 Welcome, everyone, to Mechanics Institute. I'm Laura Shepherd, Director of Events. We're very pleased to welcome you to our program, the Future of Libraries, Opening the Doors for Democracy. Tonight, we're very, very honored and pleased to present this program in conjunction with the annual Architecture and the City Festival presented by AIASF and the Center for Architecture and Design. If you're new to Mechanics Institute, we were founded in 1854, and we're one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature our general interest library on the second and third floors, our international chess club down the hallway, ongoing author and literary programs, and cinema-lit show series on Friday night. So please visit us at mi-library.org. Also, after our program, if you are new and would like a tour of our library, please see our staff, Alyssa Stone, our Senior Director of Programming and Community Outreach, will lead you on a lovely tour to the other floors of our building. Also, after a program, we'll have a Q&A with you, our audience. But first, I'd like to introduce Charles Higueroz, who's the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Architecture and Design. It brings me here with you. I know you're all library lovers, so I'll just make that as a basic assumption in my remarks again. As you know, the Center, maybe you don't know, the Center for Architecture and Design was inaugurated on Friday of last week. It really is an amazing place. Show hands, honey. I hope some have the opportunity to get out there. Wonderful, right? It's an amazing venue. The catalyst for the CAB, the College Program, was the first architecture in the city festival that was launched in 2004. The program was fostered, was administered by the AISF for a number of years until the CAB was formed. The CAB is a 501C3 organization. It is a separate organization from the AISF. AISF, of course, is oriented to serving the professional society of design professionals architects. And the CAB is intended to be certainly inclusive of architects, but of all other design and affiliated professions. And as importantly, it seeks to engage with the larger and diverse community of this city and the Bay Area, frankly, for that matter. So for the longest time, we were somewhat hampered by the lack of a good venue to sponsor events, programs, and speakers. But with this Center, it's a game changer. We now have a venue where we can engage much more fully, much more authentically with the diversity of this community of ours here in San Francisco beyond. We will be able to genuinely embrace the diversity, the equity, and the inclusion that we so much wish to see realized in all the work that we as design professionals do in favor of a built environment. So with that said, I can invite all of you to look for exciting new programs, events, and speakers scheduled to appear at the CAB. You're more than welcome. We'd love to have you there. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And if you have not been over there, the festival is continuing. Our architecture and the city festival continues through the months. And the building, their new site, is so gorgeous. So I recommend you walk over there. The beautiful cafe, great coffee, take a tour of the building. It's spectacular. I'm going to also give the rest of the introductions for our program tonight before I begin. Of course, tonight our program is hosted by John King, who is the San Francisco Chronicles Urban Design Critic, and a wise-goal fan of libraries. His prior publication includes City Escapes, San Francisco, and its buildings. And his upcoming publication, Coming Out November, is part of San Francisco's fairy building and the reinvention of American cities. John will be here on November 16th for an offer event. So we hope you'll come back for that program. Now, from Noel and Tam, I'd like to also introduce Christopher Noel, who is a principal of Noel and Tam, and the firm's library practice leader. He has directed all of Noel and Tam's public library projects since the first founding. He is also involved in the library community through the California Library Association and also the California Library Association and the American Library Association. And also, as a member of the California Library Association, he's been a statewide space needs assessment for California's more than 1,100 public libraries. Thank you. Also, from Noel and Tam, we have Trina Goodwin, who has planned and designed numerous Bay Area public facilities. And Noel and Tam, since 2005, is the associate principal with the firm. Tina most recently designed the interior architecture for the Hayward Library and Community Learning Center, which won an award last year. She offers the dual perspective of the architect and an interior designer specializing in space planning and furniture fixtures and equipment. And also, I should make note that Noel and Tam did a redesign, a refresh and redesign for the Mechanics Institute Library, which they proposed several years ago. I'm going to see a few images from that wonderful design. Our other firm that's represented tonight is the new RNS. And from that firm, we have Pauline Susan, who dedicated her career to the building and advocacy of high quality, sustainable environments that serve the public, students, and educators. A recognized leader within the Green Building Movement, Pauline's work has advanced sustainable thinking by stewarding thoughtful principles into firm-wide practices. And with her, Adam Wolff-Tag, approaches each design challenge by searching for a balance between the poetic and the pragmatic. Beauty meets budget, program, and sight. The places he crafts respond to the natural environment and function sustainability with a lasting elegance that does more with less, with less than for today. And once again, Charles Wehres recently retired as acting director of the project management of San Francisco's Department of Public Works. Mr. Wehres served as the San Francisco Public Library Commissioner from 1996 to 2008, providing oversight of the Branch Library Improvement Program for 2000. He is a past board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, and also served on the board of the Urban Libraries Council. And we welcome our esteemed guests. So first to introduce our program, John King. Hi, and I will keep my part short since there's a crowd of presenters as well as a crowd to listen, so we'll move quick. Yesterday, I was out in Mountain House, which is a planned community just over the Altamont Pass. About 27,000 people live there, and it has been in the works. The first construction was 20 years ago. It was approved a decade before that. And in driving around and looking at what's been done, I went to the Civic Center on Main Street, appropriately, they planned this from the start. And there is a pairing of civic buildings there. This is very much a place in flux and lots of big empty lots still in all. But the Civic Center had a town hall connected to the public library, single structure. And I was struck going inside. First, I love the idea that a community like this that's very much literally a 21st century city with so many other things missing you'd expect and then amenities piled on that are kind of speaking to a culture that's geared more to present day suburbia, but it did see the importance of having a library as an opening statement of the importance of, this is what we see as a civic place. And then I was also struck going in a few things. One is it was very spacious. And the children's section was as large as the adult section common area, DVDs, everything else. And it just allowed you to start reading the community priorities, the community demographics and so on. And then also there was an area that had books in different languages. And it had, it's Central Valley as you can expect, there were the shelves for Spanish-speaking residents or patrons, but then also a stack of shelves in Hindi, pump job and Erdy because the main population of Mountain House, the single largest population group is Southeast Asian at this point. And it was just kind of fun with this meeting coming up to kind of see how libraries, the future of libraries is so tied to the past of libraries because any of us who grew up with a library they went to as a kid in things or as a library they'd use as an adult, you have all the associations, all the expectations in your mind. But they're also a way of defining a community and defining the message the community wants to project about itself. And it's a time when libraries ideally are, with mom and apple pie and baseball in terms of civic goods. As I was walking over, I was talking to a photo editor at the Chronicle. And I just mentioned to her what I was doing tonight. She said, oh, libraries are my ideal place. I wish I was a librarian. But obviously, sadly, if you read news, you read about the book banning. You read about the horrible attacks on librarians so far just rhetorical. So they become a tug of war within the larger, very sad cultural strains within the United States. So having people talk about designing libraries as we have from these two very good firms is not just how do you decide how tall the shelf is and do you go for Greek columns or neoclassical columns. But it is about how do you design something that is kind of timelessly designed and it's totally of the moment. So what I will do now is hand off to Nolan Tam first. They will present in a brisk 10 minutes a slideshow. And then WRNS will follow up with a brisk 10 minus slideshow because they know the importance of getting to the conversation and then do your questions. So I'll just hand it off right now. And thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. So if I can start out by introducing Nolan Tam, which we are a 40 person firm in Berkeley. And we've been designing a lot of libraries over the years. And we really love libraries. You can see a few of them as we've done here. And what's most wonderful about libraries is that everyone is a little different. Everyone is a unique challenge. Everyone brings a special kind of joy to our hearts. And it is something that we and I have devoted our careers to. We are working currently with the Mechanics Institute. And hopefully one of these days we will sort of be reorganizing the second and third floors with new sort of furniture and finishes. These are some renderings of how it might look like in the future. If we can put a little bit of paint, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It really does. It has been here for a long time and it really needs some TLC. And we're really looking forward to bringing in some modern library kind of standards into this building. I'm going to start out by talking about the Hayward Library. It's one of our recent ones. I just want to CCAIA award. And it is a sort of an amazing library from community Hayward. It's a large city of about 180,000 people. It had a decrepit old library in the middle of the park. We proposed moving it out of the park onto an urban site so that the park itself could be restored into a community resource. And so the park and the library together form this kind of one thing. It is the library park. It was conceived on three floors because it was a tight site. The ground floor is fundamental. It's a children's area. It's noisy, it's loud. There's a marketplace in there. The second floor is that inquiry and exploration. And it's where the teen center, the computers and technology and all the public meeting spaces. And the third floor was conceived of. That's a quiet space for reading and reflection. It's all held together by this atrium in the middle. And people would criticize us for are you giving up all this space, empty space? And it really has many different functions about what it might do. But it brings in natural light and it really helps us in our sustainability goals that it's also about orientation and visibility. And it really helps the management of the library by having that open space in the center. This sort of shows the relationship of the library facing the park. And this is a section showing some of the sustainability features. It is a net zero energy library which generates more electricity than it uses. We also have a very innovative water collection and UVU system where we hold a toilet sitting flushed with reused water as well as some irrigation in this great system where we use the old basement of the library and then over the park, we made it into a system. So we are very kind of proud of it to have this innovative water system. We'll take you for a little tour through the library. This is the front door there from the corner of Mission and Sea Street. You walk into this sort of really amazing tall library lobby space with the atrium and this wonderful stairway that kind of a very sculptural reliance up there. It has a library friends bookstore and marketplace in there. And it has sort of shows the atrium having sort of this visibility through the library. One of the things about this was that the library quadrupled in size from the original but they weren't getting any additional staff. And so this was a way of making it really visible and transparent. So wherever you are on the library, it's easy to find your way around. The service decks are all lined up on the three floors, one of them together. It's really kind of the organization of it is such that it makes it easy to use spaces for adults and spaces for computers and teams space beyond that. Third floor is where sort of the more sort of quiet reading spaces are most of the collections and how to read garden over there in the corner. Let's see. We can have wonderful views looking up and down. The children's area we're especially proud of it's sort of very large and full of vibrant activity and lots of children's children of sort of younger ages and sort of storybook time, tweens, places for tweens to get away from the younger kids, places for early childhood learning and a nice story time room which kind of resembles kind of inside of a geo. But it's very popular looking out onto the park. The teen space is quite extensive as well for kids to hang out and study and also to socialize and have the Walmart Center at the back with the wonderful little cave, Hellkills. And then it's really, this is a community learning center and the Hayward community took this very much part. So we have lots of public meeting spaces. This is the large community meeting room that overhangs the street. Medium-sized meeting rooms, technology rooms, a media space. This is digital media studio. So there's a audio studio, a video studio and either end of this room and this is the place to work on them and a maker space. So it is kind of very closely connected to the park. You can see its relationship to that and it really kind of is really tied in. And with that, I'll turn it over to Trayna to talk about the Half-Night Library. Thank you very much, Chris. Half-Night Library also was an award-winning library. We won a national NIA award, L-A-A-A. And it is opening day that we see here and it was a joyous occasion but it didn't really start out that way. And as John alludes to, we have these conflicts in our society and they play out when we do these projects. So because it's hard to read, I'll read this quote. Ensuring that the community feels represented is important for the success of the project. Activities that allow the public feedback can develop a sense of trust in the project team as well as community ownership of the projects overall. This was a quote from our branch librarian after a pretty controversial process we went through. There were people who were concerned that the building was too big for their town. They felt like the city was not spending public dollars wisely and so they were fighting to make the library smaller. Which is not what first comes to mind when you hear, oh, everybody's gonna be so happy. So one of the things that we did was we broke the building in two and we made the smaller volume which is the public meeting space based out to the single family residences across the street. So it really broke the volume down at the building. And we set the taller part further back and it's adjacent to the junior high school which has a little larger scale to it. We also created a series of outdoor spaces. So there's sort of a closet in front. There is a courtyard between the two volumes and there's a children's garden in the back. So we were kind of embedded into the landscape more. The lamp in this building has the children's area on the first floor and the little number four on the right, this is the meeting space that has the courtyard in between and then upstairs has most of the old spaces. Also had reached high sustainability awards, goals including the platinum and it's also Metsuro. So as you come in the front door, it's kind of self-served. There is a little service point around the corner but it's mainly children's and you can see that little circle we'll look through in a moment. Most adults go upstairs and you would have gone to the left to go into the meeting room. So the children can come through their own special little door or we have the main entry by the stairs. And it again has several different zones for different ages of children and they're playing off the theme of beach and boardwalk and bubbles in the water that's where the circles came from. And they have this children's garden in back where they have a lot of programs. They do a lot of wildly, I guess, what's the word I'm looking for? Amphitious programming. So for example, during summer when school's out they have a lot of children who depend on schools for lunch. The library serves lunch during summer. So they have a lot of different types of programs here. This is the courtyard between the two buildings and the meeting room. So the meeting room was one of the things that we cut in half. They didn't have as many as they wanted. So we made this so that it could expand outside as a secondary space and it also has a divider and this, I'm sorry, this folding roof is really to hide that ugly divider you get sometimes in a space where you're putting the divider in. Upstairs it's a big open area with views in all directions and it's surrounded by small blast-in spaces. We use a lot of last libraries and see into different spaces and feel safe. The library's kind of inside out. It's noisy and so this is the quiet room. If you want quiet, you can go someplace but it's not the main part of the life. The teen room, the maker space. You can see they have all kinds of programs going there. And then it's really about these different moments whether it's kids playing outside, the kids working quietly in the quieter room or views back in through the building. And at the end of the day, it was a library people love. And so it is about listening to the community, reflecting their needs and bringing it forward. So with that, I'll pass it on to the ORS. I'm really excited to kind of share with you the story of the Atherton Library. And really it's hard not to talk about this library without talking about its context and it's not a standalone library. The Atherton Library is actually part of a much larger project we were the architects for, which was the Civic Center, brand new Civic Center, modeling of the Civic Center. So we have the wonderful abilities architects to kind of reshape our whole world and this library was a part of that conversation. So Atherton, as you know, is a relatively small town. About five square miles, there's about 7,000 residents. And one of the nice things about this place is that 20% of the population is under 18 and 20% of the population is over 65, which is 100% of the folks that come to this library are constituents that we're looking at. But when we got to the site, it looked something like this. It was kind of a hodgepodge of different buildings. This was the Atherton Civic Center. Always nice to design a library next to an active train track, which you see along the top. Lots of hard-scape parking. But the wonderful things about this site is that it was in a neighborhood, directly connected to a residential neighborhood. And half the site was occupied by absolute beautiful heritage of old trees. So we had something to really get excited about. The town wanted to have a Civic Center that was all pedestrian. So our design of the Civic Center was really to group the town hall, city hall, the police station into one building. And then on the opposite side of the Civic Center to have a library adjacent to a historic town hall here. Green route roads around a very connected Civic space. This is an aerial view of that. And you can start to see really one of the wonderful things about this new Civic space that connects the town hall to the library is actually finally for the first time getting these old trees to be a part of the experience of this Civic Center. They became kind of characters in this play. And it was wonderful to be able to try to amplify those for the residents. So it's a small library. It's a one-story library. Just about 11,000 square feet. And this full disclosure is my favorite elevation of the building. It fit the elevation that faces the train tracks. It's a rammed earth wall that faces streets. And one of that, you know, with a few openings and two openings that are about framing these beautiful old trees really are about being an out there community as part of the site. You know, the material palette we looked at for the library and again, it really kind of grew out of wanting to be connected to landscape and the site and responding to the old trees. But it also had a civic presence. And these rammed earth walls that you see here were doing double duty for us. They had accruciate properties. We thought they were beautiful. And they fed into a desire for a very natural material palette that was gonna really feel connected to place. And at the end of the day, they kind of had a civic nature to them. They were elemental. And to John's point earlier, we didn't have to put columns everywhere to kind of express what a library should look like. This building kind of did it on its own. It's in its very humble material palette. We had a historic resource here, a hundred year old building, the Old Town Hall. And the new efforts and library steps back from that. They'll be respecting the history of the site and engages the Old Town Hall next to a spectacular oak tree with a large open wood deck. I love this photograph because when you start to think about civic architecture over time and you look at this beautiful Spanish Mediterranean civic expression, and then you look at a modern civic expression next to one another. They just felt like a wonderful group of buildings. One meaning for it obviously. It's a beautiful open space that they use for many different types of activities. Now the plan of the building, I hate to say this as a designer, but it almost designed itself. We had to fit this library, not cut down any trees. We had to fit it in respect to the existing Town Hall. So the building really wedged in to this site just perfectly. As you can see in the plan, the idea was one large open volume defined by a single bookshelf that rolled a whole 190 feet from that space. All the collections are open and connected to one another and there's one quiet space in the back where the adults like to hang out and a very large open space on the deck where the children like to hang out. Opposite the bookshelf is where you have all the back of house for the librarians, restrooms, and then maker spaces and mechanical spaces. This is a view of looking through the library from the children's area toward the back. Wayfinding is really defined by skylights. The furniture is low. And working with this library and the idea of their delivery model is that they wanted this to feel more retail and then more traditional. There's no circulation desk. The idea is that when people come to this library, they want their staff to get up and greet them and engage with them so it's a very open and light filled environment. Outdoor spaces were huge with a 10,000 square foot library and you want to pack a lot of punch. We have over 4,000 square feet of outdoor spaces that help kind of amplify a more costive approach for the library to have their programs built outside. We're going to call in Susan. Thank you. I'm going to layer in, you're going to see some of the same photos, but I'm going to layer in a little bit of detail in those spaces and I'll say that this struck us because it wasn't how, at least for me, it wasn't how I thought of libraries when I was growing up. Libraries were where I went after school while I waited for my parents to pick me up or my mom would pick me up. But now it is, as John was saying, it's a very different place. So how can a library help support this education or help support this community? And really we talked, not about democracy with our client, but we talked about transparency, talked about equity, we talked about agency. We talked about how everything needed to do a lot more good and not just about providing a place for answers, but a place to ask questions. So I'm going to share a little bit about how we hope it's evident in our site, in our systems, in our details. As Adam showed, this is really about a place within the trees and we learned that it was really, those trees were really an extension of a habitat corridor. And so that provided insight into how we should think about the whole site and how could we explain that to the residents? So sorry, a lot of text here, a lot of other information, but really supporting that it taught us that that landscape needed to be more than just something to work around in terms of plan. This affidavit has an inadequate stormwater system. Everything floods, you wonder why, because they seem to have enough money. But anyway, there's, so how could what we were doing there provide insight to the community, to the residents about caring for the limited water system they have, or the water, the site, sorry, the city infrastructure that you can. So we have pervious paving, we have lots of retention basins which are required, we have landscape that really reflects limited water need. This campus is also all electric. That was groundbreaking, honestly, at that time. It is a reduction in carbon and as we know that's what is contributing to global warming. It's also net zero energy and we talked about this as part of a microgrid. And that microgrid is a response to resiliency and as we're all experiencing the wildfires and other issues with our utility companies. So this whole site was about educating and providing a little more education for its residents. So I can show, there's same image but there's pervious paving and so bioswales. And then it gets to this quote, which is what helped us. Again, when we were looking at doing that, when we did some other libraries before it was about how quiet can this place be? How can we organize the stacks and what they had? And here are clients that it really is not about closing in the quiet. It's about shutting out the noise. How can you live together in this one space? So there's no circulation desk. It's really about giving agency to patrons to come and find what you need. Adam shared this diagram of the wall of books that hopefully draws you in. It's all one place. It's not really organized into here's where you go and here's where you go. And then there's a lot of transparency and visibility and the daylighting from this timeline. I didn't press this right, oops. And there's really a connection to a biophilic approach. So the connection to nature. It's a place for all ages as you can see. Sure, there's a willing maze meeting room. That's pretty awesome. But it is also a place where you can go through and be a part of everything. So approximately 80% of all of these spaces receive good daylighting. That means they don't have another artificial lighting, which means their bills are small. There's about 95% of the library interiors have a direct line of sight. So that is great in terms of to the outdoors, which is a great place to be able to see what's going on to be a part of different activities. It also supports security and the idea of being in a place where you can understand where your kids are or where your parents are. And you can see through to the makerspace beyond. And again, 40% of the lighting is reduced in wattage. And again, it's a smart thing to do because we take advantage of all the good daylighting. I hope this is okay. Their energy use intensity is at 26. For those who don't know if that means it's good or bad, that's good. And part of that is because not only the contribution of the daylighting, but because there's a mechanical system under the floor which provides air, and which is a very efficient way of providing air. And it's a very comfortable way of providing air. It's called displacement ventilation. Okay, this is my favorite slide and Adam hates it, but I'll tell you why it's good. This says that it's 70% better than a normal library of this type. So that big kind of light blue circle is what a normal one would be. And that little light blue circle is what this is. And all of this just says we're trying to do better. And all of this information is available on the monitors to hopefully inspire folks to learn a little bit more about energy or carbon or water or health. I mean, honestly, all of this is about supporting a healthier environment. It's not just about less wattage or lower bills. And just a diagram of how everything should do good service. We looked at materials, maybe very quickly. The idea of building from local resources. Something about a regional connection is important to say there are great people and craftsmen in this area. So this is Heath Tiles, we can only afford so much. So it's right, we're doing the bathrooms. But what we could afford, if you can see on the left-hand side are these little trays that the tiles are put on when they go into the kiln. And those trays are almost free. So it's kind of fun to have the expensive stuff on the outside, but the more interesting stuff on the inside in the maker space. So how do you kind of bring stories together and materials? After that, I've talked about preserving a great element of memory for the town. Again, the carbon side, sorry, I'm a geek on this stuff. It's 26.5, which means pretty good. And there's a way to show what that means. So we look at our carbon with all the materials that we use and we try to understand how to shrink it and how to track it so you can't see the graphic. But this is how much it was supposed to be. This was telling you that the materials we picked in the ramders and the using the existing town hall made a significant difference. This says that in construction, some things happen that kind of made our footprint go bigger. So it's a way of us tracking what we're doing and trying to bring that into our next project. So that's where we live. It's pretty good. It's gonna be better. We've been fortunate to also win a couple of awards. I'd say our greatest definition for success is when folks use this library. It's filled every day. There's kids that walk around, there's elders that walk around, and every aspect is used. So thank you for that. Something completely different. You know, when I was invited to join this panel, I said, you know, I haven't been in practice for a number of years, so I don't have a project to show. I said, well, you've been in the library for a while. Why don't you talk about libraries as conflicts or library systems? So I said, well, that's something I can speak to. Now, what I've done is I've scripted myself in order to be brisk. So I will be reading my remarks here in the beginning. So, here we go. So, in 1996, I was appointed to the Library Commission and served for the 12 years that was mentioned earlier. During my tenure, I had a great joy to be able to be involved with the evolution and the delivery of the Branch Library Improvement Program, BLIP, for short. I was additionally fortunate, frankly, to have been involved in this enterprise with just some really awesome fellow library commissioners with whom charting the path and the progress of this program was a joy. It was easy, even, because we all were inconsensist most of the time. The case to improve our libraries had been brewing for many years. Those of you who have lived in the city for a while, the libraries we know and love today weren't always the same libraries from a while ago. The libraries were allowed to fall into some disrepair, in fact, and it was from years of underinvestment in sustaining the library at its best level. The inauguration of the New Main Library, though, in 1996, was a major catalyst for arousing the sense of the interest from the community to see branch libraries also. Addressed in a very favorable way, let me skip over something. We were underpinned by that considerable public support and fortunate to have advanced this general obligation bond off to the voters in 2000. And we were really fortunate to have earned the support of then Mayor Brown. For those of you who are on the city again for a number of years, if Mayor Brown was for something, it generally happened. And conversely, if he was against it, it did not happen. But he was very much in favor of seeing that the libraries, branch library network, rose up to the level that was evidenced by the New Main Library. 24 projects were undertaken, and this slide shows the array of projects that we undertook. We did also acquire a new distribution, called 199th Street, for those of you who know the vicinity. In undertaking the program that we had, we knew that we had to address long collected deferred maintenance. But we also wanted to bring each branch into alignment with realities of library service in the 21st century. While we were blessed to have an impressive array of Carnegie WPA, mid-century modern libraries, they reflected the areas in which they were built. To accomplish the best modernization of these facilities, we knew we had to hire, select, the best design talent available to us. So in addition to relying on our own Public Works Bureau of Architecture staff, we went to RFQ to find the talent that we eventually selected. And these are the folks you can see here. You've probably recognized a number of these. Certainly you've recognized it, it's one of the names. The outcome was amazing, it was fabulous. You all hopefully visited more than one or two of branch libraries here in the city, and you'll find that the quality of care that was taken to design these branches, to align the best practices of the time. I'm going back now, probably almost 20 years now, it's gonna interest me to say that. I'll talk a little bit about what the future holds for the branch library system in a bit. Yeah, I'm sorry, keep holding this mic down. Of course, we went designing some of these awards throughout, this is just a smattering, if you will, of some of the awards that were received by the projects. I'd like to shift my remarks at this point to the larger context in which public libraries exist, as defined by the users, but as well by the government policies that influence and affect libraries. San Francisco is not alone, obviously, in having a very robust and passionate community of library users. Every branch has its aficionados and its die-hard supporters. This has been especially true since 1961 when the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library was founded to overcome the neglect created by that underinvestment I discussed a while ago. The next 30 years, frankly, was a tale of wins and losses to sustain its existence. Without the advocacy, though, from the grassroots and from the people of the city, we would not be at this moment in time with the success that we have experienced. What is also true is that to earn the support among those in government, you must show tangible benefits to the investment. Some of you may find that diligence from government hard to believe, but it is true, especially for city services misperceived or otherwise thought expendable. I recall speaking to one elected official around 1999 at a function who told me that libraries were becoming obsolete and would soon be replaced by Amazon and Google as he was a few drinks into the evening. I smiled and I suggested that we meet another time to further explore this opinion that he had. I didn't reach out to him, he didn't reach out to me, so we never quite resolved his opinion. The economic benefit study performed in 2015, and you see the cover of the report here, shows why the library is an essential investment for any city, any place, actually. The report is online if you wanna check it out. I think it really is an awesome report that delineates, not just the appraisal of the book program, but explores all of that, which made the book program so successful for any number of reasons. So anyone interested in better understanding how libraries function is certainly in an urban place should check out that report. So just for a moment here, there were four categories that were explored by the report, and I'm not gonna be talking into them because the index report obviously does greater justice to explaining them. But they were serving staff in the system in the 21st century, catalyzing neighborhood vitality, preserving resources and history, and stimulating economic activity. Now, as you look at this chart, you can see that there was some considerable improvements in the way in which we created a better library and how folks responded to it. And there's no disputing in this particular examination, there's many more of them, of course, that the investment was well worth the effort because the way in which the community responded to it was exceptional. The library is often the community center or living room of a neighborhood. It's where people of all ages go to certainly find books, programs, and services, and as importantly find each other. It's a safe place that responds, especially well to the diversity of our community. There is no other civic place that offers as much to as many people for as many hours in the week as our free and public library. Preserving resources and history, it's said that the most sustainable, the stably delivered building is improving the one already built. That's true, and especially relevant in San Francisco because it's also true that taking to demolish an historic building is next to impossible. And that's probably a good thing. The blip was a celebration and demonstration of the historic structures in our portfolio that could be brought into the modern area through really excellent library design. Stimulating economic activity. Apart from the opportunities for local residents and businesses to participate in the design and construction of a library, having a place honored by the community that contributes to the vibrancy of a neighborhood by enlightening the neighborhood experiences and encouraging other investment in neighborhood improvements cannot be underestimated. And certainly we've seen that throughout most of the branch projects that we undertook in blip. For every dollar invested, I think you've made recalls on the slide I showed earlier, in blip San Francisco realized a return of between five and nine dollars for every dollar spent. This is the bottom line for those who count the beans. But what's most significant as regards ROI is the amazing surge in library use resulting from both the new and improved facilities and the commitment in serving the unique needs among all branches. What this has meant to each neighborhood in San Francisco is deep and lasting. In the San Francisco government services, services ratings, the poll from 2015 to 2023, the SFPL, San Francisco Public Library, outranked every single community and department in resident satisfaction. Especially impressive when you understand the COVID years, the library was operating just barely at the outset and then on a really bare bones basis thereafter because most of the library staff, the librarians, were deployed to assist in COVID relief throughout the city. There was another unsung heroic moment for our library. So, what's new, what's next? Last year in November, 80% of the voters approved the continuation of the library preservation fund. And for those of you who don't know, that is the principal source of funded underwrites support for our library system here in San Francisco. And it was exceptional in that it advanced and more secured certain funding for the next 25 years. This is an applause for all of you. No doubt that this library system of ours will continue not so many to be celebrated by the users and all those who partake of it, but for the next generation effectively. So in conclusion, I would be remiss if I did not take the opportunity to extoll the unsung heroes of libraries. But before I do that, I should go to my last slide. Oh, oh, I apologize. Yeah, I have a different slide here. We do have other projects underway as we speak. We just broke ground on the Mission Branch renovation library, the Mission District Enforcement. That should be about an 18 to 24 month duration. Construction of Chinatown Branch is in design. We hope to begin construction on that in 2024. The Ocean View Branch is being considered for our site currently. The San Francisco Public Library Strategic Planning Initiative is due early in 2024. Why that is significant is that it probably will be a catalyst for LIPP 2.0. As I mentioned, it's likely that 20 years have elapsed more than 20 since the passage of LIPP program initially. And it's time for the library to begin to reflect what we now have begun to appreciate more of in regards to how libraries are received and how they are actually used. And so there is conversation and it will need to be abundantly endorsed by key people to have a reiteration of LIPP and bring in a library to be a little later in the 21st century then, but 2000. So let me go back to mine. I really like this graphic because it depicts all the possibilities of a public library. All of these elements, they're possible for not only a transformative experience for individuals, but one that connects and builds relationships. To that point, for those of you who read The New York Times, William Christopher wrote an opinion piece last week about the crisis of loneliness in our country. The library is a very real and available bridge to interaction and overcoming isolation. An unfortunate consequence of COVID, of what's digital immersion that created alienation and loss of everything. We must connect and stay in support of spaces. I truly believe the library is part of the solution to address this crisis. So now, in conclusion, I would be remiss of some of the folks a little bit earlier. If I did not take the opportunity to explore the unsung heroes of libraries, the librarians. The librarians have never ceased to be impressed by their passion and commitment to the work and most importantly to the public that they serve. I want to finish with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut in his 2005 book, A Man Without a Country. He said, in on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who all over the country have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I love still exists if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desk of our public libraries. Thank you. Thank you, Charles. And now we're going to bring everyone together. We've had a view of East Bay, South Bay, San Francisco and now we're going to bring our guests together to have a conversation with John King. Many chairs. I want to thank, first of all, again, thank all of you for being here and I want to thank the panelists for very good presentations and the Senate was saying you did kind of take a tour in the region. And Charles, I apologize for not introducing you as well at the beginning. I was being too busy. So what I want to do is just toss one quick question to each of the panelists and then we'll have a little bit of a discussion wider and then shift to questions from the audience. This is such an important and very interesting topic. So I want to start with, and I'm going to, since I'm the architecture critic, this is going to be my one indulgent architecture question. With the building, you made a really good point of how the rammed earth kind of matches the materiality of the space, how it kind of defers to the oak trees and all. But still, you have a very historic Spanish revival, classic California, you know, Town Hall building, the historic one. And the main city, the new building, the Town Hall, which we didn't see is in a very deferential style to that. The library is totally different in terms of pure sections and plans and all. Did it take a bit of persuading to tell people that, no, this is going to feel like it fits what it's done? Yes, it did. It took a lot of persuading to just let our clients know that what we were doing was going to be responsive and authentic. The existing Town Hall that we designed, or the new Civic Center space in the new Town Hall, did have to abide by some very strict architectural rules. It had to express a certain thing and the town of Atherton loves it and it fits right into the neighborhood of our homes there. When it got to the library, we had a little bit more leeway and we were working with a fantastic librarian who, right from the beginning said, this is a space not about iconic elements. This is not a space about books. This is a space about people and started that conversation and it was just an opening for us to step into. We also were asked by our client that this library be very sustainable and an example of how you can build in this part of California. What can this do as a demonstration? How can it teach in its own making, in its own design? When you have a fantastic client like that who's pushing you harder and harder, it was just inspiring to work with that group. Great, thanks. The next question is for Tina. This kind of comes in, you work on interiors and all. What is the challenge everyone's stressed and need to talk with the public, engage with the whole civic discussion related to reach out? At the same time, the difficulty process like that is that inevitably everyone has their priority for what a building should be and certainly in the library. And you've got, I'm sure, at every meeting the person who's like, the important thing is to bring the books in front. This is a library. You should be immersed in books. And then the person who says, we need the business training centers. And then the person who says, we need the whole children's area. The library should just be for children. Does it get difficult to balance those desires, all of which are good when it comes to actually figuring out a program to XML a square feet that needs to function in multiple security versus comfort versus access information versus all the other ways? You answered your own question. Of course it is. There's only so much space. And I think probably just like people at the Mechanics Library know that there's more and more desire for places where people can stay and spend time and not just come and get something and take it home. And so there is a tension between that and there's also a sense of nostalgia. I think as people have mentioned about what library means, we all were able to go as children probably in this room and you felt rich. You could have that library card and you could take home anything you wanted. And it has a wonderful feeling that people don't want to lose. They don't want to lose that feeling that those books are there and those materials and that access is free. But I think it's more than that now. And I really respect the librarians who have transformed their profession because there was a moment where libraries were talking just like blockbuster about are we needed anymore because people can order stuff online. They can get whatever they want digitally and they transformed their careers to be about literacy in a different way. So it's not just about book literacy. It's about teaching people financial literacy about digital literacy. It's about how to find better healthcare. And so they broaden their mission about how to empower people to improve their lives. Thank you. And Charles, a question for you. It's interesting. You're a librarian, then you're on the library commission. You're kind of wrapped up being acting overall public works director but really focusing on finishing up the library programs and the branch libraries and all. What are just one or two things you've learned about how these buildings need to function? Because the demands on them are so different now from they were then. Has flexibility become the key to you like just give us a big box and we can redo it every 20 years. But I mean, we just wanted to kind of core truth you've learned about the physical library this time. The opening of the main library in 1996 was a real inflection point because it was one of the first central libraries that was turning away from some of the old paradigms about library design and entering into the computer age. And it was resisted and it was qualified at the time. It was a very, very contentious experience for me as a first or second year commissioner to have not only the pitchforks and the torches come out to every commission meeting from people who just could not ease away from their familiarity, their affection, their sentimentality for the old school library. So I would say that thankfully we're past that perceived too great a shift from a tried-and-true paradigm to where we are now where I think there's a good deal more embraced acceptance of a varied experience of spaces and activities within a public library unlike, as I said, that had been the case. So definitely we're seeing the importance of beginning to push that on a little bit more. In fact, one of the big challenges will be not having as many books on the shelves as historically we've seen because of the way in which people wish to use the library to what they feel is important to happen in the context of library. Nothing books will always be present, I think. But I do believe that libraries are going to begin to move into different areas of service improvement as a service of programming that will better speak better in line with the public expectation for, as we all I think alluded to the library as community room, as living room for the neighborhood where people seek out interactions. It isn't about just staring at a book or reading a magazine, but rather about engaging with fellow residents and others in the neighborhood. With free Wi-Fi. With absolutely free Wi-Fi and designing the cables. And Paul, you talked a lot about the environmental aspect of the design. We cast our minds back on the classic library. It is, say, the Carnegie Library and a crowd like this will probably hear it. And there are the names of the authors emblazoned on the top of the classical facade and all. Now, clearly the symbolic role that a library can play has gone beyond the architectural gesturing thing. So with something like the materiality, the energy use, the openness of the aperture library, what does that say about how just the notion of library is civic simple is evolving? Well, I think if you think about what civic means or what democratic means, it means for everybody. So is this, this is now trying to create a place that does good for not just its little place, but its region and its broader place. We're thinking now all of us about living and making decisions that have a positive effect, not just for what we're doing, but for those who are doing the making and those who are a part of, even those we can't see. So when we think about materials, it's not just what would work for that sound wall, but is it made in this case, the rammed earth, is made of dirt and that's some local dirt. That means it has less cement. That means it's better from a carbon standpoint. Reducing carbon is good, not just for Atherton, but for everyone. So I think it is about broadening our understanding that civic is about the larger impact. And then I'll ask you for Christopher, you flashed the slide that showed all those libraries to work on. So I'm kind of curious, during the last 30 years or whatever, this is a variation of the question I asked, Trimble's been, what's the deal that you're governing? Library design is like anything. There are trains that come and go. And there are the libraries of a certain era that have features that maybe now you don't have a business center. But I'm just kind of curious, are there kind of basic core things you've learned to design for? Do you come up with that? Works better than the, here's the cool library look this year that gives all the American Institute of Architects slash library awards in five years from now that stuff's all getting torn out. I think what I've learned is that every project is something complete with unity and learn something new every time. As I said, there's a long list there that's been doing it for over 30 years and so much has changed. The first library didn't even have computers and had a card catalog. And things have changed. Things like technology. But I think the thing that really sort of strikes me now is the types of spaces you still have the things that you think of. Some collections, but they're reduced. They have spaces for children. They're sort of, they're all fun. They're places for teens that are more sort of committing more to these spaces. And then noisy libraries and sort of learning to live with noise. But really kind of what's kind of really fun and interesting these days is culinary kitchens that we're putting in libraries. They're not just kitchens and teaching kitchens, but they're also places to learn sort of culinary literacy. There are spaces to make spaces is one thing, but there are all kinds of flexible spaces that we're putting in and can do everything. So we've got to have this very flexible room that's got durable finishes and good ventilation, good lighting. But it can be turned into anything, and flexibility is kind of key. And another sort of trend recently are partnerships where libraries are creating, bringing in other partners. So like in Missoula they had a partnership with a university science museum and they have that science museum teaching spaces for kids to learn science in the library. They have a place where social services comes in and has a place to be a sort of therapy in other kind of social services. Sacramento's got veterans organizations that are sort of providing services. Or Hayward has, you know, all these different pop-up social services or community services. You come in, lawyers in the library are learning how to do your taxes. All these different things, and they have spaces created specifically to sort of provide those. So, you know, the limitations are only sort of in our lives because the librarians are so creative and they're so dedicated to kind of finding new relevant things. So every project starts with this community process where you find a discern what are the most important things. We don't ask questions about what do you want in your library. We kind of ask the questions about what do you want from your life or what do you need in your life to achieve your goals or your ambitions. And we try to synthesize that and figure out, well, how does that relate to the library in terms of spaces and functions and programs. I have the wonderful opportunity to be remodeling the first library I've ever been. Right now. I've read the safe house one. We did it in the 1980s and it is completely moving from the left to the right from upstairs to downstairs to the front to the back and inside and outside. And it's been completely rethought. And it's really fun to go back and sort of my old mom's and bring me to it. Very quick answer because that's so interesting. Was that lessons learned over time or is more the technology has changed and the civic expectations of the building have changed? It's the civic expectations. And then I want to ask one question of everyone and then give a few minutes for questions. So let's, you know, just don't want to get into too involved with discussion or anything because I do want to get to the questions from the audience. But for all of you in a kind of general sense, you don't all have to answer than anyone would have thought on this. And we've touched on it throughout this but what's the difference between doing a civic building city hall whatever community center and doing a library. Are there different expectations that people are bringing into the room when you're working on a civic building as opposed to other types of public buildings? Sure. Strong. I would say that I'm not sure if they come bringing this but there is a desire for this place to be a safe space. We talked a little bit about that that it's a place where if someone is struggling with their identity or having an issue with being housed or having an issue with their peers they come to the library. They come to the teen center. They come to just be there. And I think we're hearing more and more of that. And so it doesn't become part of the program but it's what those who work in libraries tell us that they face and they try to embrace. So how do we think about that? I take just a different tact on the way I heard the question and I think from an architectural standpoint thinking about what does it look like to approach a library? I think we all have that image of a Carnegie in our head and we can't recreate that. We can't put the steps up to the front door which meant accessibility issues but there still were some core things generally there was some symmetry there was this grand room different than living in your living room or the desk in your office to read. And we hear from college students still even they're moving into a new campus they want that grander so you want a taller you want really great natural light to create this sense that you're doing something important in learning and I think there is it's a little bit intrinsic and I think it has to do with the quality of materials you want things that are a little bit more permanent or lasting than you would have a house or maybe than you're expecting to find a community rep center to elevate that sense maybe it isn't the look that used to imply education but there is something to an orderliness and a grander that elevates the experience. I would say that all civic buildings need to reflect the identity, the aspirations of the community they serve so I think irrespective of what kind of civic building it is, it must carry that import. The simple truth is that libraries do more for many for more, do more for more than any other civic building there's no discrimination in the library user community if you're going to a community center you're inclined to be fit or otherwise involved in support of other parties in a certain nature so the type of building there already is public. All the other that you might think of that is accepting of anyone under any circumstances is apartment because you go to enjoy it for what it provides for offers to you. So libraries have a sort of tougher job to do which is to understand the diversity of their community and respond to it in a responsive and responsible way as they can and that's a lot to do. Thanks. I would say kind of when I think back to the after-gen project and having to deal with both of these buildings at the same time and maybe more on a poetic level the library for us and for that community is really a place and the architecture was there to support that and connect you to the place. The Civic Center, which had a police station and had a mayor's office it was a much more static kind of formal experience and it was wonderful to kind of design a civic center with that type of bracketing or architectural language. When you go to the Appleton Library when you leave it you don't walk away with this idea of a building you walk away with this experience of daylight and the materials and experience of engaging with the community and you walk away from the Civic Center the architecture kind of leads those are great answers the only thing I have with that would be that every library needs to feel very well that every person who comes into that building feels themselves belonging in that space and what they're in that space they have an elevated sense of sort of a land or so much it's just kind of something greater than just some ordinary space great thanks these are great answers it's been a great presentation but I do want to give a few moments for questions rather than reminisce about my life in libraries I can project very well thanks Levi I used to be an architect I remember covering architects but I didn't have a strong association with a library as a child definitely I was fortunate to go to Cornell went to a lot of libraries and both classical and modern and I think that a lot of people who are in university have a really strong association with a library and then when they need university loosen very quickly especially when you go into a corporate job and live in a city like San Francisco when I was thinking about like the drain drain if you will that San Francisco has people leaving the city and kind of exiting San Francisco these well-educated coastal it's right what is the role of the library in creating this drain drain how can the library be a place for these like I guess how can the library play a role in creating like a civic sense of pride not just for I definitely recognize the role that they play for working people in all classes and I think that I'm just curious about your thoughts on the role of how libraries play a role for people who have also been in the library division have such a strong association with them and why people who went through those experiences so often do their association with libraries I'll try one thing which would be to make libraries from being kind of this this old-fashioned institution where you don't really feel brought to go in and it's something that looks so exciting that you want to get in there and take a look and see what's going on in the library what does that look like in anything I've seen before and once you get in then we go here it's something really fun the books that are really fun or there's some program going on and it's all transparent and we've seen a lot of that because we have a lot of stuff going on I think about, wow, this is my community this is something going on here this is kind of happening maybe I mean one quick thing I would say is that's kind of a challenge to the libraries but it's a challenge of anything is Christopher was saying libraries need to be welcoming but at the same time one thing I know just in my own life is there are the cycles where I wasn't going to the libraries because it was a point in my life where I wasn't going to the libraries I mean as a reporter you go to do research but then I had a kid and suddenly you're back into the cycle of libraries and then there's this bizarre thing in my 30s or whatever it's like, my gosh, I can check any book out here and it's free I don't even go to find this as a used book or order it online it's like, this is great and it's like this weird thing I got and I was a kid at the clutching library so I mean it is tough because you can put all these great things in it but there's a certain limit to what you can do in the region now but it's a good provocative question and the women in the same room I have a question I grew the lack of a community space when I looked at these things and I've been a library for a long time since childhood and we go to small towns we always go to the libraries that's actually a great conference to apply to the community and you're educating me that the whole town square part of this thing but now all I'm seeing is too much transparency I'd like to hide out we go to the Valley Library so I mean seriously the Golden Gate Library and the other libraries too anyway the Golden Gate when the children are there you can't work you cannot hear yourself think and so it's really it's a nice community space I'm glad there are people there but it's trouble something what about the people who still want to go out and according to the law there's this quiet space but it's still an incubator I mean it's still brought without having some quiet space and some nooks and things I will say as the librarian who had as the librarian who had the fun chore of doing the piece I wrote about a few libraries earlier this year the Atherton chairs are super public they're cozy they're very comfortable chairs and their quiet room pulled off the quietness and you know what you're talking about there is the hole you can't talk about whispering libraries and then it became kind of the encouraging I want to get to other questions but I got the impression with Berkeley with the teen area that it was kind of like how do you rethink and expand teen center areas that the city of Berkeley just redid it's downtown library not a full redo but the kind of periodicals thing which was a huge chunk of a floor shrank down and you got more of a teen center and it seems like kind of almost a little bit of pulled them away out of the main flow of the quiet areas well that's true but I think that you have a really good point and I think that is part of our job in listening to the community because we can talk to each other and hear these same answers too much and forget that people do want a diversity of experiences and you know for example we heard in talking to some of the students at Laney college we thought well we want to give them the same experience that Stanford students have that they all need to learn to collaborate so they can work in these businesses and they said no our houses are so noisy we live in such cramped conditions we need to come someplace silent and so we need to take that into account and design that as well and there's another point the Mechanics Library has lots of books and crannies maybe just to that point the Huntington Library is very interesting there are four quiet rooms that you can rent out and the library is very clear that there are always rented out so the need for these types of spaces you can find that peace and quiet and focus is still there in libraries question first and then stand up and interject thank you so much for this early important conversation I'm still formulating my questions but it's something along the lines of you're making such a good presentation on all the opportunities that libraries presents on how you're trying to reflect the variety of environments and what the needs are and I'm just finishing Eric on the books how he told them that he is at that so fantastic and my question is something I think that's really lacking now in city participation and I'm wondering how do you see this beautiful moving up increase of opportunities at libraries impacting social infrastructure and people wanting to participate in those specific environments how do you see libraries being funded it's a great book I recommend everybody to read it's an easy read it goes quickly and makes really great points libraries are kind of a neutral territory where people can come together without having to part of anything and librarians and other people in the community can put on programs and have forums where people can come together whether organized or they can be by chance and so by having these sort of welcome shared spaces they can come together, they can have chance meetings they can be without relationships so well as if those things start in the library or at the communities where people care for each other more but it's also a place where political conversations can happen in sort of a more spiritual paradigm you can sort of get out of here and go chamber and maybe have a conversation and we'll roll over to the next, a woman sitting next to her thank you for that question from the Cannes Institute our neighborhood has dramatically changed since then our corporations many of them have either out of the area or majority of them are hoping for more so what we need to do is change across the streets in the past and corresponding businesses as a result of that in the same way they are and I think we'd like to see ourselves as being a little critical part of helping to refurbish the new I'm curious about what you've worked on library projects where the library's role was exactly that it wasn't necessarily any more and what used to be the variety of paper with a lot of good traffic but instead any thoughts about that any work with libraries having been a critical part in helping to turn around the neighborhood or responding to turn around their own work in the library Charles do you see that with some of the San Francisco branches you know our branches there'd be a couple of exceptions obviously a brand new branch hadn't existed before or were very nicely situated the neighborhoods in which they occurred and so I think generally you know the vibrancy of those places were already benefiting from the presence of that library there I think something came to mind as you were speaking Kathy which is when I spent the time in Chicago got to know that library system pretty well they were going through a very large expansion of their library branch network and where they built branches hadn't existed before they found that in many of these neighborhoods it was a centering and a calming influence because the very purpose of the library was to serve and to serve again the diversity of the neighborhood in all these expressed needs and wants and so when you have a specific presence in community in neighborhoods like that it just creates a ripple effect of Chicago they were honestly surprised but they were very pleased to see these new libraries where they hadn't been before was having a very centering calming effect so libraries can be that place that lift up so one or two last questions real quick oh wait there's someone back okay yeah the back thank you so first thank you very much from the branch library system we love it we live in very close to a plumber park and so we have Perkola and Excelsior and Glen Park and Engelside and these guys do all the time and they hit the main library as well and we're really glad they're refurbishing them but as far as so the mission library on 24th street it's been refurbishing for a year or more now and these guys just hop on a bus and go to whatever library but this might be more of a logistical question than architectural one but is there a way to so at the mission library they put a van out in front of people and get books a couple times a week but the library has been shut down for more than a year is there a way to work through the logistics of that so that people have access to a library in the meantime the question is the eternal dilemma of putting in new improved abstraction is what do you do while the abstraction workers are inside Charles you get that question although maybe you guys you've learned that else were great too yeah what the some people in the library has four bookmobiles and so when they shut down a branch for work with a long term project they generally roll out the bookmobiles to serve that community for precise durations and for moments throughout the week I'm not aware that the mission branch has been closed that long I think to work for it the nice thing about San Francisco being 7x7 since you're not very far from another branch library we have more than two dozen libraries throughout the city we also have intro library loans so if you need to get it's not available in your branch you can get through another branch so we're blessed to have that network for years literally within the market distance of one or two other branches other than your own neighborhood branch okay and I'll clear over there was a question yeah my first question is should the library the old libraries since they are in some sort of spaces have they bookstores art centers make their spaces seems like it would be a conflict with the main library of Congress but it's my first question and I have a second one I have a question to give you an example can you set your visibility to study on your design libraries okay two I have a question I specifically wanted before this talk and I asked not because of your design but because of what can date it for a huge design okay two questions one is are there post occupancy studies on usage we got a hint of that in the flip report and should they be called libraries if the idea is to make all these other things you can call it anything you want I guess because there's libraries in East London that are called the ideas or Hayward is called the community learning center we rebranded it early in the design process to say well it's a library but I'm going to call it a community learning center because that's what's important and there are lots of systems around the country and in the world they have kind of doc2 doc1 and our who's basically named that so I think it is what we wanted to be and the integration of community functions with library is something that's happening and low park is building a new library community center in the sort of even portion of it which is the more disadvantaged part of them and we worked on that early with the community and we worked with the city to kind of see it happen and it's totally integrated if you walk in the front door there's a children's area in front of you there's a senior center on the right there's a gymnasium on the left upstairs there's a computer room there's a team space and then you can have it all placed you can carry books back and forth anywhere you want to but it hasn't been open that long but were there studies afterwards like are we bringing more patrons as a result or more book circulating as a result? I'll respond to that so yes we do some post occupancy it hasn't been open that long so we are understanding where there are glitches or where there are snacks and so that all hopefully it's sad to hear that you didn't get what you needed to get to but I think that is part of this evolution project actually to do better I would say you know I actually love that the library has this expanding definition for many reasons because it means that it's alive it's not static it's responsive to each community and so why not be that fun school I will say too the interesting thing is the team centers were doing the teams are and that team center does a lot of things it's like hip-hop video whatever they want they're loud they're very loud and it's only for teens because we weren't allowed to get in until they arrived but the thing that the teams say is that they tell their parents they're going to the library their parents go awesome as long as you're on so there's something really nice about what comes with the naming of the history of library I would say that I think that it still does center back to this idea of literacy I think that there is this passion whether it's small children getting them ready to learn to read and from the very early stages training their eyes to go from left to right to the new immigrants who are coming who are whether they're learning a new language or never learn to read in their own language or learning to read and be able to educate themselves that still center what a library is and makes it different and part of the struggle that I think we've heard a librarian from Yale say you have to realize that people are walking around with a powerful computer in their pocket all they want I mean when I started my career shelves to put telephone books and you just don't need some of that material anymore but you do need to learn to read and educate and we know that's more important than ever For those of you from out of the name there's a sculpture out on Mark and it's an L it looks like a shape and it moves with the wind that was donated by Carl Jirasi some of you may know Carl he was the inventor of the film and he donated it to the library he had a great collection of sculptures but he said it moved them because it represented the library literature learning literacy it could be learning of all kinds it is just strictly your grandfather's interpretation of the motion of learning so whenever you walk by that sculpture they out the L's and then they signify for the meaning of the reference thank you and so we're way over we have to talk about the device of reference section so I think we can give a hand to everybody I have to go to the center of the room this is important and inspiring conversation and also I just want to say that the Carrick's Institute library and chess room and the programs and also events and film we are dedicated to you and dedicated in our mission of life long learning and education and enrichment and engagement but it requires you to be part of it and so I hope for those of you who are new to Mechanics Institute join us come take a tour on Wednesday we have a free tour Wednesday at noon of our whole institute with the librarians also Alyssa Stone will give a short preview of the library for those of you who would like to join a very short tour but the full regalia will be on Wednesday at noon and please join us remember that this is a place for civil discourse which we need so much in this country today and I thank you for being with us tonight for that purpose