 Welcome once again, Robert. Thank you so much for your wonderful photographic essay, and I have to tell you that you're probably one of the best testimonials for the public libraries in America, and you're conferred an honorary library science degree as far as I'm concerned. So, we're going to have a series of just questions, and I know that you're going to also bounce them back to me, so welcome to that. But I want to start by asking you whether you had some specific inspiring library moments, library experience moments in your travels, and relate some of those. Many of the libraries, actually almost all of the libraries I went to, had inspiring stories. It's actually one of the things that I used to kind of weed out and figure which places I wanted to go to. So, it's a really difficult question to answer because I found most of them to be very important, inspiring, even critical to keep them, to keep the libraries open. But I went through and considered some of the possible ones that might be of interest. And one story I could relate goes to our time we were in Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, and we wound up photographing one of the poorest parts of the country. And we went to the Clarksdale, Mississippi, which some of you may have heard of, and it has a fantastic blues club. They're called Ground Zero Blues Club, started by Morgan Friedman, the actor. And what they do is to train young local people to play the blues, and they bring in very famous blues players to play with these kids. And it was just incredible. It was one of the nights we did take off from doing our work on the blog, and we decided to go out and hear some music. So, it was a great night. And when we were sitting there, probably the most incredible blues player I've ever heard came out on stage. And his name was Philip Carter. He was a white guy, just blew the place away. I mean, we were stunned. The next morning, we go to the Carnegie Library in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and there he is, behind the desk. He's the reference librarian, which proves that, you know, real musicians have day jobs. And so this guy, Philip Carter, proceeds to open up the Mississippi Room to me. He shows me their archives and collections. He makes the place come real. And it turns out that the Blues Club actually started in the public library upstairs. It was one of their programs, which later became this amazing program. So to me, that was an inspiring library story, kind of unexpected. And it's nice to meet young people like Philip Carter who can do a lot of things. Absolutely. That's a great story. So you also talk about libraries as, you know, among the major infrastructure of America, whether it's the schools, whether it's our transportation highway system, but that there's a concern about the diminishment of these libraries because they're being starved. Right. So tell us a little bit about that, that concern, certainly, that you express, and there's a theme throughout the book. Yeah. And I think it comes out of my interest in feeling that we all are able to do things to hopefully make our lives better and our society. And so I've always been interested in politics. I've always been interested in social issues. I've always felt, you know, engaged, at least in being able to converse with people and talk about it. So this library project came out of that interest. I really felt that, you know, this is an institution part of the larger infrastructure that I think is important, public hospitals, public, you know, schools, all of those things as well as public libraries are vital. And they are, in a sense, being starved with everyone being aware of the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. What do the rest of us have? What do the 99% have? Well, we do have this infrastructure that was built over more than 100 years. Going back to Teddy Roosevelt and Jane Adams and Jacob Rees, some of the periods of time where the early 20th century progressives were really trying to counter some of the issues of concentration of the wealth at that time. And also that they understood that public democracy doesn't work unless you have an educated public and also unless you have access to shared resources. And so public schools came out of that idea in public libraries as well. So for me, seeing that this is such a vital, important part of our culture and it's under attack at this point, it became obvious that that's what I would want to devote 20 years of my life to doing because it is critical. I am not a librarian. I'm a photographer. I teach photography. But in the process of doing this project, I've understood how incredibly important it is. As I said, I've been able to see it on a national level. And if anything, this only reinforces what I felt to begin with, which is the vital necessity in many cases of public libraries. And it's really ironic in one of the essays. I think it's the foreword by Bill Moyers. He talks about seminal moments in the history of libraries. And one of them was during the recession where the actual peak use of libraries was at an all-time high. I mean, it was literally amazing how folks went and gravitated to libraries. And then the second wave of high use was during the recent recession. So isn't it ironic that we're kind of curtailing services or shutting down libraries at the time that they're actually valued the most and needed the most? So to your point about how it's kind of necessary to maintain them open and support them. And ironically, during the Great Depression in the 1930s, no public libraries were closed. And yet they were packed. Today during the Great Recession, yes, tragically, we're seeing more and more libraries either close or cut back significantly on their hours. Living here in the Bay Area, you almost may not notice that things are pretty rough out there. It's one of the things that I think my son Walker and I both agreed it was very, very difficult to see the amount of suffering going on in the country. Libraries are one of the great levelers. It allows people that maybe don't have a lot of hope or opportunity to begin to be able to do something to mitigate experiences or to help them work their way out of experiences that just aren't very pleasant. Yeah, so, you know, Robert, you have beautiful photographs, the buildings and all that, but you also showcase the people and the amazing collections that are housed in these libraries. So we do know we espouse the values of inclusiveness and respecting individuals that walk through our doors. Was this value played out in your experience or was there any kind of changing attitudes because we're becoming a meaner, tougher society? So talk a little bit about your perspective on that. Yeah, well I do think after the 2008 crash that we have become, in some cases, people are more desperate and seeing fewer opportunities, which again is why I think I really support libraries. There is a wonderful essay in the book written by a woman named Dorothy Lazard who is a librarian over at Oakland. And she wrote about what it was like to work on the front lines of the public libraries. And I think it's a very brilliant insight. It sort of hits the nail on the head in terms of what librarians are faced with constantly on a regular daily basis. Librarians are not trained to be social workers. They're trained to be librarians. So they're given a set of circumstances which sometimes is almost impossible to work with. And yet I found in my experience over 18 years of looking at librarians, almost all of them were extremely kind, extremely considerate, able to help me unless they were overwhelmed. And there were certain situations in certain libraries where they just didn't have the time or the ability to be able to give me attention and totally understand that. But read Dorothy Lazard's essay because I think it does show kind of the degree to which librarians are faced with challenges that are very, very difficult. By the way, I should mention that the San Francisco Public Library was the first and one of the few libraries in the country that has a dedicated social worker on staff full time to deal with and hopefully provide assistance for people to go to maybe more appropriate places for them if they have problems. And I met her today. I don't know if she's here right now. But it's an amazing thing that is now, I think, being picked up by other libraries around the country, but a very progressive idea. Well, you know, to that point, I think one of the most amazing things that we actually get testimonials from some of the clients, if you will, that write to us and say, you know, because of that referral or because of Leah's work, I was able to be placed on housing. Now I have full-time employment. I was able to go back and get my education or whatever. So it really is wonderfully gratifying to see that they make a difference. And to your point about Dorothy Lazard's article or the essay, I would highly recommend it because it really does, I think, capture not only the importance of the role that libraries and librarians play in being non-judgmental and welcoming all, but also it describes historically what's happened in our public policy of how we no longer really treat mentally ill or folks that really need help and how, because of that transition, libraries have become that place of refuge. And in many ways we have to be very innovative, very creative. But some of the exchanges with the patrons that she encounters really come alive through her essay, so it's beautifully done. And by the way, I'm going to be in conversation with her tomorrow night at the Oakland Public Library. Wonderful. So I'm going to switch the tables a little bit and then just ask you one more question about, it's almost not fair because I'm asking you what specific library or libraries from your entire experience stand out as architectural marvels. I mean, something that really says to you, I'd love to go back on any given day and visit that again. Well, of course the big three would be the Seattle Public Library, the Salt Lake Public Library, and of course the Shortsman Library in New York City, the main central library in Manhattan are just unbelievable. For various reasons I would say if you get a chance go see those libraries, they're really important. But there were many, many others that just, you know, I really would be hard pressed to really even point any one of them out. But the haunted library in Indiana was just an over the top beautiful Victorian structure as well as being haunted. It was just a brilliant, beautiful use of architecture. And so many of the small little libraries, too, are very attractive in their own way. The Roscoe South Dakota Library was one that I found very interesting. In terms of one that I felt represented our culture, there was one in Nebraska, where was it? Birchard, Nebraska. That was actually a library that was closed, but the door happened to be a jar. So our son Walker and I kind of went inside and it was in a town that had been pretty much depopulated, was almost abandoned. And much of the Midwest is in that situation today because of the problems of water and drought, whatever. But in this library was the collective memory of the community. World War I lists of the fallen veterans. World War II plaques for high school, you know, band plaques and athletic plaques. They're all housed in this library along with the books in this abandoned place, a very eerie experience. But it really, to me, kind of reflected something about that part of the country at this time. So Robert, a tough question. From your point of view, what does the future hold for the American public library? Well, you know, it's a good question and it's hard for me to predict. I think we are at a crossroads in our culture, not just in terms of libraries, but the idea that we as a people can make a difference. And you can all actually get actively engaged in one form or another of supporting the institution of public libraries. And in my mind, that could be many different things. Literacy is so important and so basic. And you all know how to read. So I'm assuming you know something that someone else would like to know to be able to function in our society. Literacy is something that I think in the libraries, in local churches or synagogues, whatever, there are many different ways of helping in terms of literacy. And I would say, you know, in terms of political things, vote for people that will continue to be able to support and allow us to have this incredible infrastructure. I think that's one thing. I think that we necessarily have to accept that things are going to get worse. I think if collectively we decide we want to make things better or sustain this incredible infrastructure that we have, we can. And that's one reason why I did the book, was to really be able to bring attention to something that I think is important. And hopefully, not just here in San Francisco, but throughout the country, people will place value on this system and then do something about it. Excellent. Great. So we have quite a few questions from the audience. So I'm going to start with the first one. It says, how did the project start in your mind and how did your perception of it change over the course of the 18 years? Well, to make a long story short, I started my photography by being introduced to a guy named Ansel Adams. And he had this amazing policy that if you, as a young photographer, wanted him to look at your work, you came to his house in Carmel at five o'clock and had a cocktail with him. He'd give you feedback on your photograph. So I lived in Santa Cruz at the time and I was all over that. I was there a lot. And at one point he said he was as proud of his work for the environment as he was for his photography, which is very heavy stuff for me as a young photographer. And so I spent years photographing in the landscape and photographing environmental issues. And then it wasn't much of a switch going from being concerned about the commons of the shared environment to the commons here of the public libraries. They kind of made sense for me, at least. And I did wind up continuing on with other projects that still dealt with environmental issues and other books that I've published. In terms of how things change, very big dramatic changes. During the 18 years I did the project, as it turns out, we went from very few computers into the libraries to being now many computers, very much a part of it. It doesn't mean that computers have replaced books. They've supplemented what the books provide. It's another way of gaining access to information. I do think that we hear about the internet as being the future and why do we need libraries. But I don't know when the last time you were on the internet, but I have to wait through a lot of junk mail to get to my email. And when you're on the internet, of course, they're tracking what you're buying and whatever. Whereas when you walk into the library, people aren't going to ask you those questions. It's free, it's open, it's a place that they're not going to track you for information. Libraries are still something that I think worth fighting for because it's different than other sources of access to information. Fantastic. Alright, so this is a very specific question about what was the first thing you usually did when arriving at the library? And how did you determine the angle, etc.? The big libraries I would write ahead because obviously they were concerned about security and I wanted to be able to photograph in these libraries. The mid-size and smaller libraries, I started out writing, but most of the time the librarians were so busy and they didn't get the email or whatever. So eventually I just showed up. So for instance, in Midland, Texas, after driving on the road for about a week and I wear my sweaty t-shirt and shorts and just my eyes were blurry from being on the road and covered in dust, I walked into the library and said, hi, I'm doing this library project and I'd like to photograph your library. Most of the time the librarians were just fine after they got over the initial shock. But the librarian in Midland looked at me and she gave me that look like I knew this could be a problem. And then for some reason I mentioned I was from San Francisco and all of a sudden she got very friendly. And then she opened the petroleum room, which was the archive of the George Bush information. I was like a kid in the candy store. It was just great. So San Francisco had a great rep even in Midland, Texas. I was surprised. That's great. Okay, so is there a particular style of library that you are drawn to? You know, I actually, I found myself drawn to the small towns with the small libraries because in some ways they're maybe the only act in town. There really wasn't a lot of other things. The library was about it. It was about the only, you know, non-commercial, non-religious space that people could gather. And so it became kind of evident that libraries are functioning in some ways differently in small towns than they do in big cities. Not necessarily better or worse, but they have in some ways a very different role. And I found myself also being able to sometimes comprehend the small places in small libraries a little bit easier than some of the large libraries. Didn't have to worry as much about security and things like that. So in some ways it was a little bit easier to photograph. Very good. And there's also that same person asks whether the photos that were not selected, are they going to be available for viewing somewhere? Well, I do have a website of my own, which is just myname.com. And I'm also going to be doing a website for this project, so just haven't gotten around to it yet. But that would be showing the larger body of work and hopefully that will come up soon. Robert, you also sparked an interest in Carnegie Libraries. So there's a series of Carnegie questions. Of the 2,700 Carnegie Libraries built, how many still exist as working libraries? 1,600. There you go. 1,600. And here in San Francisco we have five. And all restored and grandeur in style. So that's fantastic. Okay. So where in Alaska? It's a fairly large area. Well, I actually photographed in Haynes, Alaska, which is southeast Alaska. I photographed in Anchorage, Alaska. I photographed in Moose Pass, Alaska, which is where the picture of the mural on the outside of the library. A couple of other little places around. So I was there to teach a workshop. So they paid me up there. And it was the beginning in 1994 of the project. So I just happened to bring along my camera when I was there. Okay. Very good. And we're all sort of curious about, you know, there's so much diversity in the libraries that you selected. The large, small, et cetera. But there is a question. What was the most unusual library? I guess other than the one that's haunted. Yeah. Well, there was one in Manawi, Nebraska that was in a little town that was a one woman town. Elsie Eidler was the last surviving person in the town. All the other people in the town had either moved on or passed away, including her husband, Rudy, who had died just a couple years before. So she's the last person in the town. Rudy had a lot of books. And so she built a shed just outside of her home. And all the books were in the shed, which had no air conditioning on a day that was unspeakably hot. So Walker and I went in and I was just dripping sweat. But the books you could check out. And they were, you know, you read them, send them back. There was a list that you would sign. People from all over the world had come to this place. And so there were people from Sweden and Japan and every, you know, all over that had checked out books and presumably send them back after she's done. And after photographing in this amazing place that she put, which was really a memorial to her husband, I walked next door to the bar that she runs in town. And thanked her for doing this because I thought it was great. Great story. So there's a question about the San Antonio Library. I think they're referring to the media that's played out about the No Books Library. Are you familiar with the all technology? Okay, so I'll respond to that one. So the question is, what's your thought on the San Antonio No Books Library? Well, actually, it's a little bit of a misnomer because it's not part of the city system, but the unincorporated county area. And what they tried there is basically technology databases. And frankly, there's been some controversy because it doesn't represent what we know and what we define as a library. So technically, it's not a library, but it does provide access to technology. And I know even within the city, there's a little bit of controversy about whether or not that's the way for the future. And rest assured that the vast majority of San Antonians do not believe that that's what's going to happen. It's just meeting a specific need on access to technology in their small centers. So that's one thing. Okay, so there was also a question about some of the states you missed. Okay, obviously you can cover all 50, and you did a great job of, I think, 38 of the 50 states. 48. There you go. So the two states that are missing and why. I wish I had a good answer, but there's no reason why I didn't go to Alabama. I have nothing against Alabama. It's a very nice state. It's just I didn't happen to go there. I am going to go at some point with my camera and photograph one library in Alabama so I can say I photographed. And the other state was Hawaii. I've never been to Hawaii, and I would love to go. It's just a matter of time and money, but someday I will, and then I will have finished all 50 states. Fantastic. We look forward to that. Great. And so the question here is, did you have a publisher interested before you actually started your trip and your project? Actually, no. A lot of this project was based on taking a risk, a calculated risk that something good would come out of it. I did have in mind when I was ready one publisher, which was Princeton Architectural Press, and they're the ones that published the book. And I didn't really consider any other press. They do wonderful books. It's kind of a smallish publisher, but they're now owned by Chronicle Books, which is a much larger publisher. But they're located in New York. The people working there are whip-smart, very dedicated, and I must say I've had the fortune of working with one of the great publishing experiences in my life. And I've published other books. But this is by far the best experience. These people were so good at what they did. I'm just so thankful. So I lucked out in that sense. Because usually when you're doing a book, you have to go to many publishers and get rejected. And it's a very disheartening experience. But this happened to work out. They understood I think when I walked in the door and said, there are 17,000 public libraries, they instantly woke up to the possibilities of lots of book sales. So I think they were smart. That's great. And also a side note to the same question. It says, thanks for a fascinating talk, a great book on such an important topic. So I want to make sure that you were aware of that observation. So those are it in terms of questions. I think we have one question from the audience. So we'll go ahead. I was prompted by the library that you described in I think it was Mississippi that hasn't had air conditioning for a year. And I'm wondering, you know, hearing the story about the Salinas Library and I remember that whole story and what happened there. Do you have any ideas? I mean, I'm not counting. Obviously the government hasn't put the money in to get air conditioning in that library. But what would it take to get some kind of celebrity or something, you know, aware of the situation? So that that could be changed? Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a really good, your point of having perhaps setting up a donations for a particular library in terms of how to help individual libraries. I mean, perhaps Luis Herrera could, I think the Salinas Library is a wonderful story. It is sort of ironic that it took celebrities to save the library system, which was going under. I mean, if it hadn't been for those people that would not, this library system would be closed. And that was the irony is people were saying John Steinbeck's hometown, they're closing all three branch libraries. It's terrible. So in terms of Chula, it's in the poorest county in the country. So in the poorest state in the country, Mississippi. So what do you do? I don't know an answer. But yeah, there could there could be a perhaps something on a website, you know, that would be set up to help. And let me suggest just one point of information. The American Library Association has some wonderful affiliate groups and some national groups like the Friends of Library USA. And on their website, there's always opportunities to link with them and either offer support, financial support or find ways to connect directly from local groups that may be interested in supporting those causes. So I really appreciate your interest in a very specific corner of the world. But those needs are there. So I wanted to ask Luis Herrera one question if I could. Sure. Yeah. I think people might be interested in knowing a little bit about your background and how you wound up coming from where you came from to where you are now. Absolutely. Be happy to share that. So I always say to colleagues and friends that I'm an accidental librarian because I was never one of those persons that said, oh my goodness, I'm going to be a librarian when I grow up. As a matter of fact, I grew up in a very humble working class family that did not have a tradition of libraries. And I always talk about or tell the story where we, my twin brother and I were taken on a tour of our new neighborhood branch. And it was just an amazing experience because we took books out and went home with at least, you know, five or six books. But we didn't have the connection that we were supposed to return them. So never return to books. And it was at the time when they would have what they call library police. Literally clerks would go and pick up your books that were delinquent. So there was a summer that I always called the worst summer of my life that every single knock on the door. I was certain it was a library police coming to shame us into returning the books. And never would have thought that I would have become the city librarian of San Francisco. And I always say that that's sort of my penance for that. But I'm loving every minute of it. But fast forward. My degree was in the University of Arizona serving underrepresented communities, particularly the Hispanic bilingual, bi-cultural communities. And that's where I really learned to eliminate barriers to service and really promote services to a diverse group. So I landed in the perfect place here in San Francisco. I was a school librarian in my former middle school. That was my first gig as a professional librarian. But I've been so fortunate of having a career in Long Beach in San Diego, Pasadena. And this is Library Nirvana, so I landed in San Francisco. So thank you for asking. And I think we have about 10 minutes left. And we're going to be able to have Mr. Dawson sign his books in the back of the room. And on that note, we're going to close the program. And please let's give Robert Dawson a wonderful round of applause. Thank you so much.