 I'm going to try to go through 18 years' worth of photography in 30 minutes, so we'll see if I can do it. It's going to be pretty fast, but I want to just touch on some of the themes and topics that went through the project. And I think in doing this project, I found it quite fascinating to see the stories that came out of the libraries. In a way, the thing that I did accomplish was taking a national overview of local libraries. So these libraries represent local stories. They're about local communities in the United States. My project, in a way, is really looking at the nation. It's kind of a snapshot of this country at this time through the local public library. And I think that's what makes it, to me, very relevant and very interesting. It also makes for a lot of stories. So I'm going to try to get through them quickly, and we'll only touch on a few. There are about 17,000 public libraries in the United States, and I photographed 557 of them. And there's about 100 that are in the book. So you can see there was a process of elimination, which was painful, getting to that point. Colonel Allen'sworth State Historic Park has a library, this one, that was built by a group of ex-slaves in the early 20th century. Colonel Allen'sworth was born into slavery, and years later he established a utopian colony in the San Joaquin Valley here in California, which later became Colonel Allen'sworth State Historic Park. And there's something about this picture early on when I took this. It's maybe the little sign over the door that says Tulare County Free Library, which must have meant something to ex-slaves when they were opening this library back in the early 20th century. And so I began to see this place, this subject matter of libraries had stories that I really needed to pursue. And it's one of the guiding things that told me where to go. And this particular one is where it all began. This is the Peterborough, New Hampshire Public Library. This is the first tax-supported public library in the world. And so this is, for me, when I went there, taking this picture of my wife Ellen on her blackberry outside the library, it was really like going to Mecca. It was kind of the symbol of the beginning of something that I felt was important. And my wife came from New Hampshire herself, and so we go back every summer. So this is Heartland Four Corners Vermont, a library that had the claim of being the smallest public library, and it had just closed at the time that I took this picture. But I think it represented the kind of local character of libraries. Early on, libraries weren't necessarily just about books. Here's St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and this is offered beer stop painting inside the libraries. Early on, libraries were also about other things. Why not include paintings and art? And so many of the early libraries had collections of, large collections of paintings and art, which you can see represented in this image taken early on on the project as well. Or this library, which is located right on the border between Vermont and Quebec. And you can walk into the library, it's called Derby Lyne, is the name of the library. You can walk into the library on the Vermont side, check out your books on the Canadian side. Your librarian could be bilingual, she's probably bi-national. It's an absolutely fascinating place, and kind of a quaint idea now of international cooperation. We probably wouldn't do this today. And also the Millicent Library. Mark Twain wrote an impassioned letter to the Millicent Library, which I reproduced in the book about the beauty of this library. But libraries have multiple uses. This is also in Vermont. Youth Hostel in a Vermont shop as well as a public library. And of course the absolute magnificent library, the New York Public Library, the main library in Manhattan, is one of the great libraries of the world. It's gone through a lot of changes, a lot of controversy about its renovation, but it still is represented in this image as one of the important ones. If the New York and Brooklyn and Queens library systems were all taken together, they would be the largest library system in the world. But they're actually three separate libraries. In other parts of the country, I did photograph of actually 48 states, so Evansville, Indiana has one of the most remarkable libraries I saw. There's a Victorian over-the-top, just extravagant, amazing place that is also considered the only haunted public library. So I was told that the gray lady lurked around, and I actually was in one dark corner of the library and thought I had saw her, but I wasn't sure, you know, it was hard to tell. But you can go on the, they have a live webcam that you can look at, stare at the walls if you'd like. Cincinnati, one of the great libraries. They actually have two libraries side by side. One very large new library and then this very large old library. And I, of course, chose to photograph in the old library because of the character. And these are the grand libraries. Philadelphia Free Library is another magnificent old style library that has a huge reading room. Actually, there are two rooms just like this. The Los Angeles Public Library, the main library in downtown LA, is also magnificent and has this incredible dome in front of the children's room with this amazing tile on the wall. And then a chandelier with a 48 light bulbs representing the 48 states of the United States at the time when the library was built in the 1920s. It's just an incredible place. This is another dome looking up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is the outside of the Milwaukee Public Library. It's just an absolutely stunning, grand, gorgeous old style library. So these were things that I did, I was interested, even smaller, but still very grand library of Newark, New Jersey. Another really quite important library. It's been there for a long time. It has a very interesting long history and an important library in this city as well. And a castle library. These are libraries. I mean, who would figure they would build a library like a castle? But this is in Washington, Ohio and Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it built in the Southwest style. Very beautiful interior as well. So Yazoo City, Mississippi. Interesting place. It has a long history of the South. Willie Morris, a very famous writer came from there. And there's a literary history with this. We met the local reference librarian who opened up the history of Yazoo City to us and even introduced us to the witch of Yazoo City, which that's a whole long another story which we won't go into. But the stories, the characters of the local communities came alive when I had a chance to interact with many of the librarians to hear about their past. And here's another example. This is in Winchester, Virginia. And this is a library built after the Civil War by a Confederate sympathizer. And when you go inside the library, it's filled with paintings of Confederate generals all around on the inside. It's a very odd thing. But it's odd to see that the Civil War is still alive. This, to me, was also one of the most important places that I had to go. This was Bratic, Pennsylvania. This is the first Carnegie public library ever built. Carnegie, as you may know, doubled the size of the number of public libraries in the United States when he started the large campaign to build, I believe, 2,700 libraries. And spent about 70% of his fortune to build this. The library is remarkable on the inside because it has a swimming pool. It has a basketball court. It has a track as well as it has books. And Carnegie was trying to present something to his workers. I think many people feel that it would have been nice if he had paid his workers more money when he was making his fortune, but at least he spent a lot of money after he made his fortune to produce this. This is another Carnegie library in Louisville, Kentucky. This shows at the time when Carnegie was building this, segregation was very much alive in this country. You didn't have one library, one Carnegie library built. So this was actually the first built for African-Americans in the South. Another library, Carnegie library in Los Angeles in an area now called South Central. And one of the beautiful libraries in downtown Oakland is what used to be the old main library. It's a Carnegie library which has now become the African-American museum and library. You should go inside and go up to the second floor and look at the incredible artwork. It's just an absolutely remarkable place and one of the great old libraries as well. We are also, I was interested in the new libraries, the idea of the new architecture and what could be done with that. And this is one of the great libraries, new libraries in the U.S. and the Seattle library. A remarkable place in lots of ways. One cool house designed this library and people come just to tour the library because it is such a fantastic work of art. I was given one hour before the library opened to walk through with my camera and take photos and I was escorted by one of the librarians who happened to be a friend of mine. And she said it's an amazing place to work in, but it doesn't function particularly well as a library because there are so many little nooks and crannies that it's difficult at night when they have to get everybody out of the library to do that. So it may be a great work of art. It's interesting to see the ideas of the library function and design as we look at them. On the other hand, one of my other favorite works of art libraries is the Salt Lake City library which is both a work of art and I think a very functional library from what I can see. There's an essay in the book written by a man, Chip Ward, who was one of the people responsible for making this happen, worked at the library system at the time. And he talked about the process of building this really from the ground up. They actively sought out people's responses. They really wanted to include the community and they made that happen. And it shows in the library. It's one of the great libraries in terms of how it functions. It's also one of the great views from a library on the snow-covered Wasatch Mountains in the background. They're pretty lucky to have that. Duluth, Minnesota. Looking like a space aliens have landed with this particular library. A futuristic library built in the 50s or 60s, I believe, but quite remarkable as a work of architecture. And Las Vegas, no surprise. Las Vegas has a very interesting and futuristic looking library and children's museum together here. Chicago considered one of the great library systems in the country, along with San Francisco, by the way. Chicago Public Library actually arose out of the great fire of 1871. It burned Chicago. And there was a British book drive at that time that the wealthy and literary stars and political people in England donated thousands of books to rebuild the Chicago Public Library. And that was the beginning of the rebirth of this library, which you see partly here today. A Frank Lloyd Wright-designed library over in San Rafael, if any of you have been to that one, it's really quite remarkable. Of course, this library, which had the tragedy of the 1906 earthquake that I think destroyed approximately 25% of the library's holdings and, of course, went through many changes and now is considered truly one of the great library systems in the country. And I get this from librarians that I talked to for the 18 years of doing this project throughout the country, so it must be true because they know what they're talking about. I also was drawn to the small libraries. The grand libraries were great. But in some ways, going to the small towns and seeing the small libraries, these were important, too. So this is a library built by the Priscilla embroidery club in Roscoe, South Dakota. And this is a group of civic-minded women who decided their town needed a library, so they hauled the rock and the lumber and they got their husbands to build the library, and then they staffed the library for many, many years. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The boys there, I think, were so thrilled that I showed up because there was nothing else going on and I was the most attractive thing there. And I saw this a lot. I got stared at a lot in doing this project. So I can still remember these two kids in Mendota, California, saying, what you doing, mister? And you're just kind of curious, but just kind of shocked that I was there with my big camera photographing in this very poor San Joaquin County community. One of the things that my son and I did was to spend the summers of 2011 and 2012 traveling all over the country looking at libraries. So we went to places that were perhaps the poorest communities in the country or the wealthiest or the most liberal or the most conservative. So here is Abilene, Texas, one of the most conservative places politically in the country. And I was kind of curious before we went there what would a place that's very conservative think about a public library? I think they hate government in general, so what's their library going to look like? And sure enough, their public library was loved and used as much as here in liberal San Francisco. So to me, that's kind of encouraging. It says that we have maybe something to talk about in our culture and we can agree on some things, one of which is the public library system. So this is in Midland, Texas. This is George and Laura Bush's home and their library also was quite packed and used and loved. Very interesting to see them. Chula, Mississippi, sad story. This is in Holmes County, Mississippi, which is the poorest county in the United States and has the shortest lifespan of anywhere in the United States. This library was open, but the lights were turned off and the AC was turned off because the computers were turned off because the AC had been broken. And the librarian was sitting inside covered in sweat, very patiently explaining the situation here in Chula, but the AC had been broken for a year. Key West, Florida. Round Valley, Nevada. And the bookmobiles. Of course, one of the great things we have in this country are that libraries don't just exist in buildings, but they also go out into communities. So this is driven by a man named Kevin Selders who wrote an essay for the book about his experience of driving throughout Northeastern Nevada thousands of miles every day, every week delivering books to remote and very small communities out in rural Nevada. Up in Alaska. One of the things that I also found interesting in photographing was that libraries do also include many other forms of information and art. So, and then just other libraries and the idea of art within or outside of libraries. So this is probably one of the most brilliant settings I had ever seen for a library in Springdale, Utah, just outside Zion National Park. I had to get up awfully early to take this photo, so I'm very proud of it, unusual for me. And looking at this structure in Kansas City, Missouri, a library parking garage with these books on it next to the library. And Austin, Texas, another use of art to convey something about the community. Many cases, libraries I think are popular because people identify with their communities through their libraries. Libraries are a repository of memories and in this case, the stories of the community. This was in Long Beach, California where I was actually photographing these New Deal murals that had been rescued from the old library. And of course, since I was working with a big view camera I was pretty obvious and this library has a lot, at the time had a lot of homeless people and there's one gentleman who, at one point, a homeless man looked at me and he kind of locked eyes and walked right up to me and I thought, well, this could be awkward, you know, this may not be a good thing. And he walked right up to my face and he said, I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. And then he turned around and walked away and I was just shocked. I didn't know what to make of it. You never know. Here are all the beauty winners of the Miss Cass Lake, Cass Lake, Minnesota. Now, Cass Lake is interesting because it's about 50% white, 50% Native American and the beauty queens represent that. You can see there's kind of a mixture of them. But again, the idea of civic memory and civic pride is tied up sometimes in the libraries and that's one thing that I found fascinating about that. Here's Carnegie's ideal. This is what he really was, I think, trying to do, his idea of the worker with a book sitting on an anvil. And I think it represents, you know, what he was striving for is to give people information and access to information inside the Detroit Public Library. I saw time and time again these magnificent libraries in places that had been devastated. And this was just part of what we found when we were in Detroit. San Antonio, Texas, Jehoely sculpture on the inside of this very vibrant, magnificent, mostly Hispanic community and a very, very beautiful library. Very extremely interesting. Another legacy of the Civil War in Lowell, Massachusetts. So this is the hometown of Jack Kerouac. He apparently, according to rumor, played hooky from school and wound up going to the stacks of the public library, this library, and that apparently did happen. And then later in his life, they found him passed out drunk in the stacks, kind of at the down end of his career. But this is a Civil War monument mural that they had and they had several of these around in different parts of the library. The John Steinbeck Library. Have you been to Salinas and been to their library? Really quite a beautiful place. They were going to close all three branches of the library. Big protest when word got out that was happening. Bill Murray, the actor, was playing golf at Pebble Beach. He caught wind of what was going on. He hit up his celebrity friends. They all chipped in some significant money to keep the library open. That story went out on the internet. It became an international kind of cause to live and all of a sudden the Salinas Library now has three libraries that function very well now with the adequate funding. Very strange but interesting. It's interesting to see a library in a national park. So this is the public library in Yosemite. Beautiful place. It happened to be that all the leaves fell off the tree just before I took this picture. So it's very nice. And this is in Death Valley National Park. This is the hottest place on earth. And I sure hope that air conditioner never breaks. But I was impressed that they had a public library in Death Valley. And then the numbers of... I can't tell you how many closed libraries I saw. And this always made me very sad. So the Abandoned Prairie Library in Amadon, North Dakota. The Abandoned Library in Sunflower, Mississippi. An Abandoned Library in Jeffrey City, Wyoming. This used to be a uranium mining town until the ore all ran out. Detroit, very sad. And we went to many of the Detroit branch libraries as well. Interesting that the struggles to keep these libraries open. This one had just been closed and later was torn down. But a very tragic thing. And also it's interesting to see the transformation of libraries. Sometimes what libraries were in the past, it changes and they become something new. They have what was, apparently, the hot nightclub of Austin, Texas called the Americana, which is now the Ralph Yarrow Borough Branch Library. And interesting to see the transformation and the change. This was in Seligman, Missouri. And it was a strip mall and a gas station. And now it's the City Hall and the Public Library in the background. Caliente, Nevada. A beautiful old, you know, Union Pacific Railway Station is now the Public Library in this tiny little desert town. Weeping Waters, Nebraska. Used to be a church. Now Public Library. That name, it's just amazing. Kansas City has a beautiful library in an old bank. And if you go downstairs, they show movies in the vault at night. And I just thought, wow, what a great adaptive reuse of the bank. Henderson, Nevada. I just outside of Las Vegas got the smart idea that they would take the books in the library to where the people are. So they build a small branch library in a shopping mall. And here's the Tuscarora, Nevada, which is a tiny little mining town in Northeastern Nevada. It comes and doubles as the, runs the post office as well as the Public Library, which is housed in the same trailer. And a community meeting, a town hall meeting in Newport, Vermont. Just again, another use, multiple use of the various libraries. And one of the things I think I also begin to realize is that it's important to see the function of libraries, how they work, not just as architecture, but also as their meaning. So this is a reading lesson. So this was taken at the Petraro Hill Branch Library back in 1994 when I first began. There's the brand new library. As I guess all 24 now branch libraries have been rebuilt in San Francisco. So we're, but this is what it looked like before. The Chicago Public Library mentioned an amazing place. This is the computer room. So it's just again, just phenomenal eye opening really for me to see this. And then finally this, getting near the end, a photograph of a library in a little town called Straford, Vermont. And there was a, Justin Morgan was a U.S. Senator who grew up in this town, very poor, his parents couldn't afford to send him to college. Years later when he became a U.S. Senator, he started the land grant system of colleges that are in every state. And really important in terms of education. So the Justin Morrill Library is very remote, kind of small, rural area. And they leave their Wi-Fi on at night. And they do that because there's no Wi-Fi reception in the little hilly Vermont valleys. So people come at night with their laptops like my son Walker and they get online. And it's one of the few places you can do that. And this is throughout the country. You see this idea that libraries are about giving free access to information. And I think Justin Morrill would be very proud of this photograph because it's really about what he was about and the idea of free, of giving access to information. It's also interesting to see the different uses of libraries. When I was in West Wendover, Nevada, right on the border with Utah, there was a library that had a sign on it outside that said there's a class inside. No admittance. So I just set my camera up outside when the class walked out. And it was all these little kids holding rifles. They were having a rifle training class. And they lined up right in front of the casinos and the background and the desert mountains. And you can't make this stuff up. I was very happy to have this picture. I had to take the photograph. And the Berkeley Tool Library. I love this picture because these guys were so busy. They were literally running every minute that I was there. And I had to tell them to stand still for one second while I took this photograph. And then they were off, running out, you know, weed whackers and, you know, levels and hammers and whatever types of equipment you want. It's an interesting aspect of what libraries are. It's not just about books. I love this picture also because of the racial diversity of reflecting our Bay Area population here as well. And of course, New Orleans. One sad story about the Hurricane Katrina. We were there about two years after Katrina. And they lost 50% of their books. So this was one of the images. This is what many of the libraries look like today in New Orleans. And the librarians inside, you know, a humid and hot trailer. Very heroic stuff. But keeping that information available to people. And again, very, very full crowded places. This is the last photograph I took on the 18-year project. We happened to be visiting our son who was in school in New York two weeks after Hurricane Sandy hit New York. And the Rockaway Library on the right was completely devastated. All the books were in the dumpster off to the left in the background. And this Queens Library Bookmobile was there to offer a place for people to come and recharge their cell phones to get online or just to get warm because it was really cold in November when we were there. So it says something about libraries as places of shelter. Here is the equipment that I work with. Working with a large format view camera. This required shooting 4x5 sheet film, which at night then in every hotel we stayed in, I had to change the film in the bathroom. My son Walker uploaded his images onto a site that we had. We also had a lot of information beforehand. We did a lot of research finding the addresses. My son Walker showed me how to work with Street View. So I wound up on Google being able to look at a library deciding if I wanted to photograph it, even being able to see the time of day, maybe the best time to really work with photographing it. So the technology did help. And as I said, I kept a blog, I kept a diary every day after Walker would drive during the day and I would write in the car and then at night I would upload that along with Walker's photographs and we uploaded that. And we did that day after day after day. So it was a long process. I also did a Kickstarter campaign which actually worked. And then finally the book itself came out as Lewis said in April and the book itself is now getting to be a rare book. They sold out their first batch of it. Now they're going to have to wait until July to get more of them in. So I'm shocked that anybody was buying this book and I'm always very pleased when that happens. So we have some available here today. I was very lucky to get Bill Moyers to write the introduction and patch it afterwards. And there were several other writers that were kind enough to contribute their time to publishing these essays. So it's quite an amazing affirmation of seeing how this works. I should mention that the last thing is the future. So I've just published this book but now my wife Ellen Manchester who's here and I are going to spend the next year in the city of Stockton. Stockton is the second largest city to declare bankruptcy in the United States and it's one of the least literate places in the country. And making images I hope that this will help in terms of some of the issues that Stockton faces. We'll see. It's a project that I'm both looking forward to and I know it's going to be a lot of work. So that is going to be after taking 18 years of looking at libraries throughout the United States. We're now going to focus on one library system in a poor part of California.