 Aloha, my name is Elaine Gallant and I'm your host of Books, Books, Books, a live streaming series to Think, Tech, Hawaii on a Walkway. This is a show where we'll discuss everything about books, whether it's reading them, writing them, and anything in between. We have a very special guest today that I'm really excited about because it's the everything in between and her name is Stacy Aldrich. Aloha Stacy, how are you? Aloha Elaine, I'm great. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. Let me give a little bit of your background. If you don't mind, Stacy Aldrich has 30 years of library experience that is currently the state librarian for Hawaii. Prior to Hawaii, she served as the Deputy Secretary for the Office of Commonwealth Libraries in Pennsylvania and State Librarian of California. Stacy has also worked in public and academic libraries. In between, she took a detour to work as a senior associate at a future in think tank of Coates and Jared Inc., where she began to sharpen her futuristic thinking skills. Always curious about learning. Stacy believes we should all have a little futurist in us so that we can create our preferred futures. Now Stacy, I think you're living that very sentiment. Am I correct? You're quite the influencer in the Hawaii State Library. Oh, well, I work with amazing people who have lots of great ideas about how we can continue to grow our communities and and grow support for our communities. So, yeah, I think it's just I have an eye for how we can keep improving so that we can keep growing into the future that keeps changing. During the pandemic, we would say every 37 minutes. Okay, so we can ground everyone. Let me ask you this. How big is the Hawaii Library system? So we have 51 branches on six islands. We're the only statewide public library system in the country. So we are funded by our state government and other states. It's a mixture of county, local, borough. The only equivalent might be Washington, D.C. We have more than 3 million books in all of our libraries across the state, which everyone has access to. So if you find a book and that's in another library, you can request a hold and have it sent to your library and read it and then take it back to your library. We have about 126,000 library cards growing. And we now have an online card that you can get to have immediate access to our digital resources. And we've had over 25,000 people sign up for that card. And how do we get that card? Do we go to our library or can we do it online or how can we do that? You can just go to our website librarieshawaii.org and it's on our homepage. There's a button that says apply for a library card now and it'll ask you a few questions and then it'll send you a number and you'll have a pin and you can immediately access all of our digital resources. That's fantastic. And not only digital, but we're going to talk about what everything is in there. I am shocked and surprised by what the library system offers. But let's, I want to know how is the library system keeping up with the times? There's competition out there. There's Amazon and Netflix and newspaper subscriptions and there's so much at our fingertips that we can Google or Yahoo or whatever your medium is. But so how is the library keeping up with this competition that's out there? When your library card is your feed to everything and the library card is how much? Zero dollars. Zero dollars and you have access to a world of information and ideas. So when we think about Amazon and we think about all the other vendor books or movies, I'm sorry we have a car going by for a second there, we have, those are all behind paywalls. You have to have money in order to access them and we think about a public library. A public library is about access for everyone, no matter who you are, no matter what your state of funding is or where you come from, the library is there for you. So with just a library card that's free, you can access the LA Times, the New York Times online. So you can do the same things you're doing right now, but you can access them through the library with your library card. You can access streaming movies through Canopy. You can access ebooks. So many of us download ebooks from Amazon and we pay to buy every book. You can use the resources at the public library, the electronic resources. So you have ebooks, e-audio books. I like to listen to e-audio books. E-magazines, we have PressReader, which is over 6,000 magazines that are from around the world. So if you want to read lemons, but you don't speak French, you can actually translate it into English and read lemons. So we have all these resources that are available to everybody with just a library card and if you don't have internet access at home, you can always come into the library and access all of these resources as well. Yes. I don't think people understand how vast the system is, the data that's available, the services that are available. So let's talk about that. You mentioned that you're saving people money with over a hundred, or was it a thousand, vetted databases? Over a hundred databases. Can you talk about those databases? Sure. It's all kinds of databases. We think from KK, it's National Geographic. So if they're doing a report on elephants, they can find information about them and images they can use in their PowerPoint because we know young kids are doing all kinds of fun. They're learning very early how to do presentations. So they have copyright free access to those images. We have access to demographics now, which if you're in business and you're trying to understand the communities that are in Hawaii, you can identify those communities and get really good demographic information. If you are an investor, we have Morningstar, so you can check your investments and see how your investments are doing. And then if you just like hobbies, we have a hobby database so you can find access to more articles or ideas on how to crochet new things or make something new. So we have a little bit of everything, which I think sometimes is the daunting thing is there's so much. Where do I start? We also have access to legal forms. So if you're not sure what forms you need to fill out, if you're having issues with renting or other kinds of legal issues, we also have access to those kinds of resources. And if you're looking up an old article about something or you're just curious about something and you want to know more about a particular topic, we have access to magazine databases and also journals like Professional Academic Journals, JSTOR is one of those databases. So if you want to find peer-reviewed research, you can look up whatever topic you're looking for in JSTOR. That would have been so helpful when I was taking journalism because I had an awful lot of paid prescriptions that I wouldn't have had to pay for as a college student. But you have more than that too. If we could pull up the graphic that shows the front page of your website and then we can go through that real quick because you have music, you have community services, you have so many things. So if we can see that graphic, do we have that graphic? Now we have a lot of resources. We have a new resource called ArtistWorks. It's available through our Libby app that you download to your phone to download eBooks and eAudio. Now ArtistWorks is available and you can take classes on how to learn a variety of instruments. So for example, we have ukuleles thanks to the Music for Life Foundation and all 51 of our branches. You can check out an ukulele and then you can download the Libby app, use your library card and go into ArtistWorks and then take classes on how to play the ukulele. So half full circle and you can do it at home all from the convenience where you want to be or on the beach, wherever you want to be. And you have Overdrive as well. Is that correct? Yes, Overdrive is the same service. Libby is just the name of their app to access the eBooks but Overdrive is the company that provides the eBooks and ArtistWorks. And they've also just purchased Canopy which are the streaming videos. So we'll start to see more integration of those videos as well. Yes, and those are top films. They are. They're award winning films. There's documentaries. You can also take a great course. And for our Kiki, there's just pure Canopy for kids which are all great programming with Sesame Street and books being read and just high quality learning opportunities. I took a little trip through Canopy and I was surprised at the movies that were there. And I saw some that I hadn't seen on Netflix. So I'm really looking forward to exploring that with my library card which I've had forever and have seriously underutilized and will not in the future. Well, I have to say, I was watching something on Hulu and I watched it on a plane and I didn't have access to Hulu. So I looked it up in our system and we actually had the season two of the series I was looking for on DVD. So there are times when you might be looking for something because not all streaming, as you know, things drop off and they move to another service. Check out the library because we might have it in Canopy as a streaming movie or you might want to check to see if we have the DVD series. We have a lot of series including K-Drama. Right. Now you're also acting as a community center for people. We talked a little bit about finding a quiet space, a quiet space in the library in such a noisy world that people come to the library just for that quietness. But it's more than that as well. The library system, you and the libraries are really reaching out to the community for various services. Would you like to talk about that? Sure, sure. You know, we bring parents together with their kids in story times. We haven't had as many during the pandemic but we're slowly bringing those back. So parents come together with their kids and are doing lap talks and reading together and having a good time. We have meeting rooms in many of our libraries that different local neighborhood boards use to have their meetings together or small clubs come together to use those meeting spaces. We also try to partner with local organizations to provide opportunities. Most recently, we partnered with AARP and we had a Kapuna Tech in the library day and Kapuna could come in and there were six tables and if they had a question about a PC, they could ask a PC question. If they had a question about their Mac, they could ask a Mac question. So we do a lot of partnering to bring in resources from the community. So again, a gathering place for finding more information, for talking with their friends. We've had great, we do great talks where we bring in authors or we might have a particular subject. We've done partnerships with Civil Beat and we did a whole series on information and information age. How do we, how do we thrive when there's so much information? And we think we had three or four of those sessions and had anywhere between 40 to 70 people show up who wanted to have a conversation about, you know, how do we thrive in, you know, information a lot. So the library really is that place to gather and have conversations and to learn and to be together. Does the library have a book club? Many of our branches do and if you go to our website and you click on the, there's a little link at the top that says read. If you click on that, you can find which libraries have book clubs. We have some virtual book club book clubs and I think we're just starting to come together in real life. If there's our front page, did you see anything of the icons that are there? And every one of these squares are the ones that you would touch and you would go directly to that link. So we have at the top is our navigation bar. You can browse, so then you can search to see what kinds of things we have in our collections. Read, you can find good books to read. We have recommendations there. You can learn. So there are items, there are specific items that you can link to for learning a language with manga languages or taking a gale course. Gale courses are amazing. You sign up for them, but they're free. You can do basic business writing to photography. There's a large range of things that you can take. There's also attend and that's where you can see what libraries are offering, what programs and when they're going to be offered. And then we have research, which that's really where all of our databases live. So you can look to see what kinds of information. We have it by subject, so you can look to see, well, what kinds of things do you have related to genealogy, which of course is looking to research scholarships. You have a way of doing that as well, correct? We have a way to look for scholarships, take SATs, be prepared, and that's all under, if you go under learn, there's the teaching resource center that has a lot of resources for students who are preparing to go to college. And people who need assistance paying their rent and trying to navigate the system in order to find ways to help paying their rent. I mean, this is how far the library goes, right? With paying your rent, you probably, we'd probably stop and ask a librarian who might be able to ask more questions about what it is you're actually looking for and seeing what resources we can connect you to within the community. Absolutely. You sent me a oceans of possibilities. Would you like to share that with our viewers? Absolutely. And if we could see the graphic on that, that would help as well too. Awesome, thank you. Yeah, we're really excited. We have our summer reading challenge this year, ocean of possibilities. And again, it's a virtual program that you can participate in by downloading it. It's called the Beanstack app. On our website, there's more information in a link so you can find that Beanstack app. And you just record your minutes. And for every 100 minutes that you record, you are entered into a contest to win four round trip tickets on Alaska Airlines. We're so grateful to Alaska Airlines for providing that at the end of the year. So you have up to 10, 10 opportunities in this drawing to read. So what I love so much about the summer reading challenge is it encourages me to just take time and read. And the new Beanstack app is so super simple. When you open it up, you can say you want to add mere minutes and you can basically click and it'll record your minutes. And when you're done reading, you stop and you don't have to like type in how many minutes you read. So it makes it super simple. And you can do it on the website. Yeah. And you can do with the whole family, which is really exciting. And so if you join, there's also some fun giveaways and rewards for reading at our libraries as you read throughout the summer. We've talked a lot about some of the wonderful programs that the library has, but what challenges does the library face today? Our biggest challenge right now is we want to do more and we want to have more hours. But staffing is always a challenge for us. I think as a system of 51 libraries, we don't have as many staff as we really do need. And the pandemic like it has impacted a lot of of our organizations across the state has impacted the library as well. So I think our biggest challenge is having the funding to make sure that we have the resources to keep supporting our communities and growing with our communities every year. We do have a question from Sarah Foley about the funding. She says this is in our chat. There's about two billion in Hawaii's general funds where our library system will benefit. How much do you think will be allocated? How will it be spent? For our library system, the budget hasn't been signed yet by the governor, but the current legislation from the legislature has provided us with funding to do a project to put RFID in our libraries, which means we can better manage our resources across the state. And our patrons will have easier access to checking items out and sharing those items with each other. So we have an RFID project coming up. So we're getting about $3 million to do that project for all of our libraries. If you're interested, our Nanakuli library is our first library that we've done RFID. And what's really cool about RFID is instead of having to like check out one thing at a time by barcode, you can basically put a whole stack of books on the stand and it just checks them all out at once. So it's quite nice and it makes it nice and zippy for our patrons to come in and grab books and leave. We also are going to be getting some more money for security. We have about 11 libraries that we've had some challenges with and so we want to improve security by putting cameras outside. So we did get about a million dollars through that and to improve our security and all of our libraries. And then we're very excited and grateful to the legislature for putting in more money for our budget for our materials. So we're getting an additional $750,000 so we'll have $1.5 million to go just towards materials. When I first got here, we didn't have anything in our materials budget. We were relying entirely on our special fines and fees to buy materials. So if you were a patron and that were saying pay your fines and fees, that's how we get books, that really was the only way. But when we think about the investment that we make in our statewide public library system, our collections are vital to making sure people have access to information. So we're very excited because we'll now have this base of $1.5 million. We still need more. Yes, I understand on Maui that Friends of the Library is treated a little differently than Friends of the Library on the other islands and they are actually able to contribute quite a bit of money to the libraries as well. If it's not money, it's furniture or volunteers and things like that. So that's another venue. Susan Armstrong has a beautiful compliment. She says, please tell Stacy how stoked I am that they are offering free music instruction on their website. That's awesome. And again, it's not quite yet just by the website. You do have to download the app. Overdrive is working on integrating it into the website, but currently it's just through Libby. Susan Armstrong has apparently found a way to take advantage of it. She's very happy with it. Here's another question from Malia Bolan. It's really not a question. She says, Stacy was very helpful to me when I reached out about getting my book into the library and heard the name of her book is Left at Hiva Oa. Please ask her to talk about this process. Sure. Yeah. So we're always excited to take a look at what authors are publishing to see if we can add them to our collection. So we do have a collection development policy and we use that to determine what books come into the collection. And so if you have a book that you would like to add to our collection or make us aware of, you can send it to my offices and then I send it to the library staff who then do a review and evaluation and then make the determination of adding it to the collection. Well, as an author, you're making my heart sing. And I also mentor a writer's group. So I know they're listening and they're probably in the chorus somewhere too. So that's very exciting. Okay. What does the future for our library system look like, Stacy? Where are we going? You know, I think about my favorite quote I've been using it a lot recently, which is from Alvin Toffler, which is the illiterate of the future will be not will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. And I really feel like the future of our libraries are these learning centers where people will have access to information ideas, classes that continuously help our entire state from Kiki to Kapuna learn, unlearn and relearn, so that we can keep creating our positive preferred futures for our state. So being that resource to learn, grow and to connect with one another. And this is tapping into your futuristic ideas that you're keen on. So this all sounds pretty fantastic. How are you working with the schools? Is there, I understand, I know there's a direct connection because we cannot, I mean, the schools have their libraries, but the public library is obviously a wonderful resource as well. How involved in the school public school system are you? We do work with the school media staff and our collections are connected for the students. So students download what's called the SORA app and they have access to all of our collections through that app. So we try to make those connections. We work with the school libraries to also make sure they're aware of all their resources and that their students know what resources are available in our libraries. I am concerned there are many schools that don't have school libraries. And so we're constantly looking for new ways to make sure that those students know that there are resources for them to support their learning. And we're always continuously looking for new ways to support the curriculum that's being taught in the schools to make sure that we can help students who are coming in after school find the resources that they need. That will help them grow their literacy skills or are there resources that can help them do their research so that they can be successful in their classes that they're taking. So this outreach that you're doing to the schools, is it also physically as well as through the internet for students? Are the representatives of the state library going into schools and encouraging? Pre-pandemic, many of our libraries across the state going into the local schools and talking with the students about what resources were available and inviting them in. So I'm hoping as we are fingers crossed coming out of the pandemic, we'll be able to do more of that and make those physical connections with the students. The pandemic has really, really knocked us off our loop. Stacy, what is your message to our listeners as the head librarian for the state of Hawaii? Well, I think my main message, if you haven't walked through the virtual or the physical doors lately, I invite you to come to any one of our libraries or come to our website, get an electronic card, try out all these amazing resources, and let us know what services are important to you or what kinds of services you would like to see more of. We have a feedback form that you can always send us more information. We're also going to be doing a strategic planning process soon and we're going to have a survey out when we want as many people as possible to give us feedback about the kinds of things that you use in libraries or the kinds of things they would like to see us pay attention to and focus our energies on. So we really just want to invite everybody in and just, you know, our website says it's where you belong and we want everybody to feel like they belong at their public library no matter where they are in the state of Hawaii. Well, Stacy, you're a joy and I think you're a real asset to the library. During your tenure with the library, what do you hope your legacy to be? I really do hope that, you know, we continue to be that place that can connect people in a world where technology seems to connect but also disconnect us so easily that the library can continue to be that place that connects us in both ways and continues to, again, help people learn unlearn and relearn so that they can feel good about whatever they're trying to do in life, in work, in play, in hobby, that they know that the library is that place where they can find a person who can help them, they can do it by themselves online or they can come together with their colleagues and their neighbors and learn from each other. So I think the library has always been a little bit of that. It just depends where you live but I think it will continue to be that place and I really hope everybody will come in and help us continue to build that future. Thank you. I hope they do too. Stacy, you're the head librarian. What's on your bedside table? What book are you reading? Right now I'm reading The Vikings. I've been watching a lot of Viking series. I've been streaming a lot of Viking series so I'm reading a history book about The Vikings and I also have a book about, it's a red cover. I'm like everybody else. It's a red cover. It's a book about conflict, deep conflict and how do we get past deep conflict from a cultural sense and from the very basic sense of just disagreement. I have a lot of things on my mind but those are the two. You have access to everything in the world to read. In closing I would like to thank you for joining us today and I must thank our underwriters, our technicians, our office staff, our producer Jay Fadal, our listeners. Thank you so much for spending 30 minutes with us. We so appreciate it. I hope you've learned something more about the library and if anything I hope you say hello to Stacy. She's a fantastic asset for us. Thank you so much Stacy, Aloha and Mahalo. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.