 I'm delighted to introduce our speaker today, Thomas Mukande. Thomas is the Library Services Advisor with Lubuto Library Partners. Thomas is a native of Zambia where the Lubuto libraries are located, but a little bit of irony. He found out about Lubuto partners while he was in the United States. At Georgetown doing his undergraduate work because the Lubuto headquarters is in the DC area. Anyway, after he found out about the project and got to know some of the people there, after he finished his degree at Georgetown, he ended up back in Zambia and in November 2013 joined the Zambia office of the Lubuto Library Partners as the Library Services Advisor. He's actually now back in the US pursuing his MLIS degree at the University of Illinois or Banna Champaign and is currently visiting the West Coast and we're delighted to have an opportunity to have him speak to us today about what's going on with the Lubuto Library Partners and let me turn things over now to Thomas. All right, thank you very much Bill for that introduction, Dr. Fischer for that introduction and good afternoon, good evening to everyone depending on where you are. So today I'm going to talk about my experiences with the Lubuto Library Partners through the lens of Zambian native but also through the lens of my library studies. I'm 25% through, just finished my first semester at Gistless in Illinois and just to give you a brief outline of my talk, this presentation. Firstly, I'm going to talk about how I, Dr. Fischer has already introduced how I found Lubuto or how Lubuto found me which is probably the best thing, one of the best things that has happened in my life and but I'll talk about my experiences working with Lubuto on the ground in Zambia prior to that I had done a little bit of volunteering with them in DC but I'll talk about my experiences in Zambia actually being a food time worker and then I will talk about the context of the services that Lubuto Library Partners provides in Zambia, the children's libraries we are setting up in a society where such services scarcely exist. So I'll talk about the services from my own experiences there and then I will proceed to talk about recent developments in Lubuto including the opening of our third library, Mumuni Library and then new information about a future fourth library that we are beginning to work on. And finally, I will talk about some opportunities for youth services, librarianships that I see in Zambia particularly after getting some exposure to Elias education and visiting libraries here in the Bay Area with Dr. Bernier. But before I start, I'd like to say a few quick thank yous. First of all, I'd like to thank you Dr. Anthony Bernier and his family for being very gracious hosts to me here on the West Coast. I'd also like to thank the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois for helping me fund this trip. And last but not the least, I'd like to thank Lubuto Library Partners for the great support they're giving me in my education in my LIS degree. Okay. So I'll give everyone a background on Lubuto, who we are, a quick background on who we are and where we operate. So Lubuto libraries as I've already mentioned are children's libraries. Our reason for existing is that we're there in Zambia to serve our children and the youth. There are currently three libraries in existence, two near Lusaka. That's on the map on the left, that's a map of Zambia. And there's a star near Lusaka, the capital city. So two of our libraries are in two parts of Lusaka City. And these libraries are located in areas, near areas where a high number of children in vulnerable situations live. So the process of deciding where to locate these libraries was very carefully thought through. And our third library most recently opened is towards the south, towards Livingston. It's in a village called Nabucuyu, and it's called Mumuni Library. And we'll talk about that later on in this discussion. But it is a rural library, which the dynamics will be quite different. And we're already beginning to see how that library will be different. Okay, so Zambia is in the, right in the middle of Africa. I just want to comment on that map on the right. Okay, so what were my experiences with the Lubuto library partners in Zambia when I was there? There are two main things that I saw, two main overarching ideas of what I felt we were doing there. And the first one was we were empowering children through the day-to-day operations. We're empowering children through an open system of education, giving them a chance to explore, to learn beyond the confines of the classroom. And I must stress here that many of the youth we serve actually do not have a chance to go to school. So this is an opportunity for them, their minds to be inspired for some form of education, really high-quality and open system of education. And secondly, the second broader idea of what I felt we were doing on a day-to-day basis was promoting children's rights, these, apart from promoting their right to an education through providing high-quality services, we were also promoting other rights such as their right to health, their right to freedom of expression. There are a number of anecdotes that I have from my time in Zambia, such as a young girl who came to the library after being physically abused by her parents. And she felt the library was a safe space to talk to our staff and the staff intervened. We made sure that she got support from the appropriate services and this girl is happy now. So you could say our right to health and life was preserved in our libraries. So the Lovuto Library, as I'll talk about in the presentation, we serve our libraries but we serve as a third space, a space where children can feel safe and comfortable. And that leads me to the services that we provide at Lovuto in Zambia. And as you can see there in the picture, we have four young children with a number of staff reading and I feel that Lovuto libraries, the buildings, a lot could be said about the buildings. It could be a whole other talk on its own. We follow vernacular conventions of architecture which make, the architecture welcomes the children to this place. It's not this sterile environment, it's this warm, inviting environment. And through my observations of children and how they used our two Lusaka libraries, I found that they came to the library to read, to use the computers. But a big reason they came to the library was this was a space they felt safe in. This was a space they came to hang out with friends, to talk to caring adults. People who would listen to them, people who would answer their questions. And this is a really big thing, especially in our times when people are questioning the value of a physical library space. And we've seen that the space is actually a big factor in the library. It's actually part of our services that just space. And secondly, one of the second service that we provided was a good collection, excellent collections, and that included materials in local languages. Children came to the libraries to read for pleasure, for fun, to do free volunteer reading, or to supplement the school learning for those who go to school. One of the things Lovuto is doing is promoting the idea of collection development, the high quality balanced collection for children. That provides both a window and a mirror to their own lives. And we have heard in some circles in Zambia the idea that reading culture does not exist. Code and code reading culture does not exist in Zambia. But when you come to these libraries, these are the most vulnerable children in a society that is relatively poor, and you see dozens of children at any hour of the day. Reading, enjoying stories, and that just disproves that notion that there's no reading culture. Perhaps what people are trying to say is that in places where there are no books, there might be no book culture, but we know from reading research that people are always reading. People read signs, people read labels on food, and once you put beautiful books in front of children, whether they're African or American or Asian, they will read. And the Lovuto collections, which are carefully selected, are doing a lot to increase chances for children to read. An important thing I should talk about is our collections are, we have a starting day collection of about 4,000 books ranging from fiction at different levels to nonfiction and reference works, reference works. But we also purchase local materials written in the local languages or written about Zambia. So children are able to read in a language they speak at home or are able to read about their own environments, and these books are hugely popular, which, and books, picture books, you know, later we'll see a picture of our, one of our staff members reading, this is not my hat, that's an American picture book, but it's excellent. Such that it has cross-culture value, and really children respond very well to that. So both books written in the country, but also excellent books that children can respond to in spite of their origin. Another service that I experienced and that we provide in Zambia as a variety of programs, the programming, ranging from early childhood programming to teen programming. And programming, I think, has the function of, variety of functions, but with Lubuto, we see that programming draws children to the library. It also gives them an opportunity to explore talents that they never knew they had to be expressive, to dig in into that inner life that they scarcely get a chance to express in their communities. Thank you Sandy for your compliment on the photos. And we see that in Lubuto, we have the model of an integrated system of programming, where a book could inspire a play. You see various pictures of plays, drama performances, and the same book could inspire artwork. So the children in the bottom picture in the middle are actually painting a wall at one, at a local business, and they got the inspiration for those birds, from books from our collection, actually, working with local artists. So local artists volunteer that time to teach our children the skills. Lubuto patrons, the skills. The same book could be a source for a story for a mentoring session. And many times after drama performances, that a lot of fun. I saw children, we made it a point if a drama performance, the story was taken from a book. Sometimes stories are taken from local stories, the oral tradition, but we always made it a point when a story was taken and still do, that when stories were taken from a book from the collection, we showed the book after the performance. And I invariably saw a number of children running into the reading room after the performance and asking the librarians, oh, where is that book? I really want to read it. So this is also a book promotion in another way, reading promotion by the young people themselves. I'll just go into the different programs in a little more depth. That's Kassela reading to an eager audience. He castellized one of our staff who has been trained in how to perform storytime. So storytime is one of our staple programs. It's held every day, three times a day, every day the library is open. Lots of kids, children come in to listen to the stories, their traditional stories are also told. And this really, this helps children develop their early literacy skills so that when those who can go to school, eventually go to school, they have a solid background, a solid footing. And in most of the patrons who come, almost all the patrons, the children who come to the Wuto libraries do not have books at home. They don't have another chance for to hear stories. So this is an excellent opportunity. And one thing that I noted when I was in our libraries, our collections, our children's book collections are some of the best in Zambia, of course, probably the best. The only other places in Zambia that have similar quality collections are the international schools for the very elite. So these are children who are poor children and have access to the best children's books. And that's always, that just blew my mind when I became associated with the Wuto in my junior year of college, just how much care is given to collection development. The Wuto Mentoring, that's a recent photo of Kenny, Kenny Howe is one of our trained mentors. The mentoring program was developed by Zambian professional, professional motivation mentoring expert. And the program is targeted towards teenagers and has about 12 sessions which aim to inculcate Zambian values, values of perseverance, care for the community, integrity. And we use both modern stories in print but also the oral tradition. And you see in the picture that everyone is at the same level, sitting in the talking circle. And this is a traditional Zambian way of talking about things, debating, coming up with solutions to problems, passing values from one generation to the next. And the man who developed the mentoring program, Dr. Makuka, has vast experience in developing these sorts of programs. He has taken it to the next level of bringing in stories that we have had in our traditions but also bringing them in conversation with more global stories. And giving children a chance to gain these values, to get connected to that culture and society. Many of our children have experienced loss in their lives from HIV AIDS that many of friends we serve. And this is a place where they can feel they're a part of something. In the WUTO, we say one of our main goals is to reconnect children in a variety of ways. But we're reconnecting children who have been societally isolated back to that culture. And I think the mentoring program is just amazing. So many things, I sat in on these programs many times and so many things come out of these discussions. Children are just open to talking in ways that they're not, they can't talk in any other place in Zambia, in their lives, I mean. And this is just awesome if I can use that term, that millennial term. The drama program, as I've already stated, was developed with a local organization called Barefeet. We have, and it's very participatory, children choose their own story. They develop their roles through collaboration. We, the stories come from both the oral tradition and books. And this program, children who participate in the drama program have told me that they gain a certain self-confidence. They really enjoy participating, but this is a way for them to express themselves to organize their inner lives. And it also, it's also a book promotion, as I've already stated. We take stories from books that children perform for their peers, huge crowds show up the neighbors, people from across in the community, parents come to performances. And children are inspired to read the story where the, to read the book where the story was taken from afterwards. A really important service that Llewuto provides, and that is pretty unique to us, I think, is our outreach program. In the picture, you see Vessa in the bean shirt reading, allowed to children. And on the left is Ndala with the OLPC computer. So this is actually somewhere out in the community on the streets at a market where the Llewuto staff go out and meet children where they're at. They take on stories, show them computers, and the different things you can do on the computer. And these are children who are hanging out in the middle of the day with really not much to do, and with not much to stimulate their minds, their imagination. And the mentoring, the outreach program is really, really important to us because our goal is to reach out to the most marginalized children in our society, in Zambian society. And sometimes you would just go and talk to the child, talk to the teenager. Most of these, and all of the children in here are pretty young. But sometimes our, Kenny Howe, who has come out of this experience of living in the streets, sometimes you'll just go and talk to them and tell them about a place where you can learn, where you can develop yourself. And it may not work the first time, but after building that rapport, the second or third time, many times children actually after hearing about Llewuto the first time, you see them the next day because they just are fascinated by the sort of books you read to them, but sometimes for the older teams living on the streets or in the center of town in a pretty rough situation, you need to build that trust. And we have people on the staff from the ground up who know the situation these young people live in and know how to talk to them. So that skills that Llewuto is training staff in, such as skills in evaluating children's books, et cetera. But also skills that are there, the funds of knowledge that people have, the knowledge about the society, knowledge about street children and how, what led them to that experience and how best to talk to them. So outreach is really important for our mission. Okay. So before I proceed, I will pause there for questions. And there are a couple of ways you could ask questions. You could chat in the chat box or click your talk button and ask a question. So any questions that have arisen from what I've said so far? Thank you. Okay. Anthony has a question. I would like you, if you wouldn't mind, to talk about the relationship of Llewuto within the library context of Zambia generally relative to other kinds of libraries, if you would. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. So Dr. Bernier asked about the Llewuto's operations relative to the library context in Zambia. So Llewuto Library partners, we are innovative in the sense that we are a ground-up organization. We, from inception, Jane Mayer, our founder and others have made it a point to work hand in hand with the profession in Zambia, with librarians working in Zambia. The Llewuto Library partners has a memorandum of understanding with the Zambian Ministry of Education, Science, Vocational Training, and Early Education. I know it's a mouthful, to be the experts on children's services, children's library services in Zambia. So we're working very closely with the profession. An additional point is that although some public libraries exist in Zambia, very few, there are no services targeted towards youth. The concept of a children's librarian or young adult librarian is really new with Llewuto in the country. So we feel those are a couple of innovations, working ground-up, not just imposing a certain view of library services, but working ground-up in our various locations, but also introducing youth librarianship in Zambia. Thanks for that question. Are there any other questions? I have a question, actually. Going back to your comment about the architecture of the libraries, we have a tradition in this country of something called Carnegie Libraries that dates back to the beginning of the 20th century when Andrew Carnegie gave a lot of money to local communities to build, in many instances, the first public library in those communities. And in addition to the money, Carnegie gave a lot of those libraries a set of building plans. So you could walk in to almost any Carnegie library in the country and that library would look the same, would be very familiar to you. So now with three libraries in Zambia, are they all, is the architecture the same or are each of those libraries a little different based on the actual physical location of where each of those might be? I guess, thank you for that question, Dr. Fischer. So our library's architect, Lenny Corumbly, uses vernacular methods of designing these buildings. They have similar plans, but they do respond to the local environment. There are aspects of the libraries that are very localized. One of the, yeah, okay, Jane, just, okay, one of the things that we have done is each of our libraries before we build it, we do a community consultation. And for the third library, it's actually the first of our three libraries with a youth center, a young adult room. And I was just, Dr. Bernier and I were visiting some libraries in the day this past week and we visited some amazing young adult centers. And it's really interesting that as far away as Zambia, we now have this youth young adult room. We have a young adult room, a new innovation that Dr. Bernier was part of introducing. And also, our libraries have decorations. The Mumuni library that I will talk about shortly also has local decorations from the local culture. So whereas the overall plans are similar, we make it a point to respond to the demands of the community. In the case of Mumuni, they asked for, they asked for a youth room because they felt youths needed their own space. And we were inspired by Dr. Bernier's work to actually respond to that request. But also, the designs on the walls are inspired by local artwork. Dr. Frischer, thanks for that question. Is that, does that respond to that? Yes, that's a great response and I'm glad that you are in fact taking heat of some of the local differences in the localities. That's wonderful. Yeah, thank you so much. Okay. So I will continue with the second part of the presentation. And so the recent developments in the Luguto library partners. So the first one I'll talk about is the opening of Mumuni library. And this also speaks to what you have, we have just talked about Dr. Frischer. The name of the library itself, Mumuni is the Tonga word for Luguto. And just stepping back slightly, Luguto is a word in the Bemba language, which is spoken in the north of Zambia. That means light, enlightenment, learning. And when we went to the south of Zambia, where the new library is located and where the Tonga culture, the Tonga speaking people live, they requested that their library be called Mumuni library, their own word for light. So we felt that that's something that they wanted, that's something that showed that they were taking ownership for the library. And this, the library there is called Mumuni library. And in the picture you see young people at the opening doing Tonga dance. So from the inception, Mumuni library in this rural area as opposed to the two first Luguto libraries in the urban area. And the opening was a deeply Tonga affair. Jane just reminded me that all the ceremonies took place in Chitonga. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend this because I was deep in my studies. But all the ceremonies were in Chitonga, English speeches were translated. So from the inception, the opening, the library has a different flavor. It is in a place called Nabokui village, several miles outside of Monzae, the nearest town. The community were involved in the building from the inception, including a library committee was set up to plan the building. The community donated materials such as the beautiful elephant grass on the roof and some effort. And one thing that people there are really grateful for is that the collection contains books in Chitonga. During my literature review for one of my classes last semester I found some research done by a student at the University of Zambia who found that in many places in southern province, children are expected to learn Tonga in addition to learning English. And they had no books in either language in these schools. And I think the Muni Library would totally change this community. It is the only culture institution for miles and miles. And we're expecting a great, just the community to be really, really empowered and changed by the community. Stuff training, the stuff there, we started training the stuff at Muni Library months before the library was opened through exchange visits to Lusaka with our staff there. And over the coming months and years really, the Wuta staff will continue to train, to train the Muni staff, the Muni Library staff. And as I said, this is, Muni Library is the only culture institution for miles and miles. And people were very grateful. And I feel we just need more of these libraries across Zambia because learning and enlightenment and sharing ideas and having a place to meet up a community space is just amazing. It's just one of the things we need in this society. And following on from that, the Wuta is now in the process of making plans to open, to build our fourth library, which will be located at the center called Mutunzi near Lusaka. The fourth library was born, the financials, a lady called Judy Feedham donated $100,000 towards this library. And the Wuta was working to find matching funds to help complete the library by a collection. And recently we just learned, and we're very excited about this, that American schools and hospitals abroad or ASHA, which is a branch of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, has granted the Wuta $250,000 to make this fourth library possible. So these funds, Judy Feedham's, but plus the grant from ASHA will make possible a complete library building and a collection. I was talking to Dr. Bernier the other day how this will also enable us to think about building a core collection of books that the future of the Wuta libraries, but also other people in the region, in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, serving young people, a core collection that can be used. So we're working with Mrs. Nelson's library services to develop this core collection, a company which will buy all the books at once. Of course, we'll continue collection development in the local languages depending on the location, but this will extend our work further in promoting a high-quality collection for children in Zambia, but beyond Zambia as well. This is really exciting because it just gives us a chance to reach more children with the Wuta libraries. ASHA, really, their goal is to promote American values around the world. And this is interesting for me because I've had some experience in America, but I grew up in Zambia and we've, I've talked to this with Jane, about this with Jane on what sort of American values our libraries are promoting. And I think libraries in general here have seen this sort of democratic ethos that's promoted by libraries. I already talked about the children's right to freedom of expression, which we have seen very tangibly in the Wuta libraries, the promotion of peace and understanding between different groups of people in the case of Zambia, different ethnicities. So these issues that libraries promote here in the United States are also issues that exist in Zambia and different parts of Zambia. But they may look different where here you have more of promotion of understanding between say races or different ethnicities or religions in Zambia. The issues are slightly different, but there are there, there, we need to think about how the different ethnic groups in Zambia can get along, how people can gain democratic ethos. And Zambia is a young democracy, but the Wuta, the Wuta definitely is, is, is, is helping inculcate those, those democracies. I thank you, Kate, for that, that, that observation. That, that, that comment that we have a lot of library development in the U.S. So that's Mutunzi, the future of the fourth library, and lots of work we'll go into making that possible over the next several months. I know I'm running short of time, but since I talked about recent happenings, if anyone has any quick questions before I go to the last part of the talk, it would be highly appreciated. Okay, it doesn't seem there are questions, so I'll proceed to the last part of the talk. When Dr. Aburnia and I were talking about my talk here, I think we felt that it was really important for me to reflect on libraries in Zambia and through the lens of my studies at the University of Illinois and what I've began to see as some of the ways that the profession of library and information science, what, what are some of the things that we can offer to Zambia as, it's from a professional standpoint. And let me just say that so far I've had a really amazing time at Illinois in the school there, in the School of Library Science. It's just, I have excellent professors who are inspiring me to think about things in a different, in a, in a different and very professional way. They're very supportive of my work with the WUTO and the WUTO as a model, and that's very appreciated. There are just three quick, quick opportunities I see, and there are many more that I will gain more understanding as time goes on. But I think the first is collection development to counter the effects of what we call book dumping in, in Africa. And book dumping is a situation where you have old books in your, in your collection, in your garage and put them in a box and ship them off to Africa, or books from a collection that have been weeded. And this is a very common thing that happens in, in, that, that we see, and all publishers want to dump books that they can't sell, yeah. So we see this happening a lot. We have seen this. I grew up through this in Zambia, just seeing books that are inappropriate or old and unusable. I still remember from when I was young going to the, the, one of the few public libraries in, in, in, in Zambia, in my town of Kittwe, and opening books with a big stamp in there saying obsolete. I actually didn't know at the time what the word meant. I had to look it up and, and you see lots of this happening. And the book is different. We're not a book donation program. A book dumping program. The books are carefully collected. I hope book dumping will become obsolete. Thanks, Jay. We're not about book dumping. We, we want to give children, African children, I believe, deserve good books, deserve high-quality books. They have the right to, to high-quality books just, just like any other children. And, and this has, I think this has hurt the profession in, in, in Zambia. There are ways that book donation can be, can be done intelligently. The shining example is, is Lovuto. But, librarians in, where in places without programs like Lovuto or at different levels, college or whatever, can, can be in closer touch with, with librarians in, in the West who want to help with book donations. They can have a more intelligent way of, of, of requesting books and choosing books. So, this is a, this is a fight Lovuto is up against. There are lots and lots of programs that are dumping books. Secondly, information literacy skills. Now, what can youth librarians do in, in, in, in Zambia and similar societies? I think information literacy and, and more broadly speaking, media literacy can counter the digital divide. Our libraries are, are places where children can come to gain these skills through the use of literacy lessons, electronic literacy lessons, or just coming to play on the computers, create music, type their stories, so we're living in a world where the internet is becoming more and more widely available. I mean, even in Zambia, people have cheap phones that can go on the internet. But, librarians have the skills to help young people navigate the internet, to help them evaluate what's out there, what can help them in their lives. They want information on diseases like HIV AIDS. They want information on careers. They want information on, on democracy and what's happening in the world. So, librarians in Zambia, it is a challenge to them to, to really step in and provide these skills, instruction in these skills. A third opportunity is early literacy skills. And in the bottom left picture there, that's actually in, before the Mumuni Library was completed, one of the teachers from close by singing traditional songs with the children there in Navakuyo Village. Early literacy is really important. Libraries are about many things, but we have the opportunity, we have the resources to help children develop emergent literacy skills. Apparently, in Zambia, literacy rates are pretty, pretty low. And this is because people have not had the chance to, to read, to begin life with print. There was an experiment done, a book flood program done in Malawi where a box of books was placed in sixth grade classrooms and children were expected to become better readers after that. But how do children become better readers if they don't have the foundational skills? It's, it's really a waste. So, I think libraries, children's librarians, working in Zambia and similar societies have, this is a great opportunity for them to, one of the many skills that they can contribute to the development of, of society. Those are just some of the, the opportunities that I've began seeing from my studies at Gistless Sign from reading the literature that in the procession of youth services, librarianships, that we're trying to promote as Lovuto in Zambia can contribute to. And I think librarians in Zambia, it's a challenge for them. It's a challenge for all of us who think about working in similar societies can, can rise up to. And with that, I'll ask for any questions. Thank you very much for listening. Great. Thank you, Thomas. Wonderful presentation. Are there any questions or comments from our participants? Thomas, thank you for an amazing tour and such a, such an eloquent way of presenting everything, the, the story about discovering the word obsolete, that stands into a book that you are reading will stay with me. But the question I wanted to pose as we conclude today is, as you are proceeding through your own program at the University of Illinois, I wonder if you have any speculation about the kinds of larger transferable professional skills that you see that could cross international lines as easily as you are doing. Okay. Thanks for that question. Well, I think some of the skills that librarianship can offer anywhere include some of the things I just talked about, the opportunities that we, we see in, in Zambia for Youth Services librarians. These include collection development, the idea that a collection needs to be kept fresh and also looking at collection development in a, in a broader way, looking, looking outside the box, outside traditional review reference sources. The way we do it in Zambia, at times we have to go out and seek out publishers who recently we have done a lot of work with the Zambia Education and Publishing House, which in the past published stories in local languages that Lubuto preserved digitally, but have begun republishing some of those stories. And you can find those in, in, in book lists, for example. So collection development, the skills that are traditional but looking at it in, in a broader sense. And information literacy skills too, traditional programming for children. But there are some other skills that I think, and this may be because I'm fresh out of information organization and access. The idea of ease of access, access points for information for young people. Antonia and I, Professor Bernier and I have been talking a lot about this, how we can merchandise books for people to easily access, book displays, programming, programming different ways that we can engage young people in, in the library. I think there, there are lots of skills that can cut across cultures. And, and, and different skills that can cut across cultures. One of the other things that I, I see, and thanks for the question, Jane, service. I, I have an, an assistantship as well in one of the libraries at, at the University of Illinois. And I, I think I'll learn much, I'm learning a lot from that as well. But I will also do a practicum in, in a public library, youth services. One of the things that I've seen from the literature but also from working alongside American librarians, professionals is this view that, yes, indeed librarianship is a service profession. We are there to serve people. We are there. The analogy is that, that one of my supervisors at work gives is that when you're sick, you go to the hospital to get treated for, for whatever ailment you have. You meet nurses, doctors, nurse practitioners. When you need information, you go to the librarian. So we are the nurses or doctors of, of information. We're there to serve people. And I've seen that really, really big in, in, in the U.S., in U.S. libraries. That professional ethos that, this is a service profession. And I think that, that can, that's a global thing wherever you are in the world. It can be, it can be, it's something, a unique aspect of our profession. I hope that answers, Dr. Bernier, I think the more I go through my studies, I'll have a better answer for you. But I hope that answers your question. It looks like it does. Great. Any other questions? And I don't want to put her on the spot. But we, we do have Jane Myers with us. And Jane is the founder of Labuto. Jane did actually do a very nice presentation on Labuto for us, a cloak and for us a couple of years ago when they were, I think, just had, just I think the second library was underway or something along those lines. And it was, it was a great presentation and introduced Labuto to us. And it's great that we were able to get an update on what's going on with Thomas. So I, I see we've got one person, there we are. Ah, okay. Any other questions or comments? Otherwise, let me, let me first of all thank my colleague, Anthony Bernier, who put Thomas on my radar. And then I was able to extend the invitation for him to do this colloquium session for us. So thank you, Anthony, for that. And my thanks to Thomas for just a wonderful presentation. And very enlightening and informative and we've, we've learned even more about the Labuto library partners and the phenomenal work that they're doing over there. And finally, let me thank everybody for participating today. We kind of got started with our, our colloquium series this semester a little early because Thomas was on the West Coast and we took advantage of his being here to have him do this presentation. So again, thank everybody for being here and I hope 2015 is off to a good start for all of you and remains that way until the end of the year. Thank you.