics are underneath, woven into the emotional architecture of the poem.

WOMAN

Has that always been part of your style, to weave in what's going on? I mean, it's part of your language, it's part of who you are as a poet. I go back to Baldwin, and James Baldwin said that we have to know what's happening around us in order to know what's happening to us because we're a part of everything around us. And I think perhaps the poet is cursed to be a keen observer. Observer.

KOMUNYAKAA

And there is a kind of innuendo, and also it's part of an extended possibility. What I mean by that is that if we are in the rhythm of the poem, we are in the emotional architecture of a poem, and language says things that are direct but also insinuation, the same as a blues singer would. I think that's what it is. It really takes me back to the essence of the blues, insinuation, daring.

WOMAN

You mean to allow silence? Simplicity say that also in a way morphs into a more complex emotional place. (breaks squealing, dog barks) (distant siren blaring) (cars driving by) (music playing on speakers in distance) (chattering) (chattering) (chattering continues) (music playing on speakers, horns honking) (intermittent beeping) (woman talking indistinctly, beeping continues) (chattering, books shuffling) (distant hammering)

CLERK

Got your library card? (hammering continues) (scanner beeps) (chattering in local language)

WOMAN

Yeah. Okay, so you want to take these pictures and save it in here? Uh-huh, but... Not all the one. This... This here is on the memory card here. Yes. You want to transfer it to here, correct? But, but I want first to save. Well, this is why you have to hold on "Control," you see? I'm going to show you example. (conversing in local language) So once that gets to 100%, then call me back over, and we can take a look. 100% to finish it? Yeah, 100% is finished downloading, and then we do installing. (speaking local language) Go back to "Home." Huh? Home. Home? Home, yeah, this, yeah. (din of traffic, chattering) (men yelling distantly, horns honking) (muffled radio chatter) (construction equipment humming) (chattering) This year's supply, I'd say about 22. (chattering) (laughter) (chattering) Now, have you worked with the book, the regular-sized braille yet? So we're going to start on this first... this first page that has A through E on it. So go ahead and check out the page. Are you lefty or righty? Um, righty. You're right-handed? Mm-hmm. Okay, it's good to hold, to keep it... Straight?...straight though. Uh-huh. Most people that read braille end up reading with a combination of both hands. Okay. So your right hand will be your leader, but sometimes your left hand will kind of keep your place. Okay. That's okay to check out with both hands, if you want. E? Hmm.. No, that's the D. Before you try to comprehend, just practice moving your hand in a straight line and following. This is how a braille-reading hand moves. So these lines that are kind of together, these little kinds of almost railroad tracks, are there to help you kind of pattern and figure out how to move in a fluid, straight, smooth way. A lot of people will read with a couple of fingers. I noticed that you for right now are mostly reading with your middle finger, and you want to make sure that this finger gets in there, too, because your forefinger has a lot of sensitivity, and a lot of people read with their forefinger and then middle finger kind of together. Okay. When your one hand finds the next line for the other hand is called tracking. (typewriter clacking) X, X, X, X. Z, Z, Z, Z. Now make sure that you... (keyboard clacking, dings) Do like this or with your hand, wherever you can, okay?

TRAINER 1

C... okay, and... what? Okay, and... (humming "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg)

TRAINER 2

You've got "Why not." So N is the end. (keyboard clacking) One position is different. You know, one is horizontal and other one vertical.

TRAINER 1

You got it? Yeah, I'm writing....

TRAINER 2

And now I'm going to do the other one. (chattering)

MAN

I have some statistics here on how many people with disabilities there are. This is according to the 2014 U.S. Census. There are roughly eight million people uh, in New York City in general, and about 900,000 of those people are people with disabilities. So that's about 11%. I'm the housing coordinator, and I do answer a lot of 311 calls regarding housing for people with disabilities. For low-income housing, there is the New York City Housing Authority, which is known to have a very long waiting list. Fortunately, that is not the only option. There are other options. There are a few different vouchers available. One is the Medicaid Waiver Program, and that's for people with physical disabilities, and it does include things like home care and Meals on Wheels and subsidized housing. If you have a voucher that covers $1,100, and you go find an apartment, and the apartment is within that range, right? It's $1,000 or $1,100 rent a month, uh, that means that you meet the criteria, you meet the income requirement for that apartment, and if the landlord tells you, "We don't take vouchers," that's considered discrimination. And if that, you know, if that does happen, there is an agency that can help you out with that. That's called the City Commission on Human Rights. It's always good to know your rights. Another housing opportunity is the housing lotteries or affordable housing. There is a difference between affordable housing and low-income housing. Most people don't realize that. So affordable housing is for, you know, it includes low income, but it also includes, you know, middle class and working families as well. Another agency that we do work with, Housing Preservation and Development. Basically they are working with developers who are building new buildings or reconstructing existing buildings, and each building has its own lottery. So each building will have its own application, and in each lottery, five percent of the apartments are set aside for people with mobility disabilities, and two percent are set aside for people with visual and hearing disabilities. Finding stable housing is pretty hard to do, especially in the affordable and low-income markets. (chattering) Oh, yeah, let's do it. (chattering)

WOMAN

In 2014 we launched an extensive strategic plan, but most importantly, we began to fill the basket about what we were going to put here, the Mid-Manhattan Library as well as in the Schwarzman Building. We engaged, um, in a very public engagement campaign around our plans. These were just concepts that we had come up with. We had public meetings, we had numerous media opportunities, um, thanks to Ken and his staff. We met with stakeholders, we met with our board, we met with anybody who would listen to us. The goals, then, were really to keep our constituents informed, which I think we did; to ensure that we got important feedback as to which should go where and what should go in what buildings, and what programs and projects that we should really focus on. And, lastly, the thing that I am the most proud about is-- and I think everybody in this room or anybody affiliated with the library should be proud about-- is that we were maintaining transparency during this process. Um, we were communicating as best we could; whatever we knew, we were letting people know. Now in October, it's actually November, we started a new phase of this campaign. And, um, it's to introduce the really spectacular architects that we spent months, um, trying to get to this point and to pick a team like this to work on this iconic project for New York City. Um, and in this next round, there will be an enormous amount again of public engagement, and we'll include even more substantive conversations. And as Tony noted, um, most importantly it's to start the conversation here, with our staff and here at the library. So, um, let me just explain how we got to this point with these two wonderful architecture firms. Um, I think as everybody knows, we went through an RFQ and an RFP process, and working with a working group, which included members of the board of directors as well as senior staff here at the library, um, we arrived at, um, uh, two semi-finalists and ended up with one finalist group. Francine, you, having worked in libraries all over the world, maybe you can give us a sense of what you think the futures of libraries are going to be, both in the physical sense and in the sense of libraries as institutions.

FRANCINE

First of all, for me, the library does not exist. Every library, it's my experience, is different. It's totally different if you're thinking of a circulating library in the Netherlands. There's even already a difference between if you make one in Amsterdam and in Rotterdam, there's even a bigger difference if you make one in Scandinavia or we also worked on the library in Athens. For instance, in Europe, the northern part of Europe is more books and the southern part of Europe is almost no books. (laughter) Um... One maybe very important thing-- I'm just now improvising-- that for me libraries are not about books, it's a lot of people think that it's a storage space for books. No, libraries are about people who want to get knowledge to them, and that can be done by books, it can be done by many other ways. It's very much about learning, it's about long-life learning, it's about the whole generation. And so libraries are, they're not only... there are cultural importance, but they also very much economically important. It has... here it's a little bit different, but, like, in Europe, it's always public money, and it's public money that you invest in your own population. Uh, so it's very much important that you give it back to the public. And, um, yeah, what else? I guess I could give a whole lecture about libraries. Um, I think what is maybe also important, that as a library, reflects what is necessary in that city-- it's a research library, it's also an archive. It's a city archive, it's the circulating library. I'm dreaming of, especially if I think of this building, about many different atmospheres, of different ways of studying, of different, very important, uh... maybe when I did design the... the... famous library we did in Delft, that's where our office is based. It's in a library for the technical university in Delft, and that was opened in 1995. And we, when we did the design in 1991, they already told me, "Francine, you don't need libraries anymore in the future." And that's in a way still a kind of opinion we hear a lot. Do you hear it a lot? It's totally because people, they still think of libraries about a storage space of books, or people think of the library when they were a kid. A lot of people have no awareness what is happening in the nowadays libraries and how necessary they are. What else, do you want? Maybe I should just stop.

WOMAN

Okay.

FRANCINE

But I have a lot of ideas about libraries. (cars driving by) (adaptive traffic signal speaking) (horn honks) (distant chattering) (cars passing) (woodwind quartet playing) (woodwind quartet music continues) (woodwind quartet music continues) (song concludes) (car alarm blaring) (alarm fades) (chattering, distant siren blaring) (large vehicle rumbling) (faint shouting) (siren blaring intermittently) (horns honking) (chattering, music playing on speakers) (chattering continues)

MAN

Okay. (trilling) (chattering)

WOMAN (muted)

What will the catalog...

MAN (muted)

That will probably be the center of the catalog... We've got lovely essays... We've got some... in there. (chattering) Plus, we only got halfway... (chattering)

WOMAN

That needs to be, like, life-sized.

WOMAN 2

Really?

WOMAN

I almost wanted to be...

WOMAN 3

It's okay, you got...?

WOMAN 4

No problem. (chattering, laughing) All right...

WOMAN

Reminds me of a couple of paintings that was done back in orientalism. I don't know if you know what that is, orientalism?

WOMAN 2

Yes. (chattering) (birds chirping) (chattering, knocking, horn honking) (siren blaring, truck accelerating) (horn honks) (chattering) (muted chattering)

MAN

Eh... in chapter one of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, um, she is being recited a story by her elder sister, right? Um... (baby fussing in crowd) And it's boring. She, she doesn't like the story, and, and this is this thing that encourages her and sets off this whole journey into, into fantasy, and I found it so interesting, thinking about that and realizing kind of what my, my journey has been, um, which is essentially the opposite of that. It's trying to take stories and make them not boring. Um, it's trying to take traditional literature and traditional, like, like, ideas of what it means to be intellectual and academic and educated... (baby crying) and how it was the actual boredom that pushed Alice into this new world of chasing fantasy. I feel so similar to that so, so frequently. I, I read these things, and I see all these brilliant, brilliant people in this world who are, are... feel the need to package their ideas and their intellect and, in this stringent and traditional way, because that's the way that we're used to digesting it. So I hope that one of the things that you take from this program is that intellect and academia and literature does not have to be highbrow. It does not have to be elitist. Um, it can develop in a organic and genuine way. So I'm going to read this last piece, um. "When this man enters a room "He wishes to keep his chin up "To carry with him a continental smile "And a heart "A heart that lifts the floor like a splintering brass chorus "Of drums and saxophones, Questlove and Coltrane "marching to Gettysburg at my feet "With shotgun improvs that grow into rock steady "Playing like a humble bass line for the beautiful, "the gorgeous shootouts that ring out "throughout old Chicago jazz clubs "and smoky New Orleans hallways. "He is a man. "He is a man because he claims he's claimed his identity "Yet still walks with the melancholy whisper "Of everything mama couldn't teach him, "Preacher couldn't preach to him "On Fridays when the bar ends, the clouds unclench their fists, "I walk home, empty pack of Marlboros in my back pocket. "Girl I don't know so well, under my left arm "Laughing too damn loudly. "I sit under a poster of Hendrix with Mona Lisa-like eyes "that follow me wherever I go "And I wonder what is in a man. "It wasn't always like that, though. "Before the intrigue of standing tall swallowed my skin "Every boy had a smiling father to dribble him "Every watch could stop if you please "Every set of five fingers had a warm twin that fit "But since then, I spent too many Sundays with the sun "And girls just looking for (bleep) "Thought I had a good one once "But now all I do is write black love poems "The only thing she hates more than me are mirrors "The only thing I hate more than love is not being in it "Call it crystal eyed or young of me to say "But some days I wake up wondering "Where have all the trumpets gone? "What makes a man, and what have they done with Motown's tongue? "When did the sound of my own breath "Become not enough music to get me through the night "And why, why can't we let ourselves go in the nighttime "Without (bleep) it up in the morning, "In the morning. "In the morning, wake me up "Like we died in each others' arms 12 hours prior "And had been planning to do so on breath cue "From the first time my lips cuddled your forehead "I know. (baby crying) "I know my carpet may not taste as sweet as the golden gates "But you slept here last night "And somewhere between the Bankers Club and the eight ball "from yesterday, I was reminded that a broken heart bleeds red "So now my past, my insides got you looking like a fresh murder "Can I be a man and clean that up for you? "Could you, could you love me just as hard "if I'd rather talk some (bleep) out? "If, if I'd rather, "If I'd rather picket fence my tongue quiet and slow "like a stream across the whole navy Van Gogh of your body "Cheek to back in a curve of your thigh and I disappear "And there's no more before, no more after, "Just a screaming white light "Rattling the inside of your skull "Like a drug-addicted prisoner and a man, a man, "I swear to God, I'm a man "standing tall, "Looking down over his work Like a lost diamond." Thank you so much. (cars driving by) (chattering) (airbrakes engaging) The way that my staff can help, in addition to providing direct help, the government and community affairs office, we can also provide, you know, guidance, possibly. You know, as you're navigating through government, many of you may not have done that as intimately as you're doing it now. You may have a question about you know, an agency or who these other agencies are interacting with, or perhaps, you know, the mayor's agenda or the speaker's agenda or the governor's agenda, or things that are helping you to navigate through the agencies at the federal level. So we can help with all of that. So I thought it would be good... The other thing we'll be doing is, I will, I or a member of my team will be joining your biweeklies Yep....just to hear from you what's happening, and if there are any, you know, new initiatives that we should be aware of or if there are any ongoing initiatives, just for you to give us updates on those as well.

WOMAN

We've got to make sure that we're bringing our Government Affairs with us so that they understand where we might be able to plug into those government relationships, right? So we need to do both.

MAN

Off the top of my head, Christopher mentioned our meeting this week with the Department of Health. As you all know, the First Lady's mental health initiative. We're trying to see how we can help them move that agenda along. There are a lot of ways that we can provide help to the city. A, you know, we have infrastructure in every neighborhood in the city, so we can provide space for them to conduct meetings. We can also help them get the word out on some of these initiatives and possibly our programming can align with what they're trying to achieve as well. Minority women-owned businesses. We're working with the city on this as well, to track, to do a better job of tracking, um, you know, who we partner with, who we do business with. So that's happening right now. IDNYC is ongoing, as we know. The city is so happy with our participation under the IDNYC programming, they've asked us to provide pop-up sites, so some of you are involved with that as well. Christopher knows about this as well. Uh, the mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, I mean, New Americans Corners. We set those up last those up last year in all the branches and the city is thinking about ways that they can improve on those services to the immigrant population and one of the ways that they're looking to do that right now is to possibly provide legal services in public spaces in the city, including libraries. So we're in conversations with the city on that as well. Libraries have always been this adjunct... Right....to the education system in the city. There are 127 city agencies. I'm sure if we were to go through a list, we probably do business with 30 or 40 of them. We are the greatest example of a public-private partnership and on that public side, I mean, we interact deeply on a daily basis, and it really is, uh, it's a good idea for us to track that as best we can. (chattering) (papers rustling)

WOMAN

Mr. Garca Mrquez is mostly remembered in terms of magical realism, being the style that he worked in. You know, the idea of magic being a part of everyday life, extraordinary things happen, magical things happen, spellbinding things happening. A big part of his work. Several people have said that Lo ve in the Time of Cholera is like the American Huckleberry Finn. Everybody knows it. Everybody can quote it. People, you know, it's the book everybody reads there. Um, so... So what do we think of him? I did think, as I read it, it would have been better titled, Lovemaking in the Time of Cholera, because I got a little bored with all the in and outs of all the bed.

MAN

I find the beginning lines and beginning pages, I can tell whether I can get into a book in a couple days. I mean, it's not like, "Call me Ishmael," which is very striking, but this one is, "It

was inevitable

"the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." And the theme of almonds and bitter almonds come through. And this is a story of unrequited love. That was only at the end gets fulfilled under the guise of being a boat with cholera, you know. And so I think he's saying, in a way, that passion is a sickness.

WOMAN

The explanation for Florentino was exactly what you said, unrequited love. That kicked off the rest of his life. It affected him for the rest of his life, but he really loved Fermina. Yes, he screwed all these women in both figurative and literal sense, but he loved Fermina, and he would have done anything for her, and I think this is proven throughout the book. Also, he was devastated by what happened to Amrica Vicua.

MAN

Right. As we all were, he was devastated by that. He kept on thinking about it. He went into the stateroom on that final voyage down the Magdalena, and he cried until there were no tears left. He was a human being, and that's what I think was so good about this book. It was surreal in many respects, magical realism, but yet there's tremendous, in-depth knowledge of human nature, both good and bad, in this book. I felt it so perceptive about what it means to be married, what it means on your wedding night, what it means to be a widow, what it means to get old. I mean, I was personally affected by the fact that the whole second part of the book was, "What does it mean to be in your 70s now?" And yet, he keeps on injecting these surreal elements. So I think both characters were very sympathetic. They were real.

WOMAN

It was his imagination of Fermina that he loved. He didn't know her. (chuckles) He only knew what he thought she was, and of course we've all had relationships where the person, the other person, thinks we're something we're not. And, I mean, it takes a while for you to finally say, "Look, I'm not who you think I am," you know? It's the... and I think he had all... it was his imagination that sustained him, not the real person. But I do think love, you know, what is love? It's very hard to figure it out.

MAN

He was in love with love, or his fantasy of her, his, you know, what did you call him? His imagination of her, about her was not the real her, and, um, and that's what kept him going. That and his constant promiscuous affairs, affairs, is what kept him going. Uh, so he was living in the world of illusion. What is love, after all? I think that's one of the themes of the book, is that love is really an illusion, and the way that Florentino loves Fermina is no different than, say, the way that Romeo falls in love with Juliet, and it's based simply on a gut reaction in adolescence and based on very little else. The pursuit of love, it's just a means to delay and avoid the aging process and ultimately to avoid death, if you can, as long as you can. (chattering) (shoes squeaking in distance) (chattering) Both the city and the library tend to view a lot of patron-facing digital efforts as separate. So there's the ITG consideration of how much bandwidth we provide for Wi-Fi. There's innovation labs. There's TechConnect, there's the hotspots. On the city side, there's the Lincoln YC pay phones projects. There's coding in the schools. There's a NYCHA hotspot. These are all you know, components of a larger strategy around an inclusive digital city. If you tell that richer story, it, um, it's more powerful, because you see the connections, and, frankly, from a library perspective, it reveals just how integral we are to the digital life of the city, in a way that if you just take it one on one, we're sort of less relevant. And so that's the other goal of this. Can we help the city understand the richness of these issues, so they can understand the richness of our solution? Should we have personas for, like, think of different types of users.

WOMAN

Yes. What does an older adult need to know in order to be able to communicate with their family, to not feel isolated, to stay in touch with the news? What does a student need to know? What does a, right, um... in, in, some of that conceptual work actually doesn't exist in the larger digital literacy space, but is exactly the input necessary for us to then say, "Okay. "If that's where people need to go, "where are we best equipped to help take them "and how can we partner "with the other institutions around the city "to sort of collectively have a digitally rich environment?" ("The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin playing) (chattering) ("The Entertainer" continues) ("The Entertainer" continues) (chattering) ("The Entertainer" continues) (song fades, large vehicle idling) (cars driving by, chattering, distant muted music) I have to say, though, I think of all the programs, I am the most proud of what we're doing today, because I think the mission of the library and the mission of our guests resonate so beautifully. We want to share the arts with all people, and this city, which is so amazing, with incredible theater and incredible theater-makers, these guests are part of the reason why deaf audiences are able to experience that. Interpreters at theater are the red carpet for deaf audiences to have access to what's being performed onstage. Um, we are not performers, yet in order for an audience that is deaf to enjoy and cry and laugh with everybody else in the theater, they need to understand what's happening onstage, and they need to understand the emotional life of the actors and the characters, the choices that actors are making, and the, um... that whole framework of the play. So we do study the actors. I do study their mannerisms. I do think about the way a show is directed and staged. I do think about text. All those pieces come together to present a red carpet to the deaf audience and say, "Hey, this is the show that everybody's enjoying." And I'm looking at how... how the context is giving meaning. I'm looking at what the intent of the person is that's hearing, that's speaking to the deaf person. I'm trying to pull out and parse out all of that so I can create a real communication between these two worlds that are... come with different cultures, different backgrounds, different world understanding. Sign language is more than just how your hands move. It's this whole three-dimensional space in front of you. So it does include our face. That's where grammar will show up a lot of times as well as, um... affect, mood. So it has a dual purpose. So I think that we try to explore that with every play. What's the feeling in every play? What's the mood? What are the characters doing, yeah.

MAN

One thing that the library has that's kind of cool is we have the fair copy of the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson wrote as a draft before the final draft went to the Continental Congress. And, um, the big difference is there's a section that, where he's quite negative about slavery, and that was taken out to win the support of delegates from some southern colonies. Um, we were wondering just, since everyone's relatively familiar with the Declaration of Independence, we were thinking we could get two volunteers to read just a few lines, uh, trying to capture a different mood, a different emotion. Um, one, sort of angry and defiant and then another one kind of more inspired and uplifting. No, pleading. Pleading, okay. Pleading the king to allow you to do this. Yeah. So do we have any volunteers? Somebody want to give it a try? Okay. And this lady also. Oh, terrific. So is any... are either of you feeling particularly angry or particularly pleading?

WOMAN

Her choice. Why don't you try angry, and you can use my microphone, and Candice will be your interpreter. Right, so you can stand right there, and I'll stand next to you. So hopefully this will show you a little bit of the difference in how an interpretation might look. So very angry. Not super fast. (chuckling) Okay. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, "all men are created equal, "that they are endowed by their Creator "with certain unalienable rights, "that among these are life, liberty, "and the pursuit of happiness. "And that to secure these rights, "governments are instituted among men, "deriving their just powers "from the consent of the governed. "That whenever any form of government "becomes destructive of these ends, "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, "to institute a new government, "laying its foundation on such principles "and organizing its powers in such form, "as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." (applause) You were angry. Pleading?

MAN

Yeah, pleading. Pleading, you may have gotten the easier one. You're begging... Are you ready? You're begging the king to allow us to do this. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, "that all men are created equal, "that they are endowed by the creator "with certain unalienable rights, "that among these are life, liberty, "and the pursuit of happiness. "That to secure these rights, "governments are instituted among men, "deriving their just powers "from the consent of the governed. "That whenever any form of government "becomes destructive of these ends, "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, "and to institute a new government, "laying its foundation on such principles "and organizing its powers in such form, "as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." (applause) Little prep next time for me. (laughing) That was fantastic. We have such talented audiences at the Library for the Performing Arts. We do. Thank you so much. (cars driving by) (train rumbling) (wind rustling) (humming a rhythm) (papers rustling) (indistinct chattering) (pencil scratching) (distant beep) (fan belt humming) (flashbulb snaps) (beeping) (flashbulb snaps) (flashbulb snaps, scanner beeps) (flashbulb snaps, scanner beeps) (flashbulb snaps) (scanner beeps) (mouse moving, clicking) (fan belt humming, clicking mouse) (flashbulb snaps, scanner beeps) (flashbulb snaps) (scanner beeps) (footsteps retreating) (flashbulb snaps) (clicking mouse) (flashbulb snaps) (machine hums) (flashbulb snaps) (scanner beeps) (clicking mouse) (flashbulb snaps, scanner beeps) (flashbulb snaps) (cart wheels squeaking) (machine whirring) (car horn honking in distance) (wheel squeaking) (papers and envelopes rustling) (squeaking) (belt humming) (boxes rattling) (books thumping) (books thumping) (belt squeaking) (barcode scanner beeping) (rumbling, squeaking) (barcode scanner beeping) (barcode scanner beeping) (rollers squeaking, boxes rumbling) (grunts) (hydraulics whirring) Leroy... (clattering) Have you seen who got 30? (train rumbling nearby) But teens are more independent, and they have a hard time asking for help. Most of the times, a lot of teens, they think they know it all. We all did at one time. So it's kinda... So my best way of getting in touch with them is kind of let them know, "Oh, listen. "So what are you doing? "I'm so bad at math. "What do you recommend for me to do? What do you do to work on your math skills?" And then they'll tell me, "Oh, Rick, "all you need to do is do this, and they have books in there." I'm like, "Oh I know we do, but do you use them?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah, Ricky. You could go to this website too..." So I kind of feel what they need and what they know and then I build from there. Um, it's a little bit hard when it comes to, getting them to come for, like, if we do a teen math program here, a lot of times, if we tell the teens, they won't come in. So it's different ways and techniques. So it will be great for us too. This is what we have to work, and that we're with the schools. So the schools could work something with the parents, and then their parents bring the teens in. Because they'll come in for a great Wii game or Xbox. They'll come in on their own for that, no problem.

WOMAN

Recreational. Recreational. But when it comes to something educational, it's a little bit hard, which is understandable, because they're doing school seven hours a day. Yeah, they're exhausted. They're exhausted when they come here. This is why I think it's very important for the libraries to give the teens their own space and their time in each branch, because it's important for the teens to come in and feel like they belong somewhere. And it's not a school. When they come to our programs, I don't want them to feel like they have to sit there straight and just do math work. No, I want you to feel like this is the place for you to come with your friends...

Relax. WOMAN

Yes....and talk about math, you can learn from each other, respect each other is the main thing that I want. Respect each other, but also learn from each other, and how can you help each other? And with the teens, a great way to do that too is get them, a bunch of teens in one room together and have them kind of let us know what they need, not us kind of telling them, "Oh, this is what you do." It's kind of like, "How will you help him? How would she help him?" All that kind of stuff, and it works. We have, as you know, a great way of studying how the children and teen readers, their reading patterns, in terms of what is being borrowed, through a tool called Collection HQ, and I noticed for the September statistics for Parkchester's children and teens, there was a lot of focus on math.

WOMAN

Right. It seemed to be a point... (chuckling) "How's your math going?" where... right. (laughter)

WOMAN 2

Not good. As far as, of the top ten circulating children, non-fiction titles for Parkchester, there were at least four or five books on fractions being requested. Correct. And what will be interesting for all of us to see is system-wide, is that also a pattern of use, right? Yeah. Um, Ashante, you've been working a lot with, um, through the MyLibraryNYC program, and I'm just curious, does this seem to be the... is... does there seem to be a true pattern of certain topics being covered at various points in the year by children and teens? Um, parents are really challenged by the new math,

with the Common Core math. WOMAN

Yes, Common Core. So they're used to doing the math, working from... working from the top down, and now they're going from left to right. Right. (chuckles) So parents are looking for books on math, kids are looking for books for math, and we're seeing that, with the teacher's sets, that math teachers are looking for teacher sets using the MyLibraryNYC teacher sets, and... it is, it is a true trend. So I'm glad you guys noticed it.

WOMAN

There's this huge increase in circulation of teacher sets and items, and so I'm wondering, are they mostly math teacher sets or...? Well, the highest... the highest-circulating teacher set is the baby animals. Because who doesn't love baby animals? That is the highest-circulating. But math is following right behind it. And that's new, right? Yeah, that's new. That's new. We've tripled our, we've over tripled our teacher sets. Yeah, I was reading this last night. I thought, "That's incredible." Yeah, we're very proud. Really incredible. We need to look at it holistically. You know, how we can partner with the programming team to ensure that there are resources and, you know, there are connections made between Programming and Collections, and also how we can broaden our reach by working with volunteers and staff. There is a, an urgency around this. We cannot fail. I mean if parents are coming, pleading to you... Yeah, yeah. I can see in their eyes their need, they want their kids to be successful. Yeah, exactly. Their whole family depends on this generation. The library cannot fail. Yeah. If you actually had a non-floating collection in specific areas that you know your neighborhood really needs-- like, math sounds like it's more than Parkchester, but it's obviously here-- and you had a four- or five-day series for parents and kids to come and learn to do math together, there might be a real opportunity to bring the community together in here too. So you could have something like the Programs in a Box. You could have this... I mean, the cornerstone of all of this is you and the collection, right, and having that partnership with the teachers. Then you can build around it, but we do have the means to build around it, right? We have the Programs in a Box, which we're all committed to. We also have the ability to bring in community tutors. There's a lot of potential there that we can weave together. Let's not lose sight of that, and, actually, let's not give that up right now, just because we're having this conversation. Let's figure out how we help make that happen. (train rumbling) (siren blaring) (fire truck honking) (brakes squealing, honking continues) (barcode scanner beeping) (chattering) (receipt printer printing, tearing)

CLERK

Here you go. Check in? Or check out? (barcode scanner beeping, stacking books) (chattering)

LIBRARY CLERK

How old are you? You're 12? So you have a student ID? Uh, do you have any form of ID? Do you have something with your name on it and your school name on it, like a schedule or a report card or a progress report? Okay, so I need you to bring me one of those things, and if you don't have any of those things, then you need to come with a parent or guardian, okay? So go get it? Huh? Do I have to go get it? If you have it, yeah. Hey, can I take out Atlanta? Yeah. Um, this one's actually reserved, but, um... let me see. (drawer closes)

WOMAN

Since we're toward the tail of the NYPL HotSpot program, the devices generally were going out for a year. That has changed. Lending periods may be shorter than a year. When we check the devices out upstairs, the due date that it gives you is the due date that it's going to provide. They're not renewable at this point. You're going to get six gigabytes per month at 4G speed. Now once you bypass that, it will still work, but if you're doing something like streaming, watching Netflix, it's going to operate slower. And keep in mind, and I tell this to a lot of people, because I've been doing this for the past couple of months, be very careful who you let use the hotspot device. You can connect up to nine devices at once, but you have to keep in mind the other people who may be using the connection may also be using the data that's already allocated. So if they're streaming and you're streaming, they're eating up data that you're using. These can only be checked out on fine-free adult library cards. Kids cards cannot be used for this. Cards for teens cannot be used for this. And if anyone has any money on their library card now, you will be asked to make a payment and clear the balance completely once we go upstairs. If you can't do that, then we cannot check out the device. Please have your library cards ready, and we will proceed to the first floor for checkout.

CLERK

I've only ever read the first one, which is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. That's what the movie's based on, it's based on that book. But that's just the first one. And then there's Th e Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Do rothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, Th e Emerald City of Oz, The Patchwork Girl. Like, and then it starts talking about specific characters. Uh-huh. Um... Yeah, The Scarecrow of Oz. Yeah, that's a whole series. But I can put Glenda on hold for you. Do you want me to do that?

MAN

Yes, please.

CLERK

Okay. (barcode scanner beeping) (chattering) (stamping) (typing on keyboard, barcode scanner beeping) (plastic crates opening) (barcode scanner beeping) This is for November 27, 2016. (barcode scanner beeping) Okay. Okay, we keep the survey here. And you are good to go. Congratulations. Thank you. Have a good day. You too, have a good one. Next in line step down.

WOMAN

Sure. (barcode scanner beeping)

CLERK

Okay, yes. ("Celebration" by Kool & the Gang playing on speakers) Celebrate good times, come on

INSTRUCTOR

Let's have some solos. Tina. Go, yes. Celebrate good times, come on Little solo. There's a party goin' on right here Cheer her on. Tina. Celebration Fabulous. Go Amina. Amina. ...And your laughter too We're gonna celebrate your party with you

WOMAN

Go Amina.

INSTRUCTOR

Fabulous, go Amina. Let's close it in a little. Close it, close. Let's all celebrate and have a good time Good. Go Bodie. Celebration Fabulous. Go Bodie. We're gonna celebrate and have a good time It's time to come together It's up to you... Let's have Millie and Liz. Millie and Liz join. Millie. Come in Liz. You'll find her. Nice, nice. I love the movement of Liz's legs. Did you see that? Look at Millie's stretched out legs. Let's go easy. Let's go. Margalit. Come on, take center. (cars driving by)

MAN

That's right. Just have to enter in the information and then try it out and see what happens. Right here... (children chattering) Hey, hey. Julius, if you're holding on to the robots to stop it from moving, then that means you need to change something on the computer....this number? (children chattering) Click the green "Run" button.

BOY

It was... ah!

BOY 2

I'll just click...

MAN

Um... See how this is kind of moving? Can you think of a way that maybe you could make it more stable? Five, four, three, two... Oh, oh, oh! Oh, oh! So how many coding blocks did I have? Five. That's right. Now, do you have to make yours exactly the same as mine? You don't. But just remember that for each action that you want this robot to do, you have to add another coding block. So you keep experimenting until it works the way that you want it.

BOY

Please don't twist

BOY 2

Oh, I told you.

BOY 1

Please don't twist. Oh, oh! Anyway, it still didn't go over... I mean, that's good, though. That's good. Yeah. Noah. Yeah. You did best. Yeah, I did something. That's so cool.

MAN

Is it perfect?

BOY

Yes. Okay. (music playing through speakers) (engine rumbling) (truck pulling up) (chattering, music playing distantly) (piano playing in distance, chatter echoing)

MAN

Welcome, everyone, to the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Schomburg Center. It really is wonderful to have you all here this evening. Thank you. Thank you to the Schomburg. Thank you for all the amazing work we all do together as New Yorkers, as lovers of the library, as all of us aspire to a world of continued creativity and inspiration drawn from the Schomburg and all of the collections and work of the library. Leading that effort at the Schomburg is our amazing director, Khalil Gibran Muhammad. (cheers and applause) And there he is. And he'll tell us more about the important work being carried out at the Schomburg and the great history of the Schomburg as we celebrate the 90th anniversary. Over to you, Khalil.

MUHAMMAD

Thank you. I've work with and met some spectacular people over the past several years. People who are talented, creative, and passionate about the Schomburg. People whose words make the world kinder and gentler. What I took for granted is the importance and significance of the public value of what we do. Of what our curators, archivists, librarians, educators, and all the staff do, of what our supporters and donors do. We do mind building, soul affirming, and surely more than we can ever measure or put in an annual report, lifesaving work. Toni Morrison once said in this building, that libraries are the pillars of our democracy. Maya Angelou sat on the Langston Hughes Stage of the Schomburg Center and called them "Rainbows in the clouds." These are not just inspirational metaphors. I've seen the lightbulbs turn on behind the eyes of a ten-year-old junior scholar. I've listened to the octogenarian volunteer tell me that, in our building, being there helps her keep on keeping on. I've greeted hundreds of academics in our reading rooms, and dozens and dozens of campuses across the nation, who said it is hard to imagine what their careers would be, but for the rich collections of the Schomburg archives. There is nothing in the world more powerful than to watch a history maker look back at her own legacy, to touch his own past, as I observed when Congressman John Lewis held in his brave hands the second meeting notes of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, from October of 1960, housed in our Ella Baker Archives. We should all be so fortunate to make some necessary trouble, as Congressman Lewis always says of his civil rights past. And to have that trouble preserved so that future generations will learn, and, when necessary, be prepared to do the same. It isn't an accident that leaders of the NAACP and the Urban League appealed to the Carnegie Corporation 90 years ago to purchase Arturo Schomburg's collection. Or that civil rights researchers turned to our collections to argue and build a case for Brown v. Board of Education. Their intention and our mission remain as relevant and true to this day. And through national partnerships and digital initiatives, we'll reach more people than ever before. (chattering, cars driving by) (airbrakes releasing) How much is the book? Ten dollars, autographed copy. I'll sign it for you personally. (large vehicle backing up) (siren blaring intermittently, fire truck horn honking) Here we go, we're going to go, Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O And on that farm he had a wife, E-I-E-I-O. With a kiss, kiss here and a kiss, kiss there Here a kiss, there a kiss, everywhere a kiss, kiss Old McDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O And on that farm he had a dog, E-I-E-I-O With a woof, woof here and a woof, woof there Here a woof, there a woof, everywhere a woof, woof (distantly): Old McDonald had a farm (chattering) (chattering) (shoes squeaking) (chattering) (typing on keyboard) (typing on keyboard) (door slamming) (papers rustling) (typing on keyboard) (distant footsteps) (door slamming) (footsteps) (quiet chatter) (distant banging, echoing)

MAN

On to homeless patrons. Everyone recognizes the problem seems to be increasing.

WOMAN

Yeah. Everyone recognizes that the library has a responsibility to serve all patrons and to be welcoming, but there is sometimes a tension between what one kind of patron needs and what another kind of patron needs. And so lines have to be drawn about, you know, how do we accommodate people together who may not always want to be together and be respectful of everyone. And then there was the question of what is the appropriate role of the library, not just as welcoming space for everyone, but, you know, where should we be intervening in social policy around the homeless... Right....as versus where should we be relying on the city, other private agencies that are expert and engaged in this as we all face this problem. We have a policy that talks about how users have to comport themselves in the library. And so it would embrace most of this conduct, and we may have to revisit that. I don't know if we want to give more flexibility or less. So if you don't do certain things, like if you come in and sleep, you could literally be asked to leave. You aren't allowed to just come into the library and sleep. So the barring policy, which can lead to your being barred from the library for periods of time. So that is also part of this discussion.

MAN

I am not an expert at this topic, but I've been a New Yorker my whole life, and one of the things that you notice is, you know, the way in which we who are not homeless keep our distance from the homeless. And in the libraries is a place where we don't keep our distance. And I do believe that as much as we need rules, and as much as we need institutions, in the end we need a change of culture in this town that says, you know, "There may be people who are scary, "but there're all other people who we should just be helping, right, as regulars in our neighborhood." But you... And I don't know how to do that, right?

WOMAN

You know, the mayor's made this commitment that he's going to deal with the homelessness issue, and he's put $100 million toward that goal. Right, yeah, no, I know. I think that they're developing a plan to be able to do it. (chatter echoing) (chattering in Spanish)

DOCENT

And we house in this room three collections. The Print Collection, the Photo Collection, and the Spencer Collection. The Print Collection, we have around 300,000 to 250,000 prints. And in our Photographic Collection, we have a half a million photographs. And this present collection that is about illustrated books, European manuscripts, we have around 15,000. We have prints from around the world. But here, we have almost, the... I can say the history of the European printmaking. Everything is started with printmaking around the 1400s. There are some samples, early samples from the 1300s, but, um, what I decided to do is to show you some of the highlights. The first print is Albert Drer, and it's called Th e Rhinoceros. Drer used to sell these outside of the Sundays church with his wife. This is a kind of newspaper from the time, 1515. It's telling a story about the king of Portugal receiving a rhinoceros. In 1515, a rhinoceros, the Europeans at that point haven't see a rhinoceros. Last time they saw was in the Roman Empire. And that rhinoceros arrived to, uh, to Lisbon, and after that the King Manuel decided to send this rhinoceros to the pope. Real thing. But when the rhinoceros was going to Rome, the ship never arrived. There was a very strong storm in the Mediterranean, and the rhinoceros die, and there was a wreck. Somebody took a note, a sketch. Drer was in Nuremberg, and he saw this sketch, and he say, "Oh, that's good idea." The caption here is telling the story of what's happened. People were buying these things, and what's almost like a today's newspaper. They were telling each other. Not everybody was able to read. Drer never saw the rhinoceros apparently, and that kind of plates, that's not really a rhinoceros, it looks like, but that was one of the popular prints about the story of the rhinoceros. The next one I'll show you, you know, it's a Rembrandt. It's after his wife died, Saskia. Before that time, he did around 80 self-portraits, together with painting and prints. This one is after his... and you see the print before, he's very joyful, you know, wearing fancy clothing, but here he's sitting on the window, and you see an introspective artist. (coughing) Some people think that this print was one of the steps for, some historians tell the one of the steps for a new style in Rembrandt's career. Come on, big smiles. (large vehicle rumbling)

MAN

61% of the library's expense funding comes from public sources, the majority of that from the city. It's obvious, we want to engage our elected officials, we want to engage our community, because we want them to fund us. And it brings us financial sustainability. My good friend, Councilmember Andy King, in the Bronx, he likes to say, "People pay attention to people who participate." Now, think about that. Community boards, we're going to community boards, telling our story. PB, we're going to PB meetings, telling our story, pitching projects. If we're not participating, people are not going to pay attention to us. So civic engagement is important. Building deeper relationships, what do we do? We're out there trying to improve the lives of the people and the communities that we serve. We're trying to improve their lives. Now, how could we not engage with them? How could we not try to build deeper relationships, whether it's with an individual in the branch or with a community-based organization? This is a relationship that we have with our community, and we need to build those relationships as deeply as we can.

WOMAN

To me, the biggest practical thing to help us about understanding community engagement and really helping you guys understand is to do away with that feeling of, like, "Oh my gosh, another thing. Oh my gosh, another thing." It's all connected. Summer reading is community engagement and advocacy. Any program you do is community engagement and advocacy. Anytime you bring in an author or an elected. Every time you go to a community board, a participatory budgeting meeting, literally everything we do, because it's for the community is community engagement, and we really have to maximize those opportunities. So what we're hoping is that the more we help you understand the big picture and connect those dots, it's hard to connect the dots here in NYPL right? Because you're split up by branch. You're split up by network. You're split up by borough. You're split up by department. Some of us are out in the Bronx. Some of us are at 39th Street. Some of us are never in our offices. Some of us are always in our offices, but we're all doing the same work and so that feeling of, "Oh, crap, letter writing is starting, "but my summer reading kickoff is starting and I have someone out on AL." Like, that's the reality of your job, right? But the more that we understand the budget cycle, the community engagement cycle, and the more we understand that it's year-round, the better off we are, and the easier the lift feels. We did it, we got all this money, and now we're having to do the work to support it, but it's gonna start again. You know? (laughter) What does Iris always tell us? "The budget wasn't baselined," and then we all start to pull out our hair and grumble about the page budget, and so that's just our work. We always have to prove that we're relevant. We always have to go back to the drawing board and prove that we're relevant every single day, every single season, but we are winners. All we do is win. All those other agencies want to learn from us, because we did it, right? We're taking the lead. We're working with our sister systems in Brooklyn and Queens, but we're taking the lead, you guys. And that is all you. (chattering) (cars driving by)

MAN

Susan, there was a little pop of this light. It's very subtle, early on. I heard it back. I think I can get it, I can get it in post, yeah. It was pretty faint. All right, stand by. "Presently he came back with the telephone directory, "holding it like a bible, smiling tenderly. "And while he was gazing at her long drooping lashes, "Margot sped through the R's "and found Albinus's address and his telephone number. "Then she quietly closed the well-thumbed blue volume. "'Take off your coat,' murmured Albinus. "Without bothering to stand up, "she began to wriggle out of the sleeves, "inclining her pretty neck and thrusting forward "first the right and then the left shoulder. "As Albinus helped her, he caught a hot whiff of violets "and saw her shoulder blades move, "and the sallow skin between them "ripple and smooth out again. "Then she took off her hat, "peered into her pocket mirror "and, wetting her forefinger, tapped the black lovelocks on her temples." Uh, let's take that pocket mirror. Mm-hmm. "Then she took off her hat, "peered into her pocket mirror, "and, wetting her forefinger, "tapped the black lovelocks on her temples. "Albinus sat down beside her "and looked and looked at that face "in which everything was so charming-- "the burning cheeks, "the lips glistening from the cherry brandy, "the childish solemnity, the long hazel eyes, "and the small, downy mole "on the soft curve just beneath the left one. "'If I knew, I should hang for it,' he thought, "'I would still look at her.' "Even that vulgar Berlin slang of hers "only enhanced the charm of her throaty voice "and large white teeth. "When laughing, she half closed her eyes, "and a dimple danced on her cheek. "He pawed at her little hand, but she withdrew it briskly. "'You're driving me crazy,' he said. "Margot patted his cuff and said, "'Now be a good boy.' "His

first thought next morning was

"it can't go on like this, it just can't. "I must get her a room. "Curse that aunt. "We shall be alone, quite alone. "A textbook of love for beginners. "Oh, the things I shall teach her. "So young, so pure, so maddening. "'Are you asleep?' "asked Elisabeth softly. "He achieved the perfect yawn and opened his eyes. Elisabeth was seated in a pale blue nightgown." (chattering) (clattering) (distant chattering) (bike wheels spinning) (cars driving by, horn honking) (cars driving by) One, two, three, four, okay. And these you're going to return also? Return these. Okay. (barcode scanner beeps, returned materials shuffling)

CLERK

Hello. (barcode scanner beeps)

CLERK 2

25 cents. (footsteps, door closes)

CLERK 1

Hello. (barcode scanner beeping) (footsteps grow distant) (barcode scanner beeping) (coughing in distance) (chair squeaking) (barcode scanner beeping quietly)

WOMAN

Harney thinks that if in America the conflict between capital and labor is not resolved through a social revolution, that what you will end up with in the United States is essentially the same class-conflict-ridden European situation, and, like, we've seen, the Americans still think by the 1840s that there is such a possibility as an alternative future for American capitalism. That capital and labor don't have to be at odds. That the variable of land shows this third way out of this conflict, and yet, here is Harney saying, "No, listen." "Already this is a problem in the United States." That famous quote that Marx has is that labor cannot be free where it's branded in black skin. This is specifically in the United States. The key here is that Marx is saying, if capitalists have the availability of both slave labor and free labor, free labor can always be undermined, and, in fact, it was. Because Northerners already were catching up to the fact that, you know, "There's some black unskilled laborers here in the North, "and whenever these workers "start striking or demanding things, we can just introduce these unskilled people." It's just the same principle. So Marx is writing, saying, look, this is a problem that must be rid of if you even want to have a development of the political workingman politics in America. But, secondly, and this is the deeper argument, which I think is quite important today-- there is a very, very, virulent critique of bourgeois society by Southern ideologues that would have been getting quite a hearing in the 1840s. We know because people like Eric Foner have written about how Abraham Lincoln read this stuff pretty regularly in the Richmond Inquirer and all of these other publications, the Southern ideologues would write to. George Fitzhugh, I think I mentioned him last time. He's this well-known first American sociologist. He's a Southern ideologue. He believes that slave society is better than a free laboring society. Why? He's got an argument. It's coherent, and there's a logic. Here it is. Throughout human history, we've always had people who were unfree, in order for some to have the liberty to think and to act and to engage in politics. Throughout time this has been the case. Why all of a sudden does bourgeois society promise something it cannot accomplish, which is the idea that all can participate in political activity? This is the lie that modern society has. That's the problem. It's not that there's this class conflict, and that you have these people who are demanding things-- no. You've already lied to them. The problem is that what you want isn't possible. The idea of a free society is a failure. That's a quote. He writes this book called Sl aves Without Masters, that essentially... Slaves Without Masters is the idea of the Northern workingmen for Fitzhugh. He says, "Look what happens when slaves have no masters. "No one takes care of them. "No one feeds them. "No one clothes them. "We in Southern society have figured out the remedy to the conflict of capital and labor." And, again, it's articulated in this way. John C. Calhoun, also a Southern ideologue, same way of thinking about it. The problem of capital and labor in America is mitigated not by land, they say, but by slavery. Richard Hofstadter, one of the famous American historians, writes a short essay in his very famous book, The American Political Tradition, that compares Fitzhugh. He puts "Fitzhugh, the marks of the planter class." And what he means by that is that you have here a critique of modern bourgeois society. You have a critique of labor. You have a critique of this supposedly free society, but you have a critique from the right. One, that as Marx says, "The working people knew," this is in his address, and I'm just going to quote it, because I know it off the top of my head. This is in the address that Marx writes to Lincoln. This is the... on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association, Marx writes a letter to Lincoln. And he says, "The workingmen knew, "the workingmen knew that when slavery was proposed "as the solution to capital and labor, "they knew that all of their hard-earned historical gains were in jeopardy." So, why Marx was supportive of the Republicans, because Marx knew that the attack of bourgeois society from the right was also an attack on any possibility of a workers' revolution. Because the workers' revolution, insofar as Marx was concerned, was a legacy from the revolutions of 1848. It was a task. It was something that was received. So in this sense, what we have is many different responses, essentially, to the crisis of the 19th century, right? If one end is Karl Marx and the other end is Fitzhugh, in the middle, and closer to Marx, certainly, than Fitzhugh is Lincoln. Lincoln says, "The free society is not and will not be a failure." That Lincoln and Marx agree on. The definition of that free society, they disagree on. Those two groups of people, the liberals and the more radical, socialist types, have so much more in common than slave planters who are arguing that bourgeois society is a lie. (marching band playing) (chattering)

CROWD MEMBER

It's been good for him. I mean, I don't get the... (music continues) (whistling) (marching band playing "Thriller" by Michael Jackson) (crowd cheering)

MAN

Let's hear it, New York! (cheers) ("Thriller" continues) ("Thriller" continues) (cars driving by) (chattering)

PATTI SMITH

Genet took these very marginalized people, and pimps and thieves and murderers and elevated them within his pantheon as saints. The Thief's Journal is my favorite book of Genet, but why I love Th e Thief's Journal isn't necessarily because of those things. Yeah. I love it because he takes, he writes my kind of memoir. It's a memoir, yet it's completely true and simultaneously completely false. Because that's the kind of guy Genet was. But when I say false, I mean, that's the part that he transforms truth into art. He elevates it as poetry. And in this way it's close to what Anselm Kiefer says. Yes, and I think that, you know, I don't even like reading memoirs. People say, "What's your favorite memoirist? Whose memoirs do you like?" I hardly ever read them. I like fiction, really. Really strange that I should be writing nonfiction, but it just happened. But, um... but that's the kind of, I was thinking of it and writing this. I didn't want to just sit and write an autobiography. I wanted to, you know... And you don't....just write about real time, which I am living, and the things that are, they're the truth of my real time. But what is the truth of our real time? It contains dreams. It contains, you know, spinning off. It contains, uh, uh, misinterpretation. It contains memory. So I was very interested in finding a way to braid all of these things together. (truck backing up, siren blaring) (siren blaring) (honking) (siren continues blaring) (fire truck honking in distance) (chattering)

OLIVA

I'm Gerry Oliva, Director of Facilities. In the spirit of getting things done, Iris actually has been generous the last two years, to set up a fund called Fix It Now, which sets aside a pot of money for us to take care of items that are non-capitally eligible. So these can range anything from, you know, doing a paint job, replacing doors, whatever we need to do in the branches to keep things functional so that they look good. In FY15, we actually completed 25 projects totaling almost a million dollars. In fiscal year '16, working with Sites and Services, we've identified over 260 projects that need to be done. 70 of those are priority one projects. We completed seven projects to date and spent a little bit over $249,000. The projects currently are, at Inwood, we did new flooring; Cathedral, we did a complete refresh; Battery Park City, we did a glass-enclosed multipurpose room; Hamilton Grange, a new boiler; Pelham Bay, new flooring and paint; St. George, new computer table; and we have 11 additional projects in place. We'll continue to work with Sites and Services to reprioritize projects as necessary and to add projects to the list. And as long as we have the funding, we'll spend it and get it done. (distant calling) (echoing chatter) How can we help circulation? Where can we add to it? Where would we find an enhancement? Um, and Melissa rightfully pointed out that in the ebook category, the waits are enormous to get our ebooks, particularly the popular novels. Um, and so...

MAN

More so than in-print books? More, yes, yes. The backlog is, she said, I think almost like four or five months to get.

WOMAN

Yes, it's terrible. It's terrible. If one of the ways you want to spend these funds, which has to be in accord both what we need to do... And... and what the city wants us to do with the city's money, um, I'd like to see the analysis of ebook borrowing, physical borrowing, and whether more money in... you know, what the bang for the buck is, and more money into either of those. Ebooks are growing at about 300% of circulation, and we know that circ in our libraries, physical circ is not growing at 300%. And that the waits, the wait time because of the licensing terms is much longer for ebooks than physical... We... I mean, we can definitely show you the data, but it's very concrete that that's the issue. And because we're going out with SimplyE in, I think, early November now, adding in more collections into ebooks will drive numbers up hugely, we believe.

MAN

Well, we'll meet demand, usually, because you can flick a switch. And the analysis we did on educators and grade levels, we actually believe that we can be very specific about what we target in terms of which ebooks we go after. So we're not just going to buy, you know, whatever is on the street. We're actually, we're actually very carefully looking at where we can make it... So the big decision there, so I'm mindful of this, because the conversations I've started to have... Yes, this is huge. Licensing deals we made, which were great and historic four years ago favored the thick end of distribution, right? So we got permission for the first time to buy licenses for books, but they have to be borrowed enough to justify paying for a full license, whether it's 52 lends, two years, perpetual, whatever, different terms, different deals. And that's why it's gone up 300% and why the other libraries in the country have benefited, which is great. Now I'm going back to the publishers and saying, "Let's get to the rest of the tail, right?" Let's get free previews. Let's get metered rate, so that it's... so that we can offer in effect, a universal e-catalog. The question will still be, though, if you imagine a future in which we... everything is potentially borrowable, electronically, for those who want to, we'll still have to decide whether we want to put money into metered rates for, you know, a book that doesn't circulate hugely or more for the best sellers, and partly that's demand, and it's partly what's the right thing for us to do? Right? So we'll still have to decide.

WOMAN

So that e-content, licensing purchase content strategy, that's what Mike has been talking to Melissa and Christopher about... to help you work through those negotiations. So I guess, I understand the temptation of electronic, because if things go as we hope they are, our... the opportunity there is about to expand, if the deals that we're trying to negotiate work. And demand is clearly expanded more than supply, though I would like to see those numbers. But let's go back and say, you know, we also are concerned that we hadn't been able-- because of budget cuts from the city and more generally-- we hadn't been able to do as much increase of physical book purchasing for circulating and for the research library, and so how does one decide between "e-" and then physical circulating and physical research collections? We looked at what's circulating and what's not circulating in terms of physical books, and we have some analysis of that. We decided to take the money this year and really focus on early childhood. So we've set up specific early childhood family literacy centers. Those, there are special collections being built.

MAN

This is physical, now.

WOMAN 2

Yes.

WOMAN

Physical collections that align with the early literacy program that we're putting in those 20 sites. Plus, looking at the other 60 sites that won't have the whole family literacy centers put in there, and really look at whether we have the materials. We're also testing-- this is part of the service innovation community work that we're doing--- we're also testing building up nonfiction children's collections that don't float, so that we can actually bring... and partnering with the teachers to make sure we have the right materials in those centers. So rather than sort of go whole hog and decide "Let's change the whole thing," we're dipping our toes in to making sure that those are the areas. Certainly for the more popular fiction for adults, I think we understand that very well. But this is where we're really trying to focus, is in the family literacy, and with the schools, and then figuring out for nonfiction materials, what should float or not float and we are building those collections out. So we are addressing out to that physical issue.

MAN

What about the physical research collection budget that we were concerned about? Yes. Not the famous special collection acquisitions, but everything else, right? Right, but the... I think the questions, are we buying the right things, because it's an old collection development policy. It's, like, from 2008, and as I said, I really want the Mellon director to get hand-deep into that. So depending on where we are with that, you know, we can dig deep into that to make sure we're really spending money on things that have research value and are used. And I'm not convinced that that's totally the case right now. I need to look at that a little bit. You know and I know that, at a market rate, we still have to put more money into the research collections, but we also want to look at that in terms of the... our properties and to see whether the boundary of 50-50 is a real boundary or just an agreed-to boundary, and maybe there's something we can do better. I just think it's easier to raise money for research collections than it is to raise money for city collections. Let's make sure we're putting it in the right place. We're just talking about one piece of the possible allocation of these funds, which is collections, electronic, circulating, research, physical and electronic. And, you know, the great dilemma given constrained or not infinite resources, which, sadly, is our fate, is you could spend every dollar on the best sellers, and they would fly out the door, but then we would have no money for the things that... We recommend. We recommend, or that, you know, we need to have in our collection for the off chance that ten years from now, somebody's really going to need it, and there's no place else to find it. We have... Yeah. and, in fact, on the best sellers, those, the non-library circulatory system of the best sellers seems to work pretty well, right? Yeah, yeah. It's not totally socially just for those who can't afford the latest best seller, but it's not like they're not circulating. Whereas, I do think we have a social commitment to the backlist that isn't circulating, right? Yeah, yep. (walkie-talkie squawking)

WOMAN (on walkie-talkie)

Tomorrow morning before we open, we have to put them back downstairs wherever they were. (voice on walkie-talkie responds indistinctly) (chattering)

MAN

Guys, all, you also have a chair, she's going to show you, let's go to the other end. Let's do that whole table down there, everybody. (chattering) What's happening? (clapping) Here we go. (chattering) Oh, my gosh. (chattering) (clapping) Now, who left their jackets here? Whose white jackets were these? They were moved here. So please make sure you're taking yours, not leaving someone's dirty jacket... One of those looks like... We all see how it's done guys. (clapping) (quietly): This is kind of pointless to me. This is here, that's the other one, two, three, four. Okay, got it. Double check if everybody has a sponsor card and a program, please. Like that, let's do that, all right? So let's do this table first. Make it really symmetrical. Do this table, work your way there to the other box, set them back. Guys-- beautiful. I'm very proud of this end, all right, all right. You did a very good job. (vacuum humming) (indistinct voice on microphone) And Anthony Appiah has volunteered to tell us about a few items in this instance from the Schomburg Collection, a selection of works by Phillis Wheatley.

APPAIAH

Phillis Wheatley became the first African-American woman poet to be published in this country in 1770. But she was born in West Africa and sold into slavery when she was seven and brought here and purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write and seemed to have encouraged her poetry. She arrived in Boston on the 11th of July 1761 aboard the Phillis, the ship from which she derived her first name, which was recently returned from Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. When the Wheatleys died, Phillis married a free man of color named John Peters, who was a grocer. The rest of her life was not so happy. Two of their children died in infancy. Peters was imprisoned for debt in 1784 and then Wheatley fell into poverty and died and was quickly followed in death by her only surviving infant son. So her poems are her only legacy. Schomburg has Arthur Schomburg's own copy of an elegiac poem on the Reverend and Learned Mr. George Whitefield which was the first poem Wheatley published. Whitefield was an evangelist in the U.S. and the personal chaplain of Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, who was one of the leading figures in British Methodism. Wheatley's Whitefield elegy brought her into national fame, and it was published in London as well as in Boston. And her reputation was reinforced by the publication of her poem, "Recollection," which first appeared in March 1772 in the London magazine or gentleman's monthly, Intelligencer, which was then more widely published in American and British periodicals. So what we have here on display are materials all collected by Arthur Schomburg himself. As I say, his copy of the first poem Wheatley published, his first edition of the poems, signed by Phillis Wheatley herself. His London magazine with the poem "Recollection," and a copy of Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, published in Boston in 1834, signed by Schomburg. That book, which was published the year Wheatley died by Margaretta Matilda Odell, was the, is the basis of much of what we know about Phillis Wheatley's life. In a famous poem about her enslavement, Wheatley wrote, "'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land, "taught my benighted soul to understand that there's a God, "and there's a Savior too, once I redemption neither sought nor knew." So we can see why Thomas Jefferson in the Notes on the State of Virginia, might have written that, "Religion indeed has produced a Phillis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet." But this was not the only judgment of her made by one of the founders. In 1776 Wheatley wrote a letter and a poem in support of Washington, George Washington, and he replied with a gracious invitation to visit him in Cambridge, stating he would be, "Happy to see a person so favored by the Muses." I'm very grateful to Steven Fullwood, assistant curator of Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books at the Schomburg, both for finding this material and for telling me about it. Unless there is other business before the board, we are adjourned, thank you. (chattering in distance) (laughing, chattering in distance)

PHOTOGRAPHER

Well, here we are again. Thank you for coming. Eyes open. Smile, smile, yes. Yes, that's, I always forget the smile part. There, so you can all see it. Okay. (chuckling) Eyes wide open, smiles. (chattering, saxophone playing jazz tune) (saxophone continues playing) (chattering in multiple language) (chattering, saxophone continue)

MAN

So maybe just talk about the state of play. So you've talked about it historically. You've talked about reparations, but this book clearly is original in one significant formulation among many, but one being that you wrestle with the issue of violence within the black community in ways that typically are positioned as an either-or. That's... that's... Either these are explorations that are about the terrible things that black people do to themselves... Right....or they're about the terrible things that whites do to black people. Yeah. But here, and probably surprising to many, you found a way to web... wed those two things together. And that seems to me to be an explicit response to the conversation we've been having about Michael Brown, for example. Right. Right, well, as you said, it's very much a response to an ocean of "black on black crime" or black people not caring about black on black crime. And I think people who regrettably, you know, people who I agree with quite a bit, play into this sometimes because they are afraid of talking about "neighbor on neighbor," as someone, you know, helpfully phrased it for me. Neighbor on neighbor crime that happens in African American communities, and we say neighbor on neighbor crime because the vast majority of crime that happens in any community is done by other community members. That was always true. That did not become true in 1965. That has always been true in black communities and in other people's communities. It's just true. People don't tend to, you know, take the subway to the other side of town, you know, to commit a crime, they tend to rob people who are right around them. And in that sense, the black community is just another human community. And the fact that the black community suffers more crime is part of the oppression, not separate from the oppression. Mm-hmm. It's not something that, you know, mutate over... it is part of what happens when you have a group of people who, over a course of generations, have been isolated, segregated, plundered, have had things taken from them. The expectation that the amount of crime that happens in their neighborhoods will somehow be the same as what happens in other neighborhoods, it's absurd. Right. It's just absurd, you know. I don't find it hard to explain, nor am I afraid of any sort of conversation about the kind of neighbor on neighbor violence that happens in African American communities. What the hell do you expect to happen? Right. It just makes sense. You know, I'm black, I'm African American, there is so much about being African American and African American politics that I don't understand, primarily because in my household Malcolm X was Jesus. (laughter) You know, and so, your orientation is... I mean, and that's like, again, that's at the root of this book. You know, like the stress on the body. You know, Malcolm's belief, his anger, his rage, you know, at seeing, you know, black people beat in the street and dogs sicced on black people, said to me, "The black body, your body, is precious." Your life is as precious as anyone, and you should not give up your life and you should not give up your body for rights that are already written in the Constitution. I'm making my way very slowly right now through this Barbara Tuchman book called A Distant Mirror, it's a history of the 14th century. And she has this chapter on serfs, and she goes through the literature of how people talk about serfs, and it's no different than how people talk about black people, except the substitution for the science that, you know, we use for black people, I meant black people being scientifically, you know, genetically inferior, is replaced by God. That's really, really the only difference, so when you get to that, you say, "Well, damn, this is something about the human condition." Like-- and I guess in many ways like, that's the power of the African American experience, when you begin to understand, there's actually a statement about the human condition. (cars driving by, distant honking) (chatter echoing) (distant footsteps) (coughing) (chatter echoing)

WOMAN

As we're seeing the fruits of our labor with all the increased staff and increased hours and increased educational opportunities that were created. And we had a great campaign, Invest in Libraries, right? I mean, we need to sort of tee this up for next year. Um, we have to have a new story, a new priority. It can't just be that we want to baseline the money that we got last year. I mean, is it seven-day service across the entire system? Um, is it, you know, more capital money? We have to sort of formulate that here, and before we know it, the budget cycle is going to be upon us. I'm sure that they're going to have their first hearing starting at the end of November for the next fiscal year. So this is sort of an important moment to sort of figure out, and you're the ones to sort of help us craft this message. So I think that we need to sort of start having a discussion about this and, you know, we need to know how much can we absorb here, you know? It was a phenomenal year and, you know, between Louise and Christopher, you know, hiring these people, getting them, you know, assimilated into the library, that's a huge number of people to get into the library system. Um, so, we need to sort of figure out what the message is. And, you know, it's gonna... it's the third year of this administration. We sort of have to have the right message. I believe, George, that we're beginning to get into their psyche a little bit more. So, you know, this is the moment to start thinking about that.

MAN

We had asked for $65 million, and the $65 million would have brought us back to fiscal '08. So we didn't get everything that we asked for. But by the same token, through the eyes of our friends in government, they may feel that the problem as far as library funding is concerned is solved. So that's one of the big dilemmas that we have to deal with at this point. We also know that we had over $1 billion in capital needs that we were asking for. We only received $300 million. But the real remarkable thing that happened last year, is for the first time ever as far as we can remember, is that they actually entered into a dialogue with us at a point in the process where they had never done that in the past. So to them, again, on the capital side, they may feel that problem is solved. So, we have to get past that. We have to articulate a message this year again. And, in addition to the message around funding, we have to continue applying pressure on the community side. I mean, that's... that's a reality and that worked last year, so we have to continue applying pressure in that way, continue to build relationships, not just with our elected officials, but with the groups and the individuals and the users and supporters and all the folks out there that really do love libraries and to have them tell our story for us.

WOMAN

We have a core group of library managers who really were phenomenal last year and are gonna be great this year. And, you know, we need to sort of figure out, also, what their roles are going to be. You know, not everybody is great at this, but people can have buddies and partners who can teach them how to do this. For me, the key questions that we need to get our head around is sort of "What is it, what's next that we want to do, or need to do, or need to fund to do?" And what do we think is a political message that our colleagues in city hall and city council will embrace? I mean, I think one of the lessons we learned last year is surprise, surprise, politicians like simple messages, right? So, six-day service, all right? And, you know, the way to win here is to think about the match between what it is we are delivering and want to deliver, and what is a message that is easily projected from them, so that they can rally the citizenry in support of what they're trying to do as well. And this only works if we think strategically for and with the political leaders and match that with the substance of what we think we need to deliver and need to find the funding for, and that's the intersect that we're looking for. (leaves rustling) (rake scraping) Macomb's Bridge, as you may not know, is the jewel of the New York Public Library. (excited chattering) And we do have programs such as this for the community, for us to come and talk and have a conversation. And it is about moving forward. It's not just about talking about, we can't preach to the choir, you know. Mm-hmm. Right. We already know. But it is about moving forward, and sometimes you have to take little steps to move forward. So you have come to talk, and there are five young men outside, and I say to them, "Hey guys, come on in and listen to Brother Muhammad talk." Because even if they're in here on the computer, that's good enough for me. Yeah. Because they're listening, and that's what the beauty of Macomb's Bridge is, that we're small, right? They chose not to, and that's fine. Latron did. Yeah, Latron is over there. (claps) But they... but there is this peer kind of thing and we've all been children and there's that peer kind of a thing and they chose to stay outside and take pictures while, you know, doing whatever it is that they do. This is a first step. We also have our writers group, which is a group of adults who come together and talk about things in the community, but not only that, talk about things, what's going on in the library. You know, the free access that we have in the library in your own community. And you can't force people to come in and take information that's available to them, you can only let them know it's there. From what I see, I'm teaching in the school system. I grew up single. My mom was young, single. I knew my father, but he didn't live with me. My husband, same thing. We grew up without our fathers in our home. We grew up, there were "uncles" there, quote unquote, but no fathers were there. So, we tried to change that with our son, you know, and made sure that we were there and it does make a difference. Not only us being in the household, but us being there, because you can still be a family, but if you're working 12 hours and your husband is working 12 hours, your child is still being raised by the street, or pray to God that someone in the school is caring enough for them to let them stay a little longer. I see now, afterschool programs start early.

Some students are out there 6

00 in the morning, waiting for the school to open because their parents have to go to work to pay these bills or to do whatever they need to do

and then they go home 8

00, 8:30.

That's from 6

00 in the morning

to 8

30 at night. There is no family, no kind of connection.

MAN

Okay, I told a lot of people, you have to... don't depend on anyone. Do it yourself, just believe in yourself and keep working at it. I couldn't afford to go to film school. I learned from the library. I learned how to type. I learned how to read a script. I learned how to do all that from the library. People say, "Why didn't you go to school?" I was taking care of my kids, I couldn't afford it, couldn't find no job. So, I learned from the library. But we have to stick together and we have to form a group where we can say, "We just ain't going to take it no more," and just do and look out for each other. We cut each other's throat a lot. Because once somebody get it, think as, or Nas was saying, you know, once you start getting that money, everybody want to go spend money downtown, they... nobody want to bring money back into the community. And then when we try to bring back money in the community, we're always trying to get... cut each other's throat. If we come together, it seems like the only time we come together is when something crazy happens with us, you know? As soon as it's over, it died out and everything's back the same. Can I say something about what he just said? My grandmother had a store, and I'll tell you how she lost her store. Like almost every other black store owner. When you have a store, you have to buy products. You have to buy straws, you have to buy brown paper bags, you have to buy canned peas. So, what happens is you have to go to your distributor, the people who are distributing these items, and most of the time, most-- like 99% of the time, they're white. So what basically happened with my grandmother is that they kept going up on her prices of her straws, of her paper bags, of her canned peas, of her this and that. So, every time they went up, she had to go up. But those same distributors weren't going up on their prices in other communities. Right. They stayed the same. So, basically, that's how they basically get it, get you out, and it goes from one thing to another, from farms to our meat markets. We have no farms. As a matter of fact, the government was sued by black farmers over 20 years ago, and they have yet, to this day, got their money for their farms. So, I mean, it's terrible. Yeah, and if you notice the neighborhood and who owns the stores and what we particularly eat is outrageous prices. Like, my mother used Hellmann's mayonnaise. You go to the store now, Hellmann's mayonnaise is like $6.99 when it should be $3.99. And the same goes for chicken wings. It's more than steak now. You know, it's because we eat this and we're going to buy it, you know, so-- so it's a lot of that going on, but it's almost every single aspect of our lives are hit some kind of way.

WOMAN

We talk about these things that we need for our children in the communities, but we don't have 'em in the communities for them. We don't have this-- these tapes that show and tell their true history. The only thing we have available for them are textbooks that tell them untruths. Like McGraw Hill, they're still printing untruths about our lives.

MAN

Would you tell everyone about what happened with McGraw Hill, because it's an interesting example. Okay, McGraw Hill, we spend millions, billions of dollars across our country, giving them the right to write textbooks that we use to educate our children on a daily basis. So they wrote a textbook, and in it, it mentioned, it was a section about slavery and it said something to the effect, I don't want to quote, but the slaves came to America as workers to lighten the load, but the thing that-- the significant point is when it... they were contacted, they said that they did it and they will only change the writing if someone calls them and asks. So if you haven't heard about it, your schools haven't heard about it, the books won't be changed. So this is information that we are allowing our children to hear because the Department of Ed, they have a big contract with McGraw Hill. Yeah, so... So what do we do about that? So McGraw Hill, in a geography book, as you just described, describes, on a section, immigration, and it's looking at how this diverse, very diverse country, a nation, that we often say, of immigrants, where did its people come from? And it's pitched to a ninth grade audience of social studies students learning geography, and in the section that looks at the southeast corner of the United States it's purple, meant to denote African Americans. And there's a little bubble that jumps out and says, between the 1500s and 1800s, immigrants from Africa came to work in the southeast part of the country. I'm paraphrasing. Literally referred to immigrants... black people as immigrant workers.

WOMAN

Workers, yeah. Now, that was egregious enough, but the irony, that in the passage referencing indentured servants to explain how people of lower economic status from England and Australia arrived here, said that indentured servants came and often had to work, had to do difficult work for little or no pay. So in reference to the quality of their experience and their recompense for their contribution, there's actually a qualitative judgment about what happened to indentured servants and nothing with reference to people of African descent. And it is hard to justify this. There's a page of advisors. There's an editorial board, and unfortunately Texas is where this textbook was being used, which is the largest textbook market in the country and this happens, you know, in 2015. The one thing I'll say, and this is a very exceptional thing to say, but it is true. This community happens to be very different than many others. You do have the Schomburg Center. Yes. So, you do have a place where you can spend the rest of your life and sending your children there for the rest of their lives to learn the truth, and the truth is complicated, but you certainly can draw upon the collective wisdom of people who have thought deeply and paid very close attention to the historical record to correct the mythologies and lies about people of African descent in this country. So we know that, you know, the average woman makes 77 cents on the dollar that the average man makes. The black woman makes 62 cents on the dollar for every dollar that a white man makes and even less than her white counterpart. So are you supposed to walk into the marketplace and say "Yeah, pay me less than everybody else?" Or are you supposed to say, "I want to be part "of making sure that the women who come behind me are paid equally for their contribution to our economy"? So that's troubling. And I'm not sure where that came from other than this notion that there's a price to be paid for standing up for justice and inequality. And that's certainly true. But if we don't teach our kids at an earlier date something different about privileging values in how we govern ourselves in the world and how we think about people and how we relate to one another, then I'm afraid we will be reproducing the same outcomes as we move forward. (chattering)

EDMUND DE WAAL

But I fell in love with this man who wanted to understand the world and he's an extraordinary person who leads me towards porcelain. Tschirnhaus thinks that it's possible to analyze the products of the arts in a philosophical manner that boats and bridges and buildings should be considered as the arts of invention. These objects can train what he calls the active imagination. Because they exhibit all the possibilities of imagination. In fact, I realize, he takes on the world as possibility. As you walk down the street there's nothing in the material world that you encounter that cannot be brought into this space of reflection, and at each point of this reflection as you pause and look with dedication, at this lamppost, this gateway, you recreate the manner of its creation. You move through the series of actions that caused it to come into being. And above all, he's interested, he writes, in how to obtain what should be observed in the first mode of the formation of things. How something comes into being is critical. It's a kind of poiesis. And when I read this, my heart swells. This is my rubric, of my journey to my white hills, this tracing of the first formation of porcelain from white earth into something else. Tschirnhaus is describing with a passionate lucidity the value of looking and thinking about how an object as an idea comes into being. Primo Levi, my hero, wrote in The Wrench of the advantage of being able to test yourself, not depending on others in the test, reflecting yourself in your work, on the pleasure of seeing your creature grow, beam after beam, bolt after bolt. Necessary, symmetrical, suited to purpose, by which Primo Levi, a chemist who spent his working life analyzing paint as well as being a writer, means that method is interesting. Be very, very careful when you describe how something is made, how it comes into shape, as process is not to be skated over. The manner of what we make defines us.

INTERVIEWER

Music and your work. Music occupies your life... Yes....and you work to it. And it was this wonderful piece that I read where you talk about the various musical moments that mattered to you from Keith Jarret to Purcell to the piece we're going to listen to if we could. (piano music plays)

ANNOUNCER

Ex Libris is available on DVD.