 I'm just really excited to come on the heels of hearing about Hackathon because it's something that we're actually going to do and pilot not overnight. But November 14th and 15th here at the main library. So we'll be contacting you to talk about how you did it. I'm actually going to exit the show for a second because I'd actually like to start with a video also. That was recently done. It's actually some of you I think might have seen our new website. It's themixitsfpl.org. And the reason I'm going there is I want to start with a video that was produced for us by Microsoft. That is the story of one of the teens, Carmen Sosa, who basically was one of the youth designers to make the mix happen. It was part of a four-year process and she started with us I'd say three years ago now and now she is in college and here we go. This is her story so I think it's kind of important to share. About six years ago, my mother passed away. I had to learn how to step up and be able to take care of my two younger siblings. I worked at Thanks School or Toria and I quickly realized that I had to know how to use technology. The reason why I wasn't getting access is because it's expensive. Although everybody sees technology everywhere, not all the youth in our communities have the access to these technologies that are so necessary for them to go to school, do their school work and have job opportunities. Technology is a really important tool. I see how it can connect people in communities. The mix is a teen digital media lab. It was developed by the San Francisco Public Library. I feel like it's a really powerful statement to say that this new center was made by youth, for youth. I've been part of the Board of Advising Youth for three years. Our group has done a lot for the mix. We've decided what programs we'll like in the space. We've done the interior design. We went to meet investors. We've publicized the past three years for the space. Some of the things that the Teen Center offers is a video production studio, the sound studio, the makerspace, tablets, computers, teens that didn't have any access at all to technology can now come to the mix at SFVL. It took a lot of partners in order to make the mix. From Microsoft, who donated a lot of their technology to the mix, from the Lori Foundation, KQED, and many more organizations. It really took a village to create something so amazing. Being involved in this process has been really great for me. I think that this new teen center is gonna get a lot of the youth really excited about technology. I feel like I'm really gonna see my work reflect on the community. So that is Carmen Sosa, and she has been an amazing part of the design team that made the mix happen. The mix is a place for teens by teens, and it is the result of much collaboration, not only from the youth, but through community-based organizations and from the city itself to make it happen. So I'm just gonna tell, I could probably spend all day telling you about it. So after this, if you, I miss something, feel free to contact me, but I'm just gonna kinda tell you a little snippet of the mix story. So now we've been open for about three months, and the programs at the mix are very value-based and collaboration-driven. And so the programs should live up to the values. All of them are designed with the idea of equity, full participation, and social connection. And I should emphasize that the mix is a space specifically for teens ages 13 to 18, and that's very new for the San Francisco Public Library and the main library to have a space that is specifically dedicated for teens. So we are mixing it up to make it work. The teens who were part of what was originally the design team to create the mix has morphed into something that we call the Board of Advising Youth continues to be active to shape the values of this space. And so the teen values that line up to equity, full participation, and social connection are open-mindedness, respect, and collaboration. And when you, you'll have a chance to tour the space after this during your break. So I think you'll be able to see that in action when you're there. And the overarching goal of all the programs is that they should help teens become better consumers of media have hands-on building experiences, have the opportunity to connect with mentors, peers, and library staff, and celebrate local culture and diversity. And some of you may know that the Mixed SFPL is part of what originally happened because of a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services funded by the MacArthur Foundation which funded approximately 30 learning labs around the country and public libraries and museums. So we consider our peers to be the organizations that have programs that specifically serve teens such as UMedia Chicago, UMedia Miami, UMedia Hartford. And what we have together is a national community of practice where we can continue on a daily basis to share what we've learned, what we're learning, what we hope to learn, how to reboot and remix all the time. So the mix happens and has happened because we're part of a connection through partnerships and programs together to support learning, to support out-of-school learning. This is called kind of in the community practice, we call it connected learning in the sense that it's peer-led and interest-driven, very different, not very different, but different than the learning that you might find in a classroom. It's very much more of what a teen would hope to find if they were to choose learning for themselves. So this is what the teens might think of the library. The library is the worst group of people ever assembled in history. They're mean, conniving, rude, extremely well-read which makes them very dangerous. So teens we think have a preconceived notion that was about what the library is for teens. That's certainly true with our previous teen center. I don't know if you guys ever saw it that was on our third floor of the teen corner. And so because that was in a shared library space and I think a lot of you might identify this having a service for teens that's in a space that's shared for everyone, it's very, very hard to provide services that teens would want to come back to. So Leslie Nope does not have access to librarians who support her 21st century learning goals in the connected learning environment. So she's not likely to want to come to the library. But she probably really would want to come to the mix. So what we're trying to do at the mix together is to, in the spirit of 21st century learning, is determine which 21st century literacies excite teens the most, which of these literacies are a good library fit and which activities will encourage these literacy skills. So these are a menu of 21st century literacies, collaboration, self-direction, information and communication, technology, literacy, real world innovation and problem solving, media literacy and leadership. All of this happens on a daily basis at the mix and it's not necessarily so didactic as all of this, it just kind of happens. It's part of I guess the menu of experience that happens for teens who come to the mix. So let's talk a little bit about collaboration. The original grant that we received was a partnership with San Francisco Public Library in collaboration with KQED, the California Academy of Sciences and Bay Area Video Coalition. And we're really excited that we're continuing to collaborate with all of those organizations and more as the mix grows. And all of those relationships encompass informal collaboration, shared responsibility, substantive decision making and interdependent learning. That's like the outside partners, that's really what we hope happens every single day in the mix with the teens who go there. That is the experience that we try to model among the staff so that again the values of collaboration, open-mindedness and respect are modeled. Some of the collaborations that we've had are the, like I said, the California Academy of Sciences. Last summer they brought in their tech team to do a program that was involving the opportunity to kind of discuss media or like real science problems using social media, using Vine, using Instagram, using Facebook. We just started a girls who code club which we're really excited about. We have our Board of Advising Youth, we have a recruitment process for that now that's actually not only open to teens who are in San Francisco, so those of you, Daily City, Bartable Places, I encourage you, the deadline is tomorrow, we might be a little loose if someone got an application and by the weekend we might let it slide. We have gaming that happens on Fridays, we have video production with Bay Area Video Coalition and then we have audio studio programs with the Blue Bear School of Music, one of our newer partners and we're excited to hopefully expand that wider. There's an opportunity for teens to have real world innovation and problem solving as very inspired by hearing about the hackathon and I look forward to following up about that because that's something that we're actually going to do, have the teens will have the opportunity to use the mix as their space and their incubator for real world innovation and problem solving. Of course that happens through active inquiry, design thinking, real world issues and challenges and acting on personal ideas. And really the mix and San Francisco Public Library together, I've been very big host in an event that happens every single year, it's happening on May 17th next year, Youth Advocacy Day where it's an opportunity for teens who are in San Francisco to work with government officials to be able to problem solve and meet with government officials to talk about issues that are really important to teens such as healthcare, housing, education. Every single week we have a design studio that happens. It's actually a maker open studio that's with 3D printing. So we're very, very excited about that where teens can create something that might be of value to them using our 3D printer. Again, the Board of Advising Youth features very prominently since that meets every week. We have a new civic project that we're working with in partnership with some local artists where people, teens can come together and use the mix as their space where they can problem solve and find out they're working with artists to do a civic program that they have to do for school. And so using the mixes that out of school, really poising it as a place where they go to take advantage of resources that they might not have access to at home or at school. Youth Speaks, we're very, very excited. We've been partners with Youth Speaks for a very long time. They got their start in San Francisco. Now they're national. They have a studio that happens every single week in the mix. It's really when you I see the space, it's pretty exciting to see how it's able to change and adjust depending on what someone might want to do in the space. So the MC there creates a very intimate cafe environment where teens really feel the freedom to share and tell their stories. That they will have the opportunity to perform potentially in a national audience. And then again, the Teen Tech SF Civic Hackathon. So that's an organization that was started Teen Tech SF. Now it's global. It was started by one of the teens from the Board of Advising Youth who became very excited about this opportunity for the teen center. It was called then, but now the mix to provide equity of access to technology and opportunity. So we're really excited to be able to host that. And that is teen led completely. We're basically the way we like to think of ourselves in an optimal way as the keeper of the keys to provide the resources for teens to do what they want to do. So of course more than anything, because this is a library traditionally, the library is a place for self-direction. So teens who come to the mix have the opportunity to advance their skill levels at their own pace. We try to infuse that this is really just the stepping stone for the fact that the public library is learning as part of a lifelong process with all access to all the married resources we have through our databases and print materials. In a peer led interest driven environment, teens have the opportunity to set their own goals for success and define and complete tasks without direct oversight. So that's very important. And so the mix for self-direction includes sewing and crafting programs. Of course our plant collection are a wide array of weekly programs in the audio and video open studio. We have various kits that we're starting to activate. It's like little bits kits. And trying to do t-shirt printing. We're really excited to be partnering with someone in the maker community to help us better activate the maker space. We're really excited about that. And of course there's media literacy and the opportunity for teens to discover how messages are constructed and for what purpose. Explore how media can influence beliefs and behaviors, evaluate information critically and competently and learn media creation tools and conventions. So we hope to activate that more fully in the coming months. The way we've kind of done that so far is again through our collaboration with YouSpeaks, we also have a long collaboration with a local organization called Writers' Core. And probably most popularly would be the audio studio programs that we've had in collaboration with Blue Bear School of Music and Bump Records, which is an offshoot of the Bay Area Video Coalition. It's a youth mentoring program for teens who are interested in producing music and making music. And of course probably more, I should emphasize our website. I know members of our web team are here today who helped us create the mix-it-sfpl.org website. I encourage you to check it out. Leadership again, that happens through the board. I think I'm running out of time. Oh my goodness. Through the Board of Advising Youth gives the opportunity for teens to work together, work positively, ethically inspire others and demonstrate integrity. And that is a paid board. They're not volunteers, so they're actually paid a stipend for their time. And so again, we have the teen-led influence, but we also have programs that are led by community partners and professionals. And I think I'm gonna skip over the ICT literacy since I have not very much time left. If you want a question, you can keep going. Okay. We'll be going into the questions. All right, well, information and community technology literacy. I think we have an interactive wall that I encourage you to check out. We have amazing internet connectivity and we have access to technology. We have an amazing array of technology in the space that teens have access to, which is pretty amazing. And then we're really trying to ask the question through having a survey, trying to get the feedback from the teens if there was a meaningful activity that they started in the mix, what would they stop doing, what would bring them back? I think more than anything we have found is when the teens come into the space and they see that it is really, truly free and open and theirs and it's not for other people, I think that that's like been super powerful and super valuable, not for other people. What I mean is it's really for the teens themselves. And I just wanna encourage you to check out our website, follow us. All right, we have a hashtag, mix it SFPL. We have a pretty robust Instagram. We're adding more and more information on our more and more content. I should say on our SoundCloud and on our YouTube page. And we have four new youth mentors who have just started working with us and part of their role is to help with the content creation for this space. And so I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. I know that was pretty like very fast. Thank you, Catherine. Thanks. I'm over here. Yeah. I just wanted to remind everyone that because this whole thing is being recorded and will be archived and available on the PLP website. If you have a question, raise your hand and speak into the microphone so that we can capture that for the crowd to hear and for posterity. So now raise your hands. What have the most popular teen attractions been and how have you marketed it to the community? Let's see. What do you think, Mary? What's been our most popular audio? Just hanging out. You speaks, that's right. Yeah, you speaks has been probably the most popular one that we've had so far in terms of an actual program. And we feel like we have done a great job marketing. That's how we feel. But yet we meet people all the time who haven't heard about it. So the best marketing that we've had is through the teens who market it to their friends. So like, for example, the teens who come through, you speaks, they come back maybe to other programs. Answer your question. Donna, any collaborations or partnerships with area high schools? I wondered how much they were involved. And secondly, have you been, I know it's fairly new, but have you charted whether your book collection circulation has changed at all in the new space? Thanks. Okay, so the first question, yes, throughout the whole process we have collaborated with the local and community high schools. In fact, we've used that. In fact, today we're about to have a mixer of the San Francisco Unified School District teacher librarians from middle and high schools. So we had them involved in that. We're really excited that this will be their first time collectively in the space. We are now that we're actually open. So we have hours that pretty much mirror the, try to have the hours. Right now, we're only currently open Tuesday through Saturday, but we're open. Hours when teens would be most likely to be there. So afternoon, evening. So for example, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, one to 8 p.m., Friday, one to six, and then Saturday, 12 to six. However, in the mornings, that's a time when we can have group and class visits. So we're starting to have a lot of interest in the class visits, and that's something that people can arrange through our website. And so we look to, now that we're actually open to continue that conversation, we, there is an email distribution that goes out to every single high school student and a website for every single high school that we can use through the teacher librarians to communicate information about the space. So we have activated that, and we hope to continue to activate it more. And your second question, remind me, I'm so sorry. Circulation. Circulation, oh yeah, so actually, we've done a little bit of research about circulation since. One of the things that we've actually been surprised to find out is that there is more adult interest in teen books than we had thought, and so we're working with trying to figure out a way to expand access to any of you who have read this, those of you who are young adult librarians are not gonna be surprised about this at all, or even adult librarians who have populations who are interested in these materials. It won't come as a surprise to you, however, it did come as a bit of a surprise to us, but that being said, we're working to remedy that now to make sure that adults continue to have access to the teen books that they want, either by expanding those teen books in the adult areas, just to make sure that there's access whenever people want it. This is gonna be the last one. Hi, your values for the space are so well articulated. Can you talk a little bit about how you developed that? Yeah, the values for the space. So there is, so you mean the actual, the values, the teen-led values? Okay, so that was through an amazing process that we learned about through one of our community collaborators who works a lot with youth, and so I don't know how many of you have ever participated in a values activity before. I really recommend it for anybody. So you start out with a C of values that's on the floor, and you have the opportunity to select among all of those values, and so what happens is you have the ones that we came up with, which were collaboration, open-mindedness, and respect, but there's also values such as safety and peace and love. So what you start out with is each person selects a selection of whatever values that there might be, and then as the people, then after a few minutes, the people have an opportunity to meet in groups of two and then bigger groups and so on and so on, so they have to kind of winnow the values to the ones that really encompass what they're trying to do so that respect became an overarching higher value that might be more valuable than that respect might encompass peace, for example. So through that conversation, it's very, very deep and very, very powerful. I highly recommend it and I'm happy to share how we did it to anybody who would like to know. Thank you so much, Catherine. Thank you. So. Thank you.