 Okay, we're back. We're live for the One O'clock Block. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech Hawaii with me is Cheryl Lynch. She's a branch manager of the branch of the Hawaii Library in Waini. And I have been meaning to have her on the show for a long time because I have admired her for a long time, because she sends me mail all the time. She tells me about what's going on in Waini in the library. And I'm always impressed. Welcome to the show, Cheryl. Thanks, Jay. Thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate this opportunity. So tell us, what makes the Waini branch of the library system different from all the other branches? Well, the Hawaii State Public Library System is the only statewide library system. And we have 51 branches across Six Islands. 51, wow. 51 and the State Library, that makes it 52. And we at Waini, we have some interesting things besides some unique programming. We also have a very large collection of Hawaiian quill patterns. Really? Yes. And people can come in and trace. Well, it's hard to expect that. That's not in the classical library, is it? No, it's not. And we have people from all over the world come and we had a group of ladies from Japan came. They traced the patterns, they went back, they made the quilt, and they brought it back and gave it to us. Oh, it's beautiful. Beautiful. Angel trumpet quilt. Yeah, it's beautiful. So you have an exhibit room in the library. How do you exhibit these things? Well, we are lucky enough to have a really nice meeting room where people can rent. And in our meeting room we have a very large quilt made by one of our quilt patterns in 1990 was donated to us. And then we have a glass case until we can get into a nice plastic sheet, the new one from the Japanese quilters. And that's in a glass case. But when people rent the meeting room, they can see them. And it's actually being used in a sense that it's in the meeting room. People in the meeting will look at it. So it's made to order for connection. And speaking of connection, it sounds to me like Wainae branch is particularly sensitive and connected with the native Hawaiian community out there, hence the quilts. Well, we try to be connected to all the people that live on the Wainae coast, and we are lucky enough that we had the quilt patterns donated, but we have something new that's happening. We have a community court out at the library. I don't know if you've seen that advertised lately. And the judiciary comes out, rents our meeting room just like everybody else. They rent it for two days because it's a lot of setup. And we have court out there in our meeting room, which is really awesome. It's real court. Real decisions, real judges. Yes. And if you see a picture of the judge, she's the quilts behind her. So it looks really good. People can't miss it. It's at Wainae. But what I caught in there is that you can rent a room at the library. Tell me about how that works. Oh, lots of libraries have meeting rooms that you can rent, and you just call the branch and ask them, do you have a meeting room? And if yes, they look through their schedule and book you, and it's pretty easy. We also have the AARP tax people. They rent, well, we let them use our meeting room, and they come in during tax season. Is there a nonprofit at all? Well, yeah, well, they're doing a wonderful service to our community, and they come out once a week on Wednesday and do taxes for free. And then over at our new sister branch at Nanakuli, just down the street, 5.6 miles, not far. But who's counting? But they do the taxes there on Friday mornings. So that's in their meeting room. That's great. That's another connection with the community, you know, with the seniors. So what was your demographic like, Cheryl? I mean, are you dealing a lot with young people, with middle-aged people, seniors? Who comes and goes from the library at Wynine? Well, really, zero to 100. I mean, we have babies up to 90-year-olds that come and use our computer every day, and everybody in between. We're close to the high school. We're close to the Wynine Middle School, or Wynine Intermediate School. So you're actually right in the community, physically? Oh, yeah, on the fire stations, the next door. Oh, sure. Yeah, in the community parks right behind us. So yeah, we got a lot of different people. You know, we have people that come and just use the computers. We have people come that will never use the computers because they're so happy we have all our books, which we still have lots of books. And let me think who else. We have high school kids coming in. We have student helpers that work there, and their friends come in to say, hey, which is okay, because it brings the kids in. Sure. And the middle schoolers come over after school. Yeah, we have lots of people. You have to say shush to them? Well, you let them have a conversation. We let them have a quiet conversation. But when they get too rowdy, we ask them to go outside. You know, you could come back in after you're quiet, yeah. So let's talk about the computers. Okay. You know, just the thought that if any institution, especially an educational institution, wants to stay relevant, it has to keep up with the way information is delivered. And certainly, I mean, from the days of the doobie decimal system and all that. We still have that. You do, good. Oh, yeah. That's our books already. It still works. You know, you've got to stay relevant with the new information systems, and they move fast. So when did you get into that, and what are you doing with it? Well, the Hawaii State Public Library System has had computers available to the public since I've been a librarian, and that's about 20 years. So we are, we stay very current. And our new state librarian, Stacey Aldridge, she makes sure we stay current. We have our computer system that our internet computers that the patrons can use are very up to date. We just got a brand new program called SAM-10, and it allows you to put a reservation on. And then if nobody's waiting, you don't have to get off your computer or get your card reset and do all this stuff. No, it just keeps adding time until the next person comes along once you use the computer. And then we have a new print management system where you send your print jobs to the computer and then you go over to the printer. And instead of everybody rifling through all the prints that printed out, you have the security to know that... Hit a code and your job comes out. Right, and your job comes out. So all those people that are printing their tax returns, they know they're safe and nobody else... It's very important. It's very important. Because how many people do their taxes online? Lots. So what you're really saying is, you know, most people I know down here, Bishop Street, they do their computer work either in the office or at home, but not in the library. There are people who don't have an office and don't have a computer at home and they need a place to do their paperwork, their computer research and their computer connection. Right. And you're offering that. So it's like an office away from home. It's like the one place they can go and do stuff, you know, to connect with the world, to do research and so forth. This is a great benefit to people who might not otherwise be able to do it. Well, here, Jay, let me tell you one of my favorite things about how to use the Wynye Public Library. All the libraries can be used like this, but Wynye's so hot in the summertime, you bring your laptop to the nice air-conditioned library, you open up your laptop, you get your library card out, and you log into our Wi-Fi, our free Wi-Fi. And you do your work from there. Oh, you're offering me such a track of questions here. I really love this conversation. Ah, Wi-Fi. Yes. Another really critical thing. So you don't have to use the computers in the library. No, you can use your own. You may have a laptop. A lot of people have laptops. They have laptops in schools. They walk around with laptops all day. But it's not all that good if you don't have Wi-Fi. So you're providing them Wi-Fi. This is terrific. Absolutely. Yes, yes. And it's a service that's used a lot by a lot of different people. And, you know, even people that have computers at home, how many people come to the library and they say, ah, my printer just ran out of ink. So they come over to the library. They send the item to themselves in their email or they put it on their flash drive. They drive over to the library. They log on to the computer. They print their job and they're heading back home. And they didn't have to go into town to buy new ink for the printer. That's great. Great service. A great service. Boy, it's a magnet. You know, people come in and be able to do it. It's enabling, enabling, yeah? Sure is. So what about things that are kind of personal? I mean, for example, I go on a computer, I go on a browser, your browser, and I want to go to my account and say it's my financial account or something that's personal. How do I protect myself? How do you protect me from, you know, nobody, nobody getting my passwords and the like? Well, I don't know all the technical specifics, but I do know our system is very safe. And at the end of your session, if you turn the computer all the way off, everything is, nothing gets saved to the hard drive. It's gone. And if you don't do that, no worries, because at the end of the day, everything gets wiped out and you start fresh. So those people that sadly forgot their flash drive and they think it's going to be on the computer the next day, unfortunately it's not, but that's also fortunate because that means no one can look at their stuff. So you give Maxis to put a flash drive in and put information in, take it out. Yeah, even our copiers now will, you can put it from your flash drive from the copier. You can scan to your flash drive from the copier, which is a really great thing. Somebody says they want to fax something, we don't have faxing, but we tell them, print your document, sign it, scan it into a flash drive and we'll let you borrow ours if you need to and then go to the computer, get on your email and send it. You know, this is a real, this is a good deed you're providing to the community. I wasn't aware of all these things. It's a mitzvah, as we say. And it also reflects something about you as the manager and your staff. You're out there to try to help people in every way you can possibly help them, am I right? Tell me about the tone, the attitude among the staff in the library. Well, I don't know about other libraries but all I can speak to is why and I have absolutely the friendliest, nicest, most dedicated, helpful staff that I've ever worked with. I've been in the library system for 20 years and all the other people I've worked with are great too, but this particular group of people are pretty awesome and they know a lot of stuff too so that makes it really fun. So what about being a librarian? Why do I think you have 76 trombones married in a librarian? Cheryl librarian. Did you train for this? You go to school for this? Yeah, I went to UH. Back 20 years ago I've always been a pretty passionate avid reader. 20 years ago I took the TV away from my family for a year. They only let me do that for a year but we all read. So after that year was over my husband told me you have got to find some way to pay for this hobby. So when I moved to Hawaii I went to library school so that I could continue my passion for reading and sharing reading and get paid for it. Was it a good choice? Oh, the best choice. I can't tell you how much pleasure I get from sharing things that I've read in the library. We have a new thing at the library. We put staff picks up in our staff name and we wait every day to hope somebody picks our book. It's fun. You're beginning to get the idea. This is a special person, a special branch. It's a wonderful expression of how the library system works in Hawaii. It's part of the community and it's part of lifelong learning. I was telling you before the show began when I went to school I always said, gee, I don't want any more of this. When I finished school I didn't get my necessary degrees. I'm out of here. I'm not going to go back to school ever. I really found that that was completely the wrong thought to have because life must be lifetime learning. You must learn all the time. It doesn't matter what you study. You have to study anything that makes your consciousness grow. That's what you offer at the library system. People come in, they can do anything they want and it's an intellectual experience for everyone. It's so much fun to see what our patrons request. When you go to the Waianae branch we have a collection, but when you look on the catalogue you have access to every book, every DVD, every CD in every library and all these 51 branches. You can request it. It gets sent to my library. The staff checks it in and we go, oh wow, this looks interesting. We put a hold on that one too. Yes, we do. We do all the time. It's fun and we talk to our patrons about what they're reading and get suggestions from them just as much as they get suggestions from us. But the beauty of one system library system is that my unique little library that tries to collect to support my community is available to everybody and everybody else is available to me or my community. How long does it take to move the things I request from one place to another? Well, that's a little hard to say because some of them are coming from the neighbor islands. All the neighbor islands, of course. Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some of them, like for example, a man asked me two days ago for a book and he was in a really big hurry so I called the other library, said is it on the shelf? Yes. Can you check it in please? And I was keeping my fingers crossed and I looked through delivery today and it wasn't there. I was so disappointed. And then I turned around and looked, oh, we got it yesterday. So all the better. Did your own expectations. Yes, it did. But it's hard because you never know because sometimes we have something called hot picks and before a book is even published, we call it pre-pub, we put it in our catalog and people can put a hold on it. So all those people that were waiting for Michelle Obama's book and it was out at the printer, we had copies. Now there was a long hold, but eventually you're going to get it. And your hot picks are on the web somewhere? Yes. How do I know what's there? Well, on the library system web page, which is librarieshawaii.org, that's where you can find everything and put me on the spot. I'm not exactly sure where the hot picks are but if you search in the top right corner and say search the site and say hot picks, it'll come up and they have them all there. You can request them and then you get on the list and then they send you and if you're smart and you put your email address on your library card application, they'll just send you an email. Okay. We're going to talk about library cards right after this break. Cheryl Lynch, the branch manager of the Y&I Public Library. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation and world and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech, Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff but I really like energy stuff so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner. How we can make the world a better place. Just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Okay, we're back. I told you we'd come back and we did come back. And Cheryl Lynch is holding her iPhone and she wants to show you something on the iPhone. What are you trying to show us? Well, you were talking about the library cards and I wanted to show people our app. So we have an app and it looks just like the library card if you have the red one. If you are lucky enough to still have your green one you would still recognize the library logo which is the red with the yellow hibiscus and it's called librarieshawaii.org. That's our website and our app is called librarieshawaii as well. And if you click on it you can do all kinds of things. This little thing that looks like a barcode. If you click on that you can scan a barcode for a book. So if you're in the library I mean excuse me if you're in the bookstore and you want to know if the library has it you just click this and scan the barcode it uses the camera on your phone. It tells you if you have it in the library or not and if you do you can put a hold on it right there. I just scanned your books on the bookshelf because one look you find anything? Well yeah a couple of them and I actually put a long one while I was sitting out there. Yeah and then also these little menu stripes up here if you click on this you can load your account information in here under the account you put your library card and your pin number and your library card is then on your phone and if you forget it at home no worries pull out your phone because no one leaves the house without their phone. That's true. They might leave without their library card but if they have it in here it even tell you if you have something on hold if you have something overdue it'll tell you if you owe money and I do I owe money? Yeah I always owe money because I forget to bring my books back and even though my app tells me they're due today but anyway the library app is my absolute favorite thing. Yeah this is for the whole system the whole system right but how long has it existed? It sounds terrific maybe we've had at least a couple years you know and so you download it from iPhone and Android also? Yeah This is great Yeah Oh can I tell you about another one too? Please So we have something called I don't know if you could see this one it's called Libby and I have it up here my background on my phone it makes it hard to see but Libby right here is our provider for downloadable e-books and audiobooks and Libby is so smart she's my best friend because she will you could search for things there's all kinds of preferences like you could put it I only want audiobooks they only want e-books and if I do check out an e-book she's smart enough to know that I'm not going to read it on my phone she sends it to my Kindle Oh very cool I know it's awesome so So what is the connection between Kindle and Amazon and your programs that you offer is it the same thing but the library system version or is it connected in some way to Kindle? Well in order for your Kindle or your iPad or your iPhone or anything when you when you go through Libby which is the it's Libby actually belongs to Overdrive and Libby is the new more user friendly app that goes with Overdrive and you can because Kindle is a proprietary for Amazon you have to then go into your Amazon account and you'll see your content you downloaded from the library system and you just manage it there and once you do it a couple times you're golden so you can have them side by side with the books that you've bought from Amazon your library includes both sources well but when you use the Libby app it doesn't okay you're only going to see what you have checked out from the library but if you look on your Amazon account you'll see both so you can see both yeah you definitely can see both this is really interesting because it speaks of a new kind of literacy you know I mean my concern I would tell you before the show is that to run a democracy you need people who are an electorate who is educated and able to make decisions about complex issues sometimes with confusing facts and disputed facts and controversies all around we see that today and you need people to be educated not only in the CNN sense but in the sense of reading in the sense of understanding the context understanding the history understanding the possibilities it can't be thin it can't be focused only on your shoelaces it has to be based on life on learning that keeps on going that puts us all in the landscape so the library is actually working on that and you're offering literacy to people and literacy means much more than just reading books it's a way of thinking I can see it thank you well I just have to reassure you that Cedric Gates and Mylesha Mabukura are legislators from Y&I are very familiar with the library and we see them and we see their family and so I know they're in there reading so that's great but you were talking about literacy one of the things that the library does and most every library has something called story time and Y&I has two story times we have something called time where we encourage reading as we encourage families and pre-schoolers and then we have toddler time which is zero to three and those two story times are think of them as ways to help your child get ready to learn so when they go to school they have been exposed to reading they've been exposed to the joy of reading and they will be ready when they go to school now our toddler time our children's library and uses the skills that she learned in a program called Every Child Ready to Read and they teach specific skills so when she has toddler time and it's crazy there's like 25 people in there I was in there with her the other day and it's so much fun but she tells the parents or the caregivers why she's doing specific things so that like for example a car to ride on and you think giving a baby a car to ride on to write their name and she tells the parents just let them scribble cause they'll and then she has a clapping game and we say their name and they put their name up on the board she said it's a way to familiarize them with pre pre-learning pre-reading skills so she does all those things and then she's teaching she's exposing the children and she's teaching the parents how to take it home it's great it is it's I'm really impressed you know cause even if you scribble you're learning the relationship of something on the page something on the paper with communication with thought process and that's a huge lesson for a kid yeah and they scribble and then everybody claps and says their name and claps for them and they go up and they put yeah so it's a lovely association don't you like what people clap for you you know one of our hosts here we have like 70 of them all together but one of our hosts wrote a piece an op-ed piece for the Star Advertiser just submitted and I think it will be printed and it's about the relationship of the electorate and education and the press okay the press the electorate the education and the idea is that to have a working democracy you have got to have engagement you've got to have people together who are willing to test their ideas and I have the vision is you know when you went to library school and when you talk with people or reading it's not only that they read they engage right and it's that interaction makes you hone your opinions down it makes you find the truth it tests you and this kind of thing I mean it's basic in our country in our democracy and you told me before that you have events so I suspect that the events go beyond just literacy the events go to engagement too where people actually have an opportunity to address themselves in a group am I right? Yes as a matter of fact well still very tied to literacy we why and I and many of the libraries have monthly book club and last month the book we read I was the host because at my library we change hosts every month the book that I picked nobody liked so and different people would tell me oh did you read that I'm like what I did was then I emailed all of them and I attached a bunch of reviews because this book had won the Pulitzer prize and everyone's like why did it win the Pulitzer prize this is terrible so I attached a bunch of reviews and then when we came to book club I had more people there than I had at any other book club because nobody liked the book and wanted to figure out who on earth would like this and we started discussing it we talked about the reviews it was a fantastic discussion and I think a lot of people left said hmm maybe I'll read that again and see yeah it was great and next month open minded just critical thinking all the good things all the fun stuff it was so much fun and then next month we have the author coming Rodney Morales his new book called For a Song and it's set in the early I think 2007 it's set in Hawaii and the funny thing is is when you read the description of the book you can read it on the website under book clubs if you search for it it sounds just like it came out of the newspaper today so I can't wait till he comes and we can talk about it yeah it's so fun so I have to ask you as a librarian as the manager of this library these days what are you reading Cheryl give me the book that appeals to you right now okay well I must say I usually read three or four because I listen to one that I'm not really liking right now but that's okay I just finished an audio book an audio book that I downloaded from the library okay and I'm reading a book called the Museum of Modern Love very unique I think Heather Rose is the author and it's it's a fiction book about a real artist it's very interesting because art is not something I'm familiar with so I've learned a ton from this fiction and then I just read a book called First it's written by a guy named Scott Harrison and it's about his startup called Charity Water it's a huge thing but it's so personable and so engaging I really enjoyed reading that and learned about that water charity but our children's librarian works on the Nene committee do you know what the Nene is I know the Goose yeah well it's named after the Goose it's the state award for children's book children's fiction book it's been going on since 1950 sure I've heard of this and she's on the committee to help pick the titles for the kids to vote on well she's got so much to do doing toddler time story time and all the great programs she does that the staff volunteered to help her read the books oh my gosh has it been so much fun we're reading all these books that are designed for fourth, fifth and sixth graders and then we all talk about them and then she gives us all a piece of paper we gotta fill it out like we're in school we liked what we didn't like so I've read a lot of really cute books that way you learn so much more about the book oh yeah you learn so much more in general and you never forget the learning experience about the book so take one minute now Cheryl and tell the people what you would like them to take away from this discussion about the Hawaii library system and about Waianae okay well if you haven't been to the Waianae library in a while please come back I really won't recognize it when you come inside we look a lot different the library is the library system is available to people in many forms whether it's online or whether it's downloadable to your device or you've come in for a program you just come in to enjoy the air conditioning and we have the coldest water fountain on the west side there's lots of reasons to come to the library whether it's my library or any library so please come back and see us I think you'll find that there's something for everybody there yeah and if you want to succeed in this life in this world you've got to know things the way to know things is to read things because that helps you speak things and it's not only for your benefit it's for all of our benefit to raise all the boats that we all have lifelong learning thank you Cheryl you're welcome my pleasure my pleasure