 Okay. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. Yes, it's a webinar where we cover anything that may be of interest to librarians across the state and actually across the country. These sessions are free to anyone who wants to attend and watch our live sessions and our recordings afterwards. We do them live on Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m. central time. So if you're available, then come and join us. Otherwise, we do have recorded all of our shows going back to January 2009 when we first started, so you can go on our website and watch any of our recordings if you cannot join us at 10 a.m. on Wednesdays. We do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live, presentations, mini-training sessions, interviews, basically anything we think that might be of interest and vaguely related to libraries. We'll put you on the show. And we have commission staff that do some of these presentations, and we also bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. This morning on the line, we have with us Michael Porter. Hi, Michael. Hello. Hello. And he is, I've got a longish bio for him here, librarian, presenter, author, practical technology fan, and the most important thing, of course, a Pez collector. But he is also the, I mean, previously worked at the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation, OCLC Web Junction, Allen County Public Library, so he's been all over and everywhere in all sorts of different capacities, library-related. Currently, he is the CEO of Library Renewal, which is a great organization that he and a whole group of people put together to help libraries research, dedicated to research partnerships and grassroots support for libraries who are struggling to offer electronic content to their users. eBooks, eAnything, it's a big deal out there, obviously, and this great organization, Library Renewal, at libraryrenewal.org. Michael is in charge of that, and to help libraries figure out what to do with all this. Today, though, he is going to speak to us about renewal in general. So I will hand over to you, Michael, and if you want to give a more, a different explanation of who you are and what you do, you can. Otherwise, you can just go ahead and take it away. Okay. Thank you very much, Christa. Before we get started, I did want to thank you, Christa, for all the work and help that you've provided in getting ready for the webinar. You've been a joy to work with, and I know everybody on the line here is probably familiar with your work. You do a great job, so thank you. Thank you very much. We're very pleased to get you on the show, and especially, I didn't mention this that everybody might not know, Michael's way over on the West Coast, so it's 8 a.m. for him over there, correct? Yeah. A little bit earlier than us. It's okay. I do lots of presentations all over, and so I'm used to doing one or two days where I don't get too much sleep. I tend to, you know, just to fess up to everybody, I tend to procrastinate. That style actually works pretty well when I'm making presentations for me, so it's no problem at all. Okay. It's all good. Thank you very much. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's actually, it is an honor every time I get to present, so everyone that's attending or watching the archive, thank you very much for taking the time. There are a lot of ways you could spend your time, and I've tried pretty hard to give you a presentation that is worth your time, and make it appealing to you regardless of sort of where you are, what kind of library you're in, and have it be applicable, and hopefully a little inspiring even. So I guess, Christa, if it's all right with you, I'll jump in here. Yeah, go right ahead. Take it away. Yep. Cool. Hi, everybody. I'm Michael Porter. We're here to talk about renewal, as Christa said, and I want to talk about how you could renew yourself, your library, and your career as a part of the work that you do. There are lots of opportunities for lots of powerful impact, and we want to talk about how you, you, I'm talking to you, can actually make some of that good stuff happen and get some more potential realized for the library through you and your work. So let's talk more about that. I thought we'd do an introduction first. Let's see here. There we go. All right. Sorry, I had a little, my slide movement here figured out. All right. So, hi, I'm Michael Porter. And just in case any of you were wondering, I'm not this Michael Porter, the inspirational gospel singer from the early 80s, though I do know that some people feel like they should thank God for the internet because they can take up pictures like this. So that's not me. That's me. I'm this Michael Porter. And this is the Michael Porter that's worked in the library for 20 years, you know, I try to take picture every year or so when I'm at work just so you can see how things change years go by. I'll just tell you usually, you know, when I'm in person and I show the slides, I get this slide, I get a laugh. So hopefully some of you got a chuckle out of this. I'll also tell you we've got about an hour together and we have 140 slides. And I know I do this as well. I like to multitask when I watch presentations. But I will tell you if you, if you multitask this, you're going to miss 140 pretty spiffy slides. All right, I've worked in the library for 20 years. I also had this strange job once where I got to travel all over the world to dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. And I got to visit libraries all over the world. And it was incredibly inspiring. Every port we went to, I would stop and I would find the library and visit the library and see if I could talk with folks there. It was just a fabulous experience. So in traveling all over the world, seeing lots and lots and lots of libraries, I couldn't help but just love libraries. It's the power, the impact, and the potential of libraries is so clear globally. But you know, before I had this job, I worked for the Gates Foundation in the U.S. Library Program. And I was on the road for two out of three weeks for four years. And that let me work with thousands of library staffers, hundreds and hundreds of different libraries actually in the libraries in 33 different states. So I loved libraries before. I understood why libraries were important. But going to all of these locations, including several libraries in Nebraska, I might add, it was just impossible not to see the care and passion that library staffers were putting in to make these institutions work in their local communities. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. And I was already motivated to work and try to help libraries and help library staff. But with this job and with the job that I had seeing libraries all over the world, hopefully, as you get to know me here, as your presenter, since I'm yapping at you for an hour, you'll understand that this comes from a place that has a little experience behind it and also has intellectual, and I would say there's a lot of belief in my heart as well about this. So when I say things about you and your work in your library, I don't know you perhaps individually. I don't know your exact job or what your boss is like or what the politics in your library are like. But I do know how libraries work. I've tried really hard to get some fairly simple things and some inspirations and stories together today to help you find ways that you could renew yourself, your library, and your career and hopefully get some pretty exciting fun and interesting things done. Things that you enjoy as well as provide lots of benefit for the community. Okay, so caring about libraries so much, I think a lot about what made libraries work. How did we get here? What made us and our institution so successful in every community around this country? There are more libraries in McDonald's and Starbucks and that's significant. There's something there. We're going to talk about that a little more. I know we know the reasons, but it's sometimes nice to think about some of them specifically. So I think a lot about that, but I also think a lot about the fact that some of what made libraries work for the past hundred years or more, they're not working quite as well as some of those things. Now, many of the things, and we're going to talk about this, the things that underlie all of our work are the same as far as principles go. But some of the actual duties and tasks and services, those are revolving in ways that don't really mesh with some of the traditional services we've offered to accomplish our missions and work towards the principles that libraries are built to further. So I guess all in all, as we're getting to know each other here as I introduced myself to you, I would say I'm very concerned for libraries, love libraries, also hopeful for libraries though. And also I will say it's one of the few things that really truly I get pretty patriotic about. And now to some of you that might sound awesome, some of you that might sound hokey. I've seen enough of libraries in this country, in this world, to understand that it's really important to democracy and to the communities that we all live in. So I'm very concerned about libraries. In fact, I'm concerned enough that I left my job and started working full-time with a group of libraries all around the country and individual librarians all around the country to start a nonprofit called Library Renewal. And just very briefly, we're going to talk a little more about Library Renewal later, but we were created specifically to further the mission of libraries as it relates to e-content. So that's what we focus on as an organization. And we are working to build a new e-content acquisition and distribution infrastructure with transparent pricing for libraries. The idea is libraries would control this system and understand exactly what the price points were and any fees or anything would be explicitly explained and the cost would be minimized because we're a nonprofit run by libraries writing what fair prices were for any of the services that the organization that we would create together through the organization. It's a different model, and we've been working on it for a couple years. It's a gigantic task. There's lots of movement with e-content right now in that market, but we believe strongly that we have something to offer and as you'll see later, if you want to talk to us about that, you can. So let's talk about renewal for a second. Thinking about this presentation and how to make it valuable for you and your work in your library, it really dawned on me that I'm a real advocate for renewal. And I also advocate for it enough that I really believe you can do it. There's a lot that you can do. So when we think about renewing yourself, your library, and your career, I believe that you can do it, and hopefully by the time we're through this presentation, you'll feel even more like that than perhaps you do now. Before we get into the meat of things here, let's just start off with the definition of the word renew, the root word of renewal. So as a transitive verb renew means several things, and I pulled the definitions that I mean when we're talking about renewing yourself, your library, and your career to make like new, to restore to freshness, vigor, or perfection, to make new spiritually or regenerate, to restore to existence, or revive, to make extensive changes, or to rebuild, to replace, or replenish. That's what we're talking about with renewal. Look, I know you have a hard job. I know it. Before I went to library school, I worked for 10 years in a library system. This was the larger system, had 13 branches in the system. Worked in the main library in circulation. I worked extra hours in the systems office. Then I moved over to the children's department, and then I moved to the biggest, busiest branch to be a reference librarian. So I, and by the way, numerically, most of the folks in the country that call themselves librarians don't have master's degrees, and I believe in the importance of a master's degree, but I also understand that many of the best librarians in the country don't have master's degrees. Many of the best librarians in the country do, of course. But I'm more interested in people that are committed and working really hard, and doing all they can to understand how libraries work, the principles of librarianship, how to really be good librarians to serve their community through the institution of the library. So if I say librarian, I do mean you. I mean library staff. So just so you know, sometimes there's a little distinction when people present, and I just want to make that clear. I agree with you totally on your definition and explanation of a librarian, Michael. Okay, thanks. And you know, certainly there's respect for the work that I and you and lots of other folks have done getting master's degrees, but there's, after having that job with the Gates Foundation and just saying hundreds of libraries and librarians, they wanted to do that, but they couldn't, but were absolutely committed to doing as much as they could to understand what it meant to be a librarian. Not everybody is like that. Some people, it's just a job, and they're just grinding out the time. We're going to actually talk about that a little bit as we move forward, because I believe there's opportunity even for you folks for renewal. Okay, so I have a challenge, or you could say a dare for you, and I mean you. Here's what it is. I dare you to come up with an idea. And I mean an idea for a project at your library. And I mean a project that you really want to do, something that you're really excited about. Let's say you are in a larger library and you work at the desk and you would like to do a display. Now look, I'm not saying this would fly at your library. You'd be allowed to do this, but maybe you want to try this project. That could be an idea. If you work in a real small library and aren't open very many hours, maybe you want to try some sort of reading group that you haven't done before. I don't know. It's not my idea. It's your idea. Something that you could do in your library that you would really enjoy working on that would get you excited and be a little different from what you usually do. So that's my challenge to you, to come up with an idea. Something that you're really excited about. And then the next step of that challenge is for me to dare you or challenge you to make that happen. I know lots of folks are saying, oh no, no, no, no. You don't know what it's like. I'm too busy. I can't do something like that. Well, let's not talk about that yet. We're going to talk about that. But despite the fact that you might be saying, stop this. No, no, no. I'm not going to do anything different. Let's just for this at this point, let's just decide we're going to go ahead and make it happen. And when I say we're going to make it happen, I really mean you're going to make it happen. You. I would encourage you to now go do it. So I dare you in order to make this happen to do three things to make this happen. Make a strategy. What do you want to do? What does it mean? What are the consequences? Make a strategy for making that happen. And then define tactics, the actual things you'll do to make your strategy for this project, this idea that you want to make happen in your library really happen, and then assign a timeline to it. Then I want you to write all that down and keep thinking about it. So I dare you do this. I dare you to come up with an idea that you really like, that you really want to do something a little different in your library. It doesn't have to be gigantic. It could be gigantic. And then make a strategy, tactics, and a timeline for it. Write all that down. Keep thinking about it. Get it stuck in your head. Maybe you're in the shower, right? It's drifting off to sleep. That's sometimes that's, maybe that's not what you want to think about. You drift off to sleep. This is my challenge to you. Come up with this idea. Create a strategy, tactics, and timeline. Write them down. Keep thinking about them. And then refine those plans. Now, we're going to talk more about this, but we're going to talk about why this is a challenge that I'm issuing to everybody listening today and why I think that it can actually work. So this is meant to be encouraging not to be, it's a little, maybe a little cheesy here, but it's meant to be sort of, yeah, let's go do this. Like, not like rah-rah, everything's great when it's not. But you know, you can go do this. And I know. So look, let's go back to this. I know a lot of folks are saying stop. Oh, stop it. You don't know what it's like in my library. And I know, truthfully, a lot of folks are saying this. No, no, no, no, no. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Sometimes there are reasons to say stop, stop, stop. However, I will say that I am of the opinion that sometimes, sometimes in library land, this attitude of stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. No, no, no, no. It can be a little rampant. And it might not be the most popular thing for me to say, but I have seen this over and over again there. And it's not just libraries, right? It's human nature sometimes. You can get stuck in a rut with coworkers, with management, with politics that just say stop, stop, stop. And before you know it, you have that attitude, too. And I'm not saying all of you have that attitude. But I know it's something that can happen. So I know some of you are thinking, I'm not going to think of some new idea. It's not going to happen. And more than that, no, no, no, no, no. I know some of you are thinking, forget this. You don't understand. You don't know what it's like, Michael Porter. Who are you to come in and say this? Forget it. Forget it. I'm overworked. I'm underpaid. Besides, I'm not the one in the library that has authority. And you know what? I know some people think maybe not some of you attending. Maybe. Very well maybe. Some of you might just think, you know what? I have a crappy job. And I don't like my job. Some of you are thinking, you've tried something like this before and it didn't work. Or some of you might just feel deflated. Oh, you know, I don't get listened to. Or maybe you might not say it, but you might think it when you're being really frank. I'm scared to do something different. And you know, I know there will be people that hear this message and think, you know what? I don't have to listen to you. What do you know? And by the way, who are you to come in and tell me to come up with some ideas, some big program to make some ideas and some planning tactics? OK. Well, look, you know, I get it. I understand that these are all challenges. I also understand that at your library you might want to do something that you might not be able to make work. It just might not fly at your library. I get that. However, as we're going to talk about, that doesn't actually mean that you can't do things that are different, that move your library in the direction it needs to go, that let you play to your strengths and do things that you really enjoy and really want to work on. I know that that's true because I've done it and I know dozens and dozens and dozens of other folks that have done it as well. So I'm not trying to be all sys-boom-bah-rah-rah-rah when you shouldn't be like that. I'm trying to be realistically optimistic. And that's something we're going to talk about as we move forward. So let's talk a little more about, you know, like, look, OK, Michael Porter, who thinks he can waltz in here and talk to folks in Nebraska about how they need to do some new project, something different, something that maybe breaks the mold a little bit that they're really excited to work on, that they might not be able to even get approval to do. Why would I even want to bother doing that? Well, let's talk more about why you would want to bother do something a little different, something that got you excited about your job, that maybe helped your library deliver a service that needs to be delivered more effectively. Why would you want to bother to do that? Well, here's the first thing. Look, you, you, each one of you, you have more power. We, we have more power individually to affect positive change than many of us realize. And I don't care what your job is in the library. I believe this. I believe this because in part I've been able to do some things like this. And the reason I've been able to do things like this is because dozens and dozens of people have held my hand and taught me and mentored me and worked with me. I know it's possible. And just in case any of you are wondering, my slides are advancing automatically. For some reason, it's very strange. I'm not sure what's going on. But if I seem to skip around a little bit, that's what's going on. So despite that, I believe that you have more power and ability than you may realize. And I'm serious about this. You, you, each one of you. And to, to exemplify that, I would just say, you know, here's a slide. Insert image of heroes. There are lots of heroes that were brought to their heroic deeds through circumstance, certainly. But, or maybe the position or wealth or fame of their family, and then they decided to do some of the right things that made it easier for them to be heroes that we know of. But most heroes are just everyday heroes. And most heroes, you know heroes that I don't know. And I would say, I have seen this. I have seen that. Working in the children's department, a very large children's department, 300,000 items in the whole department. This is a big children's department. I've seen hundreds of kids that saw the librarians in that department as heroes. And it's part of what motivates me. And sometimes, you know, I can get a little choked up thinking about this. I remembered those little kids who were so shy and scared and had horrible lives. And they would come in the library, and after seeing me there every day for a year or two, they would finally give me a hug. And you just knew they didn't have anybody else in their life like that. And it wasn't me. It wasn't me. You know, yeah, sure, it was good that I was there. But there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of us from the country doing this work every day. That's a hero to me. That's a hero to that little kid. And so my point here is that you could stick your image in here. Really. Doing your job. And you know what? I don't care what your job is at the library when I'm saying this. You could be the executive director of a multi-library system. You could be a shelver. You could work in the maintenance department. You could be the one woman that runs everything in a one-room library. And I know several of you may very well be in each of those positions. I believe you have potential to renew your library through your work. And I believe that if you find something that is very appealing to you, that you're interested in doing, that is different, that is a little experimental perhaps, you're going to be more motivated and you're going to have a better chance of success at it. So really you. I believe you have the power to do this. Still though, I know some people are saying stop, stop, stop. You don't get it, dude. So let's talk a little more about why we should bother to try some new project that we really believe and want to make happen to further the mission of our library to make our library more successful. Why bother doing something new? I'm too busy already, right? Well, your library serves a role in the community. No other institution does. It's rare. It's important. It's wonderful. And truthfully, when things are so motivated by money and other issues and we're all so busy and we have families and lives, it's pretty amazing that the library exists. And it exists because you make it all happen. Your work makes this happen. Really, again, you, you and your work do this. Here's another reason why you should bother because communities need libraries to thrive. And, you know, when I present about libraries, I always have this slide in my presentations, this equation, libraries equal content plus community. If you think about what libraries do, we're about content, access, helping people find the right content and engaging with our community to make sure this institution facilitates access to content and community. Now, clearly, this could be a lot more. We could talk about wisdom and knowledge and all different kinds of community. There's a lot more to this. But this is an important role that no other institution in society fills. Here's another example of why you should bother. This is a film that was made shortly after World War II finished. And it's about democracy. It was an instructional video. And I took some screenshots. In this video, they described some of the conditions for democracy. And two of those are economic balance and enlightenment. Well, what is the library there for? Everybody can use it. It's the free public library and enlightenment because, well, that's what happens when you read, when you learn, when you engage with your community through content at your library. So it's important for you to bother trying to push limits and do things that really get you excited and inspired and motivated because you further the conditions of democracy through the only institution in your community that's set up to do it the way we're set up to do it. There are also a couple of signs of democracy that were in this video. I took screenshots of it right after World War II was when it was made. Shared respect and shared power. So enlightenment involves knowledge. Certainly, you have to get knowledge before you can be enlightened. And if we all know the axiom of knowledge is power, right? If you think about the equal access that libraries are absolutely committed to, that's all about shared power. And we're also completely about shared respect, right? We care about our community. We want our community to be uplifted to become richer. That could be financially certainly, but that could be emotionally. We're going to talk more about this in a variety of ways. So when you think about why you should bother maybe trying something new or getting a little excited about a specific project that you could actually do something on and maybe get more energy and positive things going on in your head even sometimes. There are reasons to do this because you have a job at the library. The library is so important to democracy and to this country and to your community. It's important that we do things like this. And not to be all super-uber-patriotic, but this is something that is pretty exciting and pretty rare. And it is something that's pretty great. And so I would just say, if anybody ever asks why we still need libraries when we have Google, Apple, or Amazon, remember what we've been talking about, these principles and conditions of democracy, the role that your job fills in society and the fact that 15 years ago, Google didn't exist. Imagine that. That's crazy. So if somebody says, well, I don't need the library when I can do searches on Google, okay, well, if companies come, look, I don't know if this will or won't happen, right? But Google could go out of business. They're not baked into the fabric of democracy, but libraries are. And we need to perpetuate that. And when I think personally, think about how technology is evolving and how people need to get things electronically and how horribly expensive and difficult it is for people to get things electronically through the library, I'm very concerned about the future of libraries. Concerned enough that, look, hey, I'll put my money where my mouth is, I worked with and took years to work on this and we're still, we've got a long way to go. Believe me, we've got a long way to go. And it's not always easy, but I cared enough about this to seek out a couple dozen other folks that could either come and get involved individually or with their library to help create a new system for libraries to control the cost and pricing and access to their e-content. Now, look, I'm not just pushing library renewal, I'm just telling you that if you're saying, well, I can't do that, look, who the heck am I to try to do something like that? Really, truly, that's why I got more people involved and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. What I'm trying to say right now is your role, your job is incredibly important and it's gonna stay important and the way you're gonna engage and move things forward is by doing things, for example, what we've been talking about here is finding a project you're really excited in, making a smart plan and then following through on that plan to try to make that happen. Here's another reason why you should bother. This is the average income for the bottom 90% of us. These are households. Average income for the bottom 90% of households is just $1,000. That's not a lot. 90% of the people in this country need libraries and as technology evolves, if libraries aren't playing in that environment where people wanna get things, lickety-split, what they want, when they want how they want it, if they can't do that through the library, that's a huge problem for democracy, for the country. I gotta tell you, just be selfish for your job. You wanna keep your job, we gotta try doing some different things and I believe all the stuff I've been telling you, you can do it and I'm outlining a simple plan for you to try a project and I'll tell you to try one project that can spawn into another project, and before you know it, you're helping to ensure that libraries can be around to serve these people that desperately need what the library offers that they can't get anywhere else. Look, I'm not mad at people that make bucket loads of money all the time. They use the library too. We like those folks. They're part of our community as well. But numerically, when you look at split, there's a powerful reason for us to try to get things moving forward in our libraries. Here's another reason why you should bother to try to put some energy into trying some new project to renew yourself professionally or your library or your career or your community through some project you might wanna take on. This is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Many of you, probably all of you have seen this and studied this in school. And basically, as you know, at the bottom, these are things that, you know, you have to have these things at the bottom before you can move to the next level and then to the next level and the next level at the top is self-actualization. So, like, look, if you can't breathe and don't have food and water, right, you're not gonna be doing any of these other things. And, you know, think about this list of sleep, sex, homeostasis, excretion. Oh, look, I realize we're an employee company, but when you think about this stuff, we have things in the library about this, right? And go to the next level, security of body employment, resources, morality, family health, like, look, we have things in our library about all of this stuff. So when you think about how the library fits in the people's lives, right, all of this stuff comes into play. Let's talk a little more about why I should bother. Let's talk about the principles of libraries and librarianship. So libraries are designed around specific principles. Your job is designed around specific principles. I asked about these principles on Facebook, I guess a couple of months ago now, and I got this huge thread of responses. People were very interested to chime in about this question about how you would describe the principles of librarianship. And in that discussion, I was pointed to some work that two different groups of libraries had volunteered to come and work together on as a committee, two committees, to come up with the core values of librarianship. And these core values are listed here. Access, confidentiality, privacy, democracy, diversity, education, lifelong learning, intellectual freedom, preservation, public good, professionalism, service, and social responsibility. And I can tell you these were debated ad nauseam twice in two different committees. I feel pretty good about this list. And in fact, when I asked the folks, and on the left there you can see a little mini picture of all the comments people chimed in with, these things came up. They came up, they were phrased a little differently. This is a pretty darn good list of things. We're the only institution committed to all of these things, specifically all of these things, and we need to do all we can to further them. Because humanity and these principles are critical to society. They bring hope, they lift people up, and it's right in the blood and the genes of the library. Our very existence as institutions and your job, your job was created around these principles. To me, that's powerful stuff. That's amazing stuff. And you know, there you go. It's a grand fall flight, I guess. At least when it comes to libraries, that's for sure. Okay, you and your work makes all of us happen. So these are fancy shiny words here, but it's true. So when I think about the United States, sure I love the United States, but I love libraries more. And I believe that it's important for you to think about ways to renew yourself, your library, and career, and it's important for you to think realistically about ways that you can do this. You can renew yourself, your library, and your career. So I am going to say you can do it, but I'm going to say that with some tempering. Tempering that is realistic optimism. I consider myself a realistic optimist, and I would encourage you to be a realistic optimist as well. So this is a slide I have in all my presentations. Just because you're optimistic doesn't mean you're naive. But there are some schools of thought that think that if I just believe that success is going to come to me, and it can come to me easily, I can just believe it and it'll happen. Look, it's important to believe in things, but there's more to it than that. Just believing that success will come easily to you is not going to make it happen, as our friend Dwight would tell us. So I have some quotes here, and I don't usually do this, but these are really good stories, and so we're going to walk through these, and there are some really important lessons here about how to be realistically optimistic. So you're not going to be some schmuck who's just all smiling, everything's great all the time, constantly, but you're going to be realistic, but you're going to be optimistic, because that's the only way you're going to move things forward successfully, and that's the way you're also going to get the most value out of your work. You're going to get a better feeling in your head about what you're working on as well. So realistic optimists, they believe they'll succeed, but they also believe that they have to make the success happen. They don't just believe that it's going to, they just believe in it and it's going to happen. That's not enough. You have to make it happen, just as you believe it will happen. One way you might say this is luck takes discipline. This is one of the librarian old posters, and I opened my beer on the bottom of the beer cap and said, luck takes discipline. I thought that was great. So that's sort of what they're saying. You have to believe you're going to succeed, but you have to make that success happen. It takes effort and really careful planning persistence and choosing the right strategies. So when we started this presentation, and I challenged you, I dared you to come up with some idea about some project, something you want to do at your library to move its mission forward that's not getting done, that you're really excited about. And then we're talking about how we need strategy and we need tactics. We need a timeline and then we need to review that and think about it and get it nice and healthy and then put it into action. All of that takes effort, careful planning, persistence and choosing the right strategies. So when we're talking about realistic optimism, we're not just talking about busy work. We're not just talking about smiling and saying everything's great when it's not. We're not saying we're going to be able to do everything in the world. No, no, no, we're being realistically optimistic and that is important and necessary in libraries, particularly right now. Here's a little story about Winston Churchill. His shortest speech ever. Here's what it is. It's not going to take long. Here's what it is. Never give in. You've heard it. Never give in. Never give in. Accept the convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. So this is right. This is when Hitler had defeated all of the original eight allies except for Churchill's England. Now look, I'm not saying working in the library is like World War II. However, there is an important point in that things can seem pretty dark and you can still triumph. And I know some of you work in libraries where the politics are not good and you are perhaps not given the amount of respect or freedom or capacity that you feel you deserve. There are ways you can move towards that. There are lots of ways you can move towards that. It's critically important for you to be optimistic to make this happen and for you to do as much good as possible, for as many people as possible through the library. You don't have to be all goofy and happy and smiley, right, but you have to be realistically optimistic. That's the path to getting those things that you want and need from your library and your career and for your community. So realistic optimists, they recognize the need for serious thought to how they will deal with obstacles, how we will deal with obstacles. And in giving thought to dealing with those obstacles will be prepared and that preparation then is just going to increase your confidence in your ability to get things done, which will make you in turn more optimistic. Imagine that, realistically optimistic, not just goofy optimistic, but realistically optimistic. So what that means really is that believing the road to success is going to be rocky. That's going to lead to greater success because you're prepared, you're expecting these challenges and you're expecting to take action on them. So really people are confident, this is a great quote, people who are confident that they will succeed and equally confident that success won't come easily. They put in more effort, they plan how they'll deal with problems before they arise and they persist longer in the face of difficulty. So being realistically optimistic when you're thinking about your project or the project after that, or maybe the project after that, if you realize it's probably not going to come too easily, you're going to put in more effort, you're going to plan how you'll deal with problems even before they arise and you'll know that because you've done this work, you're going to last longer as you're working through this stuff. So this is the last quote I'm going to read to you, cultivate your realistic optimism by combining a positive attitude with an honest assessment of the challenges that await you. Don't visualize success, visualize the steps you will take in order to make success happen. And this is by the woman that wrote this article, this was in the Harvard Business Review, it's very short but very fine article. So let's go back, I dare you to come up with an idea, I dare you, something you really want to do at your library that will maybe break some new ground. I challenge you to make strategy, tactics, and I dare you to do this, do it. And then write it down, think about it, mull it over, refine it, and then do it. Okay, I'm going to go through this maybe a little quickly because sometimes it's hard to think about motivation. And I want to tell you this story because it took me, I still something I still struggle with being optimistic. I work for decades trying to train my brain to be realistically optimistic. I still struggle with it sometimes. It's not always easy. But as you work at doing this, you start to find motivation and inspiration in places that are there right in front of you that you never saw before. It's like you train your brain to let it see treasure that can help you and help you help other people and it just makes you happier in your head. I do presentations, I do lots of presentations about future libraries, about technology, about ebooks, about design. That's my undergrads in painting and sculpture. So there are a lot of principles of design that really apply to libraries. So I want to talk, just let me give you a story. Let me show you an example of how when you're realistically optimistic, the way you can think about things and how it might help shape some of the things you look at and motivate you. You'll find you'll get motivation throughout the day more and more to try to be like this. And you're going to need this because you're going to start some project that's going to be challenging, maybe a little difficult for you. So let's talk about motivation through design. So I'm in Seattle, so this is the Seattle Public Library and you've probably seen this, many of you may have even been here. It's kind of a funky building, kind of a weird looking thing, huh? It actually, whether you think it is or not, is believed by most people that no architecture to be an incredibly beautiful and effective building. It has some challenges, of course, as we've talked about being realistically optimistic. And having talked with lots of librarians there, I'm familiar with many of the challenges, but familiar also with some of its pretty amazing successes. This can be motivating for you because there's a pretty powerful punch line. Punch line, that makes it sound like a joke. Pretty powerful climax to this story. About getting motivated through design by this example at Seattle Public Library. So here's one of the ways that it's inspiring. This building brings in tens of millions of dollars every year to the city of Seattle for architectural tourism. People come to Seattle to see this building designed by Rem Koolhaas. Now, you might say, well, look at that lump. Why am I, why is anybody going to come see that? And some of you may already know it's beautiful and believe it's beautiful. I'm of that thought, but I understand that that's not necessarily what everybody thinks. There's a lot of reasons why. Let me tell you a few things about the building so it makes more sense. First of all, see how it juts out in funky ways, down at the bottom on the left at the top on the right. It does that because the architect wanted to have the building push out further so it could take advantage of views because where the library is, you can see mountains on both sides and you can see Puget Sound, but it's blocked by lots of buildings. So he wanted to take advantage of the actual location of the library so that people could go to a space in the library and use the views as they learned to make the library a more hospitable, welcoming, friendly, special, all those great things. So it might seem silly that that's got all that jutting out and clearly they made it very decorative, but those things are there for a reason. They were designed very specifically to take advantage of the physical location of this building. That's pretty cool, right? Maybe it's not so goofy that it's like that. Maybe an initial reaction of, oh gosh, that's ugly or stupid. You might still think that and that would be okay, right, or allowed to have our opinions on that stuff. But understanding that there was lots and lots and lots of thought and purpose behind that is pretty important. Here's another interesting thing. This guy thought about the library and he basically thought the library does five different things. You have administrative tasks, which he put in HQ headquarters. You have all your materials and the way you access things, and he called that the spiral. We'll talk about that. Libraries often have meeting places, and they have to have places for staff to work. And then you also have a place to have to have a place for people to come in, to enter, to sort of start their experience of coming to the library, and frankly just things like parking, right? So he broke the things that happened in the library very roughly down into departments. And those were the ways he broke them down. He also, the spiral. So using Dewey, decimal system, right? The spiral starts at zero at the top and sort of goes around and around down to 999. So gosh, imagine you work in a library like that. That's crazy. You can't run from the zeros to the 700s, right? You're gonna have to take an elevator. You're gonna have to walk a lot. So they have librarian station. All of this was designed, right? It's pretty amazing the amount of effort and time and thought that went into this. Even if you think it's goofy, even if you think it's a crazy idea, they had buy-in. They worked with the community, with the leaders, with the government, with the librarians. Like crazy, they worked with the librarians. It's a pretty amazing story to think about this and how much effort and community buy-in went into this process. So here's an example of design and how they pieced all this together. In order to get from one section or the other or to get a librarian to help a patron in a specific area of the stacks, they had this basically VOIP walkie-talkie system that they have to do it. So they have all these little pieces that were carefully designed. This library, when you check your books in, it goes to a robot down in the basement that sorts the books and gets them ready to shelf. They designed all of these things for the library. You know, look, doesn't work all the time. Sometimes it breaks and you gotta fix the robot. Design isn't perfect, right? Sometimes things are gonna go wrong and you gotta work it. But the design itself actually ends up being pretty successful. And many people believe this to be a pretty beautiful library. You saw it from the outside. Here are some images of what it looks like from the inside. So you can see a lot of care and thought went into this. I'm gonna show you some more, but I'm gonna talk more about why am I bothering to show you all of this stuff and all these pictures of this one library? So look, see how all the careful design and thought went into this to use all the spaces to make it as useful and pretty and appealing to users of the library. This is, there is significant effort, thought, every little thing about this building. So I'll just tell you, I'm pretty library geeky. I was watching when they had the architects pitch this on local public access television. I watched all the presentations from all the different architects that proposed building the new main library. And I, including Rem Koolhaas, this designer, who's a little quirky, he's one of those starkatech guys, talk about all of this and how this would all work. Pretty amazing stuff that they would put all of this money and effort and time and thought and then that it would turn all this money back to the community every year through architectural tourism and also that it would just be the library. So the library is filling even another role beyond the role it fills as a library. It's pretty powerful stuff. So it also tells a story and that story is pretty simple. That story is people believe that the library is important enough to make this happen. That's, wow, that says a lot. Even if you think it's a waste of money or it's ugly, lots of people don't. Enough people that they'll bring millions of dollars to the city every year and that's a good thing and it gets a lot of attention to the library and that's a good thing because we need positive attention. Now look, I realize this is, I know I've been in a lot of what your libraries are like. I understand we're in an old building, it's run down. You might work 20 hours a week. This seems like beyond Disneyland, I get it. But look at all the thought that went into this. Look at all the people that believed in this. Look at all the effort and care and money, money, money that went into this. Now I realize this is a special situation but it's pretty exciting. It's pretty amazing. People really believe in these libraries so much that they would, even if it's just one place they bothered to do something like this. Wow, that's pretty exciting. That might mean that if you get an idea and want to take some project that really excites you, maybe it's a little different, that you want to put effort and time in and make happen. Gosh, you know, if they could do this and make that happen, you could do something. You could certainly do something. You could do a lot of some things. So I guess that's part of what I meant is when you learn things and you look at things about how libraries are working and stories from libraries, you can use that to inspire you to get you motivated. And you know, you can tell, I like pictures. 140 slides an hour long presentation. I like pictures. Sure, well look, I'm trying to keep me motivated too when I give these presentations. So I put lots of pretty pictures in and the crowd seemed to like it. I hope you can see all the slides today. I hope it works on the webinar, but this is one of the ways I'm trying to make my work more enjoyable. So I stay motivated as well. So let me just say this. So thinking about how important libraries are, let's go back to your project that you might work on. And how important your work in libraries is to society. And you know, for me, I think about how technology is changing the landscape of libraries and access. And also then realizing that you can shape your own professional destiny by doing things like what we've talked about taking on a project. Let's think about how you could design something libraries need, right? That's again the challenge or the dare that I put forward to you. And let me, let's just talk a little bit more about e-content, e-books and this project I and a pretty large group of other individuals and libraries have joined in on to deal with some of this. So like, this is a huge issue and we know it's just gonna get bigger and bigger, right? Y'all these e-books, all of this stuff going on here. And you know, I do lots of presentations about e-book trends, but really it's about e-content. Because an e-book is several different formats of zeros and ones and e-content, whether it be music or videos or games, it's just zeros and one. So we're really talking about a way for libraries to get zeros and ones to people more effectively. Frankly, that's what we're talking about. And the larger umbrella for that in my mind is e-content. Short, of course, for electronic content. So let's talk about how thinking about this challenge, I'm telling you a story about a project, right? So let's thinking about e-content and we haven't showed you the numbers, that would be other presentations and many of us have seen about how the projections for how many more people are gonna be accessing content electronically and what that means for libraries. The impact is gonna be gigantic in the next decade. So let's talk about this with the what if version. Well, you know, happily there's lots of things we can all agree on. Technology makes libraries more relevant and useful. And we've talked about this already as well. Communities need libraries to thrive. But when we look at how we get e-content right now, we just know that we need new solutions and these solutions need to be substantial. They need to be highly functional. They need to be practical and they need to be new. They need to be different than what we have right now. And a lot of people are saying when it comes to e-content, now, now, now, this solution, oh, we need them right now. But the challenge for libraries, of course, as we all know is whatever we do, we have to do it really well. So we can't just jump in and just do, oh, just freak out, because that's not gonna work for our patrons. At the same time, the current methods that we use, that we have to use to acquire e-content, they're unnecessarily expensive and inefficient. They truly are very expensive, very inefficient, and truthfully very unsustainable. Imagine that you're gonna have to rebuild your collection electronically. Imagine that. That is a huge task. And if we're paying twice as much as the cost for us to buy a print book, to buy an e-book, first of all, that's completely broken. That doesn't make any sense. Second of all, there's no way in the world we're gonna even be able to start rebuilding our entire collections electronically, or, you know, not entirely, but large swaths of our collection electronically if it costs twice as much as a book. And we're starting not from scratch, but many of us from scratch, and many of us close to scratch. This just is not going to work. And what that means is that the format evolution for electronic content requires a new approach. And above, right, we see the old phone with VHS tapes, typewriter, and really the issue here is money. Money is an issue. So we believe this format evolution, it just requires a new infrastructure and different systems that we have in place right now. So talking about how to renew yourself, your library, and your career, and the fact that I believe that you can do it, you can take a project, that you can do it, well, what if, there we go, ha ha, what if instead of when we think about control and how, and this could be for electronic content, right, this gigantic thing that dozens of people are working on, this could be for a single project that's something fun or funky or desperately needed at your library that you want to take on, that you'll be really engaged and excited about. What if instead of thinking about control and how we just don't have enough control, what if we actually realize, let's just say from the library, every real perspective, that if we banded together, if there are more libraries in the US than in our Starbucks or McDonald's, we have huge amounts of power, and it's right at our fingertips. We just have to figure out how to come together and this word sounds bad, exploit, but it's in a good way, exploit our shared power to the benefit of our communities, to the furthering of our missions. This is possible, this can actually happen. I would say if you have a project where you want to do something, okay, so look, before I, when I was in the circulation department at that library, I told you about before I went to library school and I wanted to go into children's, I wanted to do a display and I was allowed to work on a display because I was in art school, right? It was something I liked. So I picked a project that I really liked, I sort of stumbled onto that. I was a little restless and I wanted to do something that I thought would be fun, truthfully, that's where that came from. Now hopefully I've matured a little bit and can share stories like this too, but the example is there nonetheless and that instance, that thing worked. You might not be able to do that at your library, I get that, but there are other things that you could do and you know what? You could even do these in your free time if you had to because a bunch of projects that I've had to work on have been in my free time. So let's talk a little bit more about what if. So what if, thinking about let's just say electronic content and what library it all works on, we realize that together we have huge amounts of power and what if we decided to come together in a new way and made our own organization? What if we did that? And what if that organization was controlled by libraries and had a mission to further the mission of libraries as it relates to e-commerce, it's pretty exciting. It's enabled us so far to get a whole bunch of attraction, lots of presentations and mentions in library press and right now though, we are seeking partners, we're seeking more partners, library partners and funding partners because it takes money to do this, but the ultimate point is that we wanna get more money for rights holders and I just lost one of my screens here. Oh, there we go, okay, I thought maybe I lost ya. We wanna get more money for rights holders, publishers and huge savings for libraries. That's what we're aspiring for. And we believe after a couple of years of work on this and research and planning and setting us up as a 5-1-C3 that it's only possible through an organization that's transparent, that's a library run, that's expert, that's a non-profit and that's absolutely committed to the mission of libraries. So if you wanna know, we have a couple more things to talk about, but if you wanna know more about library renewal and this story, contact us, partner with us, get a hold of us, we're here, we're ready, we're able to talk with you about all this stuff. And it doesn't have to be about this stuff, it could be about your project. So, in turn, I see this maybe not the best term to use half-glass full-time not the best term to use half-glass full, half-glass empty, but I see our work as definitely glass is half-full. So we're working up towards our conclusion here. So what if, instead of saying, stop, now I can't do this? What if instead of saying, no, stop, I can't do this? Oh, no, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't get it, no, no, no. What if, and I will tell you, when I started working on this stop thing, the stop sign, the metaphor, or the analogy or whatever is the best word for it, this is the first thing I thought of. I've tried really hard to train my brain to not go to that bad place. Sometimes it's still good, it does, I get it. Trying to be realistically optimistic. But the first thing I thought was of this graffiti on stop signs, which is funny, right? Humor is a really useful thing to keep you realistically optimistic, by the way, as I'm sure all of you know. I thought of this, and then I thought of this. I really did, because I'd seen these signs before, and also it fits in with the idea of, you know what, look, I can actually do some stuff, I really, really, I don't have to say stop, I can say stop, collaborate, listen, like, don't stop believing, and you know, look, you may think this is a little cheesy, but really, for me, a lot of the motivation is about love, and there are lots of different kinds of love, but we love our communities, and we love what our libraries do, and we're not gonna stop doing that. And one of the ways to make sure that you don't get completely fried or burnt out, or feel beat down, or feel like you can't work on the things that you know the library only needs to work on, is to take the challenge that I've given you, and that challenge is, find a project that you're really excited about, motivated about, and make a plan for it, and think on it, and refine your plan, and then do it. So what if, what if all of that happened? What if your project came together? What if library renewal actually takes off and works, and does all this great stuff? What if you do another project after this first project, and a second or third project? Some of them won't work, some of them will work. What if all of that happens? Well, that's very refreshing, that's my, that's what this slide is here to show you. That would be so refreshing, that would be really great. So again, I dare you to come up with an idea, something you really wanna do at your library, you're really excited about, a little ground breaking maybe, a little different, and then I challenge you to make a strategy, tactics, and a timeline for this idea, for this thing you wanna do in your library. And write it down, keep thinking about it, it's like a little bit of a hobby almost, and then refine those plans, keep all of this in your head, don't say stop, go, you, you go do it. So that's the end of my presentation. If you wanna get ahold of me to talk about any of this stuff, you can get me at info at libraryrenewald.org, and you can visit libraryrenewald.org on the web, I'm not sure how we're doing with time, let me, I was sort of in the zone there, it looks like. No, that's okay. We're right on the hour, I'm happy to stay if anybody has questions. I'm happy to stay if anybody has questions, so feel free, or I can say adios and thank you. No, that's fine. You're right on the sunset. No, that's fine, we can stay as long, whatever people need. We're not picky about stopping right on the hour, it's, I'm in charge here, so whatever, we do whatever it needs. All right, boss. Yeah. At the very beginning of this presentation, you mentioned the other Michael Porter, who is, he said more of a religious, inspirational speaker, and you said, I'm not him, I'm not him. And that's true, obviously you're not him, but you're definitely inspirational speaker. Because this presentation was awesome, yes, with ideas and thoughts and opening minds about what to do and what you can do, and just try, it doesn't hurt to try and ask and say, hey, how about this? And if it doesn't work, failure's okay too, try something else, try again, that's part of the strategy that you were talking about. Be brave, have fun, experiment, and play to your strengths. And we do have some comments, not actual questions though, but that came in through the system and early in the presentation actually, is some of it. No, no, it's okay. You stink. No, not publicly, no. Someone said, I have recently been told, this is someone from a college library. I have recently been told by my admissions to focus only on the base essential of my one-person library. But she says, I love the idea of going rogue and working under the radar. So I think you've inspired her to say, the heck with that, I'm gonna try something anyway. Yeah, you know, some of you may have seen a couple videos that David King and I did. One was called Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Library, and the other was called Library 101. And we did all of those in our free time. We wanted to learn how to make better video, we wanted to play around with audio, David does music, we wanted to goof around, we wanted to have fun, we wanted to really dive into how to do the lighting and the sets. Now, we also do presentations about video too, right? So we parlay that into something that's useful. And we've used the equipment that we bought for those videos to do other videos. David's got some consulting gigs from it. We've taken the conferences and shot some videos. So you get as much value out of the work that you do. So I guess the reason I'm saying all that, we wrote articles in Computers Libraries Magazine and Public Libraries Magazine about the video projects that we did. The reason I'm saying all of that is because you might have to do some stuff under the radar like we did with those video projects as it just was on our job. We had different jobs, but we wanted to learn stuff and we wanted to try to help people and spread some good stuff around while we were learning. And then we got tons of benefit out of it, truthfully, through the writing and the exposure and all that. And you know what, it was a lot of hard work and we had to pay for some stuff, but it was under the radar. It's similar to doing any profession. You need to do your own personal professional development and it's not always gonna be on work time or paid for or supported by your work, but if you want to keep going in your career and advancing, keeping on top of things, you very often have to do it on your own outside and that's just part of keeping what you're doing going. And eventually that can work itself back into your actual job if you're lucky. It absolutely has for me and just dozens and dozens of my colleagues and friends. I would also say though, Krista, I know there are lots of folk that they work part-time, they run their library, they work their part-time maybe or maybe they work full-time and it's just that's their day job. And I would say even for those folks that aren't going to go do their personal professional development, which truthfully is something we all need to be doing. I agree, I like you phrased just perfectly, use personal professional development as well as professional development that you do at work. But those folks that aren't gonna do any personal professional development, this can still work because you can do this at work. You can get motivated to start a new project. So I was trying to show respect for people who are in that position, but also help motivate folks to try some stuff to if they were in that position. Yeah, it can work both ways, yeah. Another comment from actually I believe one of our, I'm looking here, oh, a librarian here in Nebraska. She said, just a comment that, thank you, it was a very nice pick me up for a Wednesday morning, so good for you. Thank you very much. And then I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Here at the Library Commission, we have staff that will get together and watch our Encompass Live shows in a separate meeting room so they can watch and see what's going on. And Michael Sowers, who is our Technology Innovation Librarian here, is in a room there. And he has commented and said, darn you, Michael, meaning you, Michael. I've come up with an idea, and it involves you, Krista. So we'll see what you've gotten me into. I don't know. I mean, that story and me being here is another example of how you try a project and other things can come from it. You try enough projects and things start to happen from that momentum. It's not like the universe magically aligns. It's like you create opportunity through your hard work. And this is sort of a stepping stone to get those sorts of things happen. So the reason I'm here today is because I started working on stuff like this years ago and slowly building a capacity to actually get a career out of doing some presentations and met folks like you and Michael Sowers. And I've actually presented with Michael before. So then here we are on Encompass Life. It takes time and you have to stick with it. But if you do that and you let your sort of pure motivation show through and what you're really about and you have fun while you're doing it because you're working on stuff you like, stuff comes together. You create your own look. Absolutely. Okay, it doesn't look like any other urgent questions or comments have come through while we've been chatting. So unless you have anything else you need to want to say to wrap up or you maybe already have, Michael? No, I'm just gonna thank everybody for their time and attention. Thank you very much. Well, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. Like I said, you're not a religious inspirational speaker but you're definitely inspirational. Thanks. And I think there's gonna be a lot of response coming out of this in the future. Near future, and like you said, it can take time and effort in the long time but in far future as well. Okay. Let's keep at it. Yeah, absolutely. All right, thank you very much, Michael. I'm going to steal back control. You can just, from you. There we go. So thank you, Michael. And thank you everyone for attending this morning. The session was recorded and the recording will be available sometime later today or tomorrow for everyone to watch afterwards. And I will invite you to join us next week on Encompass Live where our topic will be about your government online, the executive branch and cabinet. This is actually the first of a three-part series that our Laura Johnson who's our continuing education coordinator here at the Library Commission is doing on government websites that are out there for you and what kind of information is in them and how you can access them and use them for your work. So she's going to start off here with the executive branch and the cabinet next week on Wednesday morning. So I hope you will join us for that. And as you can see here also, we do have a Facebook page for Encompass Live. So please feel free to please go to Facebook and like our page there and you will also via Encompass Live receive updates and notifications of whenever we have new sessions coming and when the recordings are available and reminders of, for example, of today's session show that was on, so like us on the Facebook page and I'll help you keep up with what we are doing on Encompass Live. So other than that, I think we are done for this morning. Thank you very much and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.