 Welcome to this talk of the town, which is an update from one of our favorite institutions in town, our library, and we get to talk to Assistant Director Anna Lytton about what's coming up in the month of March especially, but just over what we can all look forward to over the next few weeks. Anna, great to see you. You as well, you as well. It has been really, frankly, it's been too long since we last got to check in with you, especially given, of course, that the library has continued to be the kind of vibrant community space that it usually is when we're all in person. I've noticed that the library's programs, you know, the activity around the library doors as people are, you know, grabbing their materials, etc. It's all continuing quite a pace. Yeah, it really is. I'm just so grateful that I work with such an amazing staff of people who've really come up with very creative ways to continue to provide amazing library services to the community. So working with Marie Cannon, our head of circulation, we've been able to devise a very safe and very, and essentially contactless way for people to get library materials. We have seen huge numbers of library resources going out the door. We've actually been circulating in the last full month that I have data for is January. We circulated more books in January 2021 than we did in January 2020. So people are really able to access one of our core services materials. People are really able to find books and other library materials and being able to check them out and bring them home. So the gift that we are able to give the community is continuing to offer those great resources. I can attest to that myself because, you know, as we know, January and February are cold weather months. So I have been by to pick my own materials on multiple occasions and actually decided to come back later because there were so many people waiting and, you know, the line was out at the cold. So I definitely have had firsthand experience of the fact that, yeah, it doesn't surprise me to hear you guys are even busier in terms of material going out the door. Yeah. Yeah. We've offered the last time I was speaking with you, James, we were talking about our library grab bag service and that service has just taken off in such an amazing way. It's so I can't tell you the joy that librarians feel in putting together those materials for people and the response from the community has been tremendous. People are so happy to get their grab bags and it's another great way that we've found to while we are closed for browsing to offer some of that same kind of service to the community. And it's been just a real true delight to be able to provide that service. Yeah. I mean, very few examples as strong as the Robbins library really around seeing the opportunities here in in pandemic time and really taking advantage of those as best as possible. As you said, as we noted last time we were talking makes librarians just as happy as it does. Patron. Absolutely. Some of these programs, that's for sure. Anyway, let's talk about what's coming up. I know that this is always a busy time in the library calendar every year because we are heading into March, which is traditionally community read time. And I'll let you go ahead and explain what the program is generally and then what the community read is for this year. Yeah, absolutely. Arlington's community read program Arlington reads together started in the early 2000s and the program offers a way for the community to come together to learn to read to engage in a topic deeply. There was a volunteer committee who selects the title after nominations from the community. We get together over a number of meetings, discuss and read many different titles and make one final selection. This year we were really that the committee itself was wonderful this year. We invited some new community members to that committee. We had two high school students who served on that committee, which was a real joy for me to bring in new voices, different outlooks to that committee. The committee chose a kind of classic book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria. I'm looking at the 20th anniversary edition of this book now. So this book has been around for a while, but the 20th anniversary edition includes some really great new updates, including a fantastic introduction. The book is a little bit longer than some books that we often pick. But one of the great things about this book is I don't think you need to read the entire book to really get a lot out of the book. And so one of the things we've done for our community read program this year, our community read program always includes quite a bit of programming, book discussion groups, as well as presentations from outside groups and many different types of ways that readers can get involved with that program. Our book groups this year include some opportunities to discuss, not the entire book, but a piece of the book. So our first book discussion, community book discussion, isn't a discussion just of the introduction, which is around 30 pages. It's not super long. Even if you're daunted by a long book during these times, these difficult trying times, you don't need to read the whole thing to get quite a bit of great information out of that title. So we're excited about that. And we have a fantastic lineup of programs as part of that schedule this year. I'm holding up right now the brochure that's available in the library for all of the events for this program. This is also available online, and I know we'll be sharing that information with viewers. Our featured event this year is an author visit with the author of this year's title, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. We are really excited to be partnering with the Arlington Educational Foundation for that event. She's going to be visiting the community on Sunday, March 21st. That's the correct date. Sunday, March 21st, she'll be doing a Zoom presentation with the entire community. That's going to be a moderated discussion. And I'm very, very excited about it. She gets rave reviews wherever she goes, and I think it's going to be a great event. We already have over 250 people signed up for that presentation. So I'm sure it's going to be a packed house and a great, great presentation for everyone. So we're super excited about that event. The other events throughout the month, there's, again, you can flip through all of them here. We're launching with an event with True Story Theater, a local theater organization that does interactive programs that build on stories, which is a perfect way for, I think, us to ease into this month of programming. A way to kind of bring some playfulness to thinking about identity, which is really the key theme of this year's book and how we build our identities and how our identities impact how we see the world. Lots of different pieces there. So that's going to be happening on March 3rd. Other great events throughout the month. We are having a presentation with Margaret Thomas from Arlington Public School. She's a MECCO coordinator for the community, for people who don't know MECCOs and opportunity for Boston resident students to participate in, to actually enroll as full-time students in suburban schools. And I'm really excited to hear more from her about the history and experience of being a MECCO student, being participating in that program in Arlington. What is that experience like? We'll be hearing from Speak Out Boston, which is a queer speaker's bureau for the Boston area about that kind of intersection of being a member of a community of color and a queer person. Like, how do your identities work together there or work apart? What is that like? We are going to be having a conversation. Oh, and we're going to be ending the month with a musical presentation by Tim Hall. He's a Boston area musician who does both spoken word and jazz. And when I was first introduced to him, his themes of identity, his themes of masculinity just came through so beautifully through his performance. I really wanted to include him in the month. I'd like to have a little fun piece at the end of the month to send us off with a little bit of joy. And I think Tim's going to bring that. I hope that we all have the opportunity to learn something about our identities, what race means in our individual lives, and how we can learn to communicate with those who have different identities than we do. Yeah, I mean, I could go on and on myself about this choice, but I'll leave it at this. I will say that it fits in very well with a reckoning, a necessary reckoning happening on a national level. We hope and certainly here in Arlington over these last couple of years, as we are well aware, these are issues that need to be addressed and faced and that needs to happen in community and community conversation as difficult, as uncomfortable as it may need to be. And this is a wonderful vehicle for that. Secondly, I will just add that in my previous life as a high school teacher here in Boston, we were lucky enough to read this book together as a community in our school and have the author in for a couple of sessions following that collective reading together. And in my 20 plus years of being at that school, I have to say this was one of the most galvanizing, powerful kind of sources of important conversation that we encountered in that whole time. So it promises to just be rich with possibility, I think, for the community. Congratulations to you and the committee for making that kind of choice. And it certainly sounds like the surrounding programming is going to only enhance people's experience. So I really hope so. And I do really want to take a if I can take a brief moment, I want to thank our partners in this whole project, particularly the Arlington Libraries Foundation, which has been an important funder for this project for the past few years. Their deep commitment to helping us get great authors into the community is so fantastic. And the Arlington Educational Foundation for joining this year, particularly wanting to support this book choice for both the community and the school community as well. And I'm really, I just am so happy that these keys, we've been able to bring these different groups together to provide this amazing program for everyone in Arlington. Well, I think it is crystal clear to people, we're both very excited. This prospect. But there's obviously other stuff to talk about as well. The library, as we often mentioned, is quite the engine for a number of different programs and conversations in town. So at your leisure, tell us what else we have to look forward to. Yeah, one of the things that I've been really this January, February, March are such busy months here. But there's been a lot of joy in that busyness. And I think one of the new projects that we're taking on that I'm particularly excited about is developing a collection I've been working with Jillian Harvey, the director of diversity, equity and inclusion here for Arlington on building a project that we are calling elevating Arlington's voices of color. I think Jill described it so well when she said people of color are so often spoken about rather than given the space to speak. And we wanted to create a collection, a place where we can hold stories of people of color in our community, hear their stories directly, hear their experiences. So in creating this collection, we want to hold memoir, we want to hold photos, we want to hold any way that somebody wants to tell their story. Here's what my life feels like and looks like living as a Black, Indigenous or person of color here in our community. So we're launching this collection with actually it's ongoing right now, a writing series with a local writer, Lynette Benton, who's a longtime writing teacher. She's been leading a couple of workshops and we are hoping to that some of the people who've been attending those will will submit their stories to our collection. Jillian and I have been working on pulling some different photographers and some different artists and to help people figure out how to tell your story. That's one of the tough things if I just say to you, I want I want your story for this collection, please tell your story, giving people some tools to help them do that has also been one of the joys of this work so far. We are taking submissions right now to that collection and we're looking forward to seeing what we have so that we can help people understand the experiences of our neighbors. Again, another wonderful idea and you know one thing that particularly resonates for me and what you just said, no doubt that the voices of people of color need to be heard and not immediately responded to. Those rest of us need to take time and take that in rather than respond and all too often as you said there's that drowning out or speaking for and by establishing a collection or archive like this you are enabling that process of us. You know those of us who need to be in the audience for this taking the things in and again processing those as we should. Yeah, it's been really exciting and I just also have to say it's Lynette Benton who has been leading writing workshops for the library for many years. She was so excited to take on this project as well and it's just another piece where I've just felt a lot of joy in working on this. That's great. Well I wish I could overlay the joy on this next topic but you know we've made passing reference so far to COVID and of course that is the world we continue to live in and will be for some time to come. My understanding is that you also are developing or in the process of having a kind of COVID archive. Can you tell us about that? Yeah that's been another fantastic project that's been forming over this time period. Our Arlington's COVID-19 archive is a place where we have been collecting photos, some writing, some videos, many different pieces to help show for today and for years into the future what Arlington looked like during this period. That collection is available on our website for anyone to see or to contribute to and I love it. I love looking at that collection. We have over 100 different artifacts essentially photos, videos, stories as I said in that in that collection and looking back on it it's just already we are almost a year into our COVID lives and looking back on it it's just amazing how quickly we'll forget some of these pieces. One of the pieces that I was editing in the collection just recently was a story about the first day of public school in Arlington. I believe that was September 21st around there and in this story you know the woman who posted was talking about what we didn't know what school was going to be like but we wanted kids to have this feeling of kind of excitement about going back to school and I was just so glad to be able to capture that there. We're going to forget what that felt like. We're going to be like oh and school didn't start for so long that year but remembering we still wanted to give kids that feeling of joy or looking back on it now you don't remember when he started wearing a mask. We don't remember that anymore it just is such part of our getting dressed in the morning is finding that mask so it's interesting to see those kinds of earlier stories too about when what was it like to get your first mask and stick that on. Yeah I think it is amazing because of course we all are aware that there's nothing we want to think about less right now than this world that we've been living in in a lot of ways right and there's nothing that we long to escape any more deeply than we do this. At the same time you're absolutely right that we need that it is so important that as we're living through it we are amassing the documentation of that for ourselves to look back on already and for obviously for posterity but yeah what you were just saying reminded me of hearing on the radio just a few days ago one of the first reports from you know of the first case in Massachusetts and of course that was only a year ago and it's a time that I lived through it's not that long and yet I just hearing that as an archival document really changed my perception of listening to it and of what it brought back for me etc so I can just imagine how the ripple effects of what you guys are amassing there will will play out over years and decades to come. Yeah and I really do hope that everybody all of the viewers today take a moment to go and take a look at that archive it is there are funny pieces in it we've forgotten how funny it felt to be sitting in our house for so long back in March and April it's just it's I think it's so valuable and I hope that when people look at that archive they're also a little bit inspired to look through the photos on their phone or go back to see some diary entries and think about what they could contribute to help us get a fuller understanding of what this period was like in Arlington Massachusetts in 2020 and 2021. Well I'm so glad that you mentioned you know looking at the archive because let me ask you how does somebody look at the archive. Yeah it's available through our website so that's robinslibrary.org and it's through our local history collection there's a local history tab right there the front page of our website and if you scroll down just a little bit you're gonna see the Arlington's COVID-19 archive it's right there easy to access there's a submit button once you see that as well so if anyone has any interest in submitting items easy to do right from there as well it's it's fun to take a look I know you're right James nobody wants to think about this anymore but it is kind of interesting to look at some of these photos to think about what spring felt like during this time period and you are so right it feels like so long ago and I think that the earliest submission that we have is a photo of Arlington's Health and Human Services Director Christine Bongiorno at a press conference about those early cases that we had here in Arlington and it's just it's amazing to think that happened a year ago and things our world will never be the same. Yeah and I have to say it takes a librarian to look at that and appreciate all of it with the gusto that it is interesting and it's going to be interesting for people for so many years into the future we are living through a historic time and I hope that we you know even though it's so difficult on so many levels we do need to take a moment to remember this is we are living through history and to let that slip away would be a real loss. Right this is not going to be one of those times it just you know slips our mind or something anything like that that's right. Let me ask you if you know I have a I have a question for you which I think the audience is going to be very you know curious about which has to do with reopening and you know what the timeline might be etc but before we get to that is there anything that is on the calendar coming coming up that you want to share with people that we haven't talked about yet. I know I think you know I encourage everyone to take a look at our events calendar we have really been doing an amazing job or I mean I I say wait I really mean my staff has been doing an amazing job of providing great programs for the community throughout this entire time period and I want to call out in particular Michelle Maher who runs the plugged-in programming that program series targets people 55 and older but really anyone is welcome. Michelle really saw this time period at the time when it might be better to increase programming that there's people might have more time or be looking for more ways to feel engaged and connected to the community and I think that what she did of adding more programs to her calendar is so typical of how everyone at the library has thought about this time period what can we provide to the community during a hard time and our events calendar which is again located at robinslibrary.org slash events it shows so many different ways for people to learn something connect to a different group come to a new book group come hear a presentation the friends of robins library have been putting on fantastic concerts every month there are so many ways to help you to remind remind yourself that you are connected to a wonderful community of people and I do hope that people take advantage of that right now. Love to hear that because you know I we feel at ACMI that we are really we have some super close partnerships in town and that with the libraries is one of them and I think part of the you know the real bedrock of that collaboration is our mutual commitment to just bringing connection to to town and enhancing community and looking for ways to do that whatever the circumstances are that we're living with and through. Well we've really been lucky to partner with ACMI ACMI has you know we've all been challenged to find new technology or use technology in new and different ways and ACMI has been a fantastic partner in presenting for example the friends of library of robins library concerts both to facebook pages and ACMI channels and really helping providing better ways to access things that are happening now. So let's just pause this whole programming right here and I got mine you got you go back and pat yourself. Exactly we're all doing a great job we're doing the best we can. Well we and it feels good it feels good to be making the effort. So let me let me now ask you you know that that that question that is probably ever on people's minds because it has been the library has been busy has been a constant presence in our lives throughout the pandemic but of course we can get only so far into into the doors and people are anxious to know when and if there's going to be a possibility that they can spend time in the library. Yeah we are really committed to finding to first understanding the health context here in Arlington and in Massachusetts and we are starting to see cases decrease which brings me so much I know brings me so much personal joy so much joy as a member of this town this state it's great to see those numbers start to go down. We are really looking at what services we can provide safely and how of course the service that we get the most questions about is browsing services people want to come in and be able to browse for books so we are really carefully thinking about what we need to do in order to make those services safe for the community that includes thinking about our occupancy rates how many people can we have in the building how can we let people know when it's safe to come in how can we provide some of the other essential services that we know community members are looking for technology services many different pieces for visiting the library so right now we are in the process of thinking about all of those pieces I cannot give you a date today when we will be opening for browsing or other services but I hope everyone in the community knows that this is a true staff of such a desire to be able to figure out safe ways to open up and provide some of those services or I should say open up more people do come into the library every day right now to pick up their materials but they're not really coming very far into the building so we're having meetings with all of our department heads we are making sure that we are able to do what we need to do safely we're thinking about what's happening in other communities and building a model that will work for Arlington that will be safe and sustainable for community members and staff and keep everyone safe and make sure that people are getting the services that they they really need and deserve yeah it may be self-evident but I think we need to acknowledge that there are you know that the biggest things are outside of your control and that you're you're doing your best to figure it out but it does sound like we all need to understand that it is probably going to be a gradated re-entry into the library for us as a community in other words there's going to be smaller steps before those doors are open wide as they were you know back in oh the halcyon days right right exactly and as now people are first we only had contactless pickup and then we opened up to being able to come into the library lobby to pick up your items which is much easier we are looking at those great gradations to make it to provide services as safely as we can making sure we're doing that in a way that's really going to work all right well needless to say we look forward to that but we've got plenty to look forward with what you've discussed today we've got plenty to look forward to even before we get to that point I hope so yeah it's been great to talk to you let's make sure that we don't let too much time go by before our next update I'm sure we will have plenty to talk about then no matter how soon it comes absolutely I have been speaking to assistant library director Anna Lytton about upcoming programs at the Robbins Library it is talk of the town that you've been watching and this library update Anna thanks again for joining us and to you out there we appreciate your being here and we'll see you next time I'm James Milan thanks a lot