 So hello and welcome. My name is Jonathan Zittrin and I think in my capacity as the librarian of the Harvard Law Library in the left ventricle of the heart of which we sit right now, the treasure room. I'm so pleased to welcome you all to this reception and event commemorating the success of the Digital Public Library of America and the welcoming of its new director, John Bracken. Welcome, John. Boston is fond of thinking of itself, I don't know how others think of it, as a city of ideas, a city of the mind, city of teaching and of learning and for America, a city that is one of the oldest and thinks perhaps to the farthest horizon and among librarians, that's a lot of what we are doing as well. And the Digital Public Library of America I think was intended as much as sort of a continuity machine, a way of preserving and amplifying the things we found so valuable within the four corners of libraries as it was a new and transformative play to take libraries into the next century. And of course it's both and in our first panel you're going to hear from the folks who really thought about this stuff and gave rise to the DPLA. It's my pleasure to dwell a bit on John Bracken himself and for those of you who may be confused I don't mean the longest serving premier of Manitoba so for those of you hoping to meet him you'll be disappointed to hear he died in 1969 but rather and we got the better of this deal are John Bracken, somebody who including in such places as the MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation, it's been his job to see possibility often where others are not quite seeing it yet about themselves, how to elicit that kind of imagination and creativity and then execution as he worked on various grant projects and portfolios, swaysing, encouraging, the kind of person that if you ever had to give John a call including occasionally with less than good news as the guy who might be writing the checks to know that on the other end of the phone with somebody who would hear you out and you'd come away with some solution that you hadn't even thought of to the problem you hadn't realized you had that's a very rare quality and it's one I think that will serve John and the DPLA so well as he's taking up his new post and I think if we're being pithy about what the DPLA is a number of people just see it as kind of a digitization play and I don't mean to put that in minimizing quotes there's something so deeply empowering about the idea of taking that which is in a room like this and making it available to anybody whether or not they can be the path to this door and make it through our turn style but also to think more generally about the values behind libraries, the embrace of truth, the concept of the availability of education for people regardless of their station, of their money, of whether they're looking for certification or not and these values I think are fairly self-evident in an era like today where perhaps they are implicitly or even explicitly under attack so I'm just so glad to have a group like this gathered for this in the spirit of designated survivor I believe John Palfrey is not here but may make a brief appearance and someone else may be asked to step out while that happens so there's continuity should something go wrong but minus John among all the folks in this room nearly all of you have had some really great hand in bringing about what has so many moving parts is so much about relationships among libraries not just dealing with say materials or technologies so our first group of folks to kind of reflect a little bit on the origin and the trajectory of the DPLA includes John himself so come on up John and given that we have two chairs and three people I'm going to designate you as our designated standard yes the standard bearer as it were and we have Mara Marks and Bob Darden, Bob Darden University Librarian here speaking with such a resonant and passionate and anchored voice somebody with a compass that has served this university, this nation and the world so well I'm just so excited to see Bob's reflections here and Mara Marks who has been so deeply involved in all aspects not only of the DPLA but of the funding establishments the constitutive establishments of our national and ultimately world network of libraries and I just know after hearing from them we will be reminded of just how vital these institutions and these people they comprise are to a healthy vibrant growing fair and just have to work that in a law school society so John over to you and Bob and Mara come on up and join us thank you so much. So we're going to trade you guys should take the chairs we're going to trade microphones back and forth thank you Jay-Z it means a lot to be here at Harvard Law Library and to be with the Berkman Center means a lot to me personally and professionally as a place that I've taken so much from over the years and it's so important to DPLA and the origins of DPLA. So speaking of more and Bob you were both on the original steering committee you were there before it was even an idea and thank you guys I guess apologies a little bit indulge me you know this is as I'm onboarding and and sort of orienting in my new job I get this opportunity to these interview these two folks who helped to bake this thing that that exists that we on the staff are now charged with helping to succeed. What were you what were you thinking what was the sort of original light bulb moment you had what brought you to the table I think it was probably almost exactly eight years ago that you guys had the first seven and a half years ago you had the first meeting here in at Harvard. What what what was the impulse well it's a long story but it's a collective institution that would out Google Google and do it in the public interest. In a way though it did begin I don't know if you agree more with Google because they began digitizing books in 2004 and at first it looked like a great idea at least it did to many of us because it was to be a. Did you hear me OK I brought up the G word Google the original idea was to be a search service and so the user could in principle look up a title or an author or an idea even on a screen and Google would give you snippets so you could have some idea of the immediate context and then often would tell you where you could find the book in the nearest public library. We thought it was just great. And we also thought about just the sheer volume of knowledge that could be digitized at scale. So before Google did this we were digitizing you know very slowly and it was costing us I remember it was costing us four dollars a page to digitize a book and then suddenly Google came on the scene and was doing entire libraries. And so there was this incredible feeling of oh my gosh this is a moment where we can really put all knowledge online and we can do so many things we can reach so many people and we can do large scale data work. It was so exciting. So Mara was out there at the Boston Public Library digitizing away at enormous expense. I think I was not. She was overpaid as usual. Actually I have a huge several drawers full of folders about the origins of the DP LA at Harvard. We began thinking about it actually around 2007 when when I came here and Google asked to digitize books that were covered by copyright that led to the lawsuits. I won't go into the whole story but in this in February 2008 we created after a big debate in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dash a digital repository that would make the scholarly articles produced by the faculty available free of charge. And after Dash it seemed that while Google was transforming its search service into what turned out to be a proposal for a commercial library we thought maybe you know we could do something along those lines. My first proposal was actually in April 2013 a memo I sent out trying to combine the research collections of Harvard the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress and one memo after another fell flat. I actually Sarah got a rather poor reception by other people in the Harvard Library. But finally in it was April 2000. April 2009 I sent a letter out to heads of foundations heads of libraries and computer scientists inviting them to attend a meeting at Harvard which took place on October 1st 2010 and that's where we really began to make it happen and that's where you came into the picture. And and many others and that's during that time you know you described so well what was happening at Harvard there was so much going on in the country so the Open Content Alliance had been formed and Brewster Kale and the Internet Archive was you know bringing libraries together thinking about open digitization and non-commercial digitization the Boston Library Consortium was very active I'm proud to say Boston was right out there in front and so this was just that zeitgeist everyone was really thinking about how do we create this public access library and Jonathan spoke so beautifully about the values of libraries it wasn't just about the stuff it was about working together and transcending this moment that seemed like commercial forces were sort of taking over all that we held dear and I remember all of us at the time had power points that we used with the Boston Public Libraries free to all you know the words emblazoned over the front door and we had a lot of images of libraries being built back in the American Public Library movement so we were really thinking about what is a library for today and then Professor Darten got this wonderful group together and do you want to tell that story? I won't go into all the details but I have the statement here if you want it Well we had a one page proposal and after about 15 minutes there were roughly 40 people at this conference said this is a good idea we can make it happen and we improvised a mission statement which maybe you can read I think what's worth saying is that some of the people in that very room were university library heads who were involved in the Google Books project and even they were realizing okay we have to create some other alternative so the statement that we sort of worked on all day I'll try to be quickly Leaders from research libraries, foundations and a variety of cultural institutions gathered in a workshop at the Radcliffe Institute blah blah blah in order to discuss how to work together towards the creation of a digital public library of America that is an open distributed network of comprehensive online resources that would draw on the nation's living heritage from libraries, universities, archives and museums in order to educate, inform and empower everyone in current and future generations and there was a lot of words smithing that went on there because of words like empower and everyone and extended so the idea of extension meant it was to be a horizontal type organization not a vertical one like the Library of Congress for example so we appointed a steering committee, we had five major work groups, we had big public meetings in Washington DC, San Francisco, Chicago and we had a beta sprint where 1,100 computer technicians proposed ideas for the infrastructure I mean things just took off the first grant came from the Sloan Foundation where Doran Weber was a big supporter it was $150,000 for the first four months and the Berkman Center with people like Jonathan Zetrain got deeply involved so the momentum built up at a terrific pace and on April 13, 2013, we launched and things did not crash they took off one more exciting thing because there's so many exciting things about this was that big tent approach and it really felt like maybe this was what Berkman Center brought to the project it was sort of a neutral but very engaged place to act as a home so it would have been different had one library really said okay we're the center of this DPLA but Berkman infused its own values into the DPLA and so it took on this very open welcoming entrepreneurial sort of what am I looking for, what's the word I'm looking for, spirit so okay I'll be quiet now you can ask some questions you're doing exactly what I want to do but I'm going to steal your microphone to ask a question so that was 2010, 2011, this is 2018, it's a different world I mean I think we think differently about information we have new lessons about the role of the internet as a force in society I think we've seen a new set of energy and entrepreneurship coming from a lot of traditional institutions including libraries as you reflect back on those early meetings how do you think about where we are today what conversations would we be having today if we were finding a digital public library of America that maybe you didn't have in 2010 well to begin I could mention two things that we at least I had not anticipated at the beginning the first was the importance of public librarians I mean I confess that as a scholar I tended to think of the DPLA as something that would link up research libraries it had a broad mission but I myself it was a weak point on my part imagined serious scholars drawing on this digitized base no the public librarians jumped in at our first big meetings they were extremely active and in all of the annual meetings we've had since I would say that the heart of the DPLA is with public librarians it's been fascinating to see how they took the initiative develop things as they wanted them to develop and the second unanticipated direction that we took was toward public education so there are sort of course packets which a DPLA provides to public schools everywhere we've cooperated with the National Public Broadcasting in 2015 President Obama helped launch a project to bring e-books to poorer neighborhoods in certain areas and the whole kind of educational mission developed in a rather unanticipated way so that's again going back into the past it could be that Mora has ideas about the future I agree with you on your points and you know the public librarians I would say are just representative of that activist platform that public libraries are today for all communities and so I think a DPLA has to think about that you know their role as a neutral trusted accurate you know a place where the truth can be told or will be told and you were at night so maybe you were thinking about truthiness in news maybe we were thinking more about information quality but I was not thinking about large scale attacks on facts and things and I think libraries have an important role to play there I think what again going back to the excitement is you have this platform and you have an ability to bring people together around this trusted time-tested institution and use that so if I try to peer into the future I have enough problems forecasting the past not to mention the future says the eminent historian but there's one thing that occurs to me I've been reading a lot of books that deal with fake news hoaxes and so-called digital silos produced by the new social media which did not exist when we first began I think it would be great if the DPLA could think of a way for face-to-face contact that would supplement the digital contact that goes on and this could be done through the service hubs which are now very active in many of the states I think they could sponsor such contacts and it would reinforce things because I honestly believe face-to-face improvised contact between real human beings is terribly effective I'd like to also just put in a pitch for real access still, I think that's still an issue so broad public access to knowledge and to materials is still an issue and the Open eBooks project is a great start but a DPLA can do an awful lot to close the digital divide today and I think has made progress in the last years and picking that up and running with it is going to be important another thing I've mentioned to you John is maybe the DPLA which as probably most of you know has a very small staff I mean it's not a bureaucracy at all but it might think of developing a foreign affairs department because everywhere I go especially in Latin America and Europe people want to develop their own DPLAs and there are many other organizations but not just Europeana I think especially in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico there is tremendous eagerness to be part of this and they say why don't you call it the digital public library of the Americas so that's something you might think of you need money to staff it etc but I think we're getting close to the point where we will have a world digital library integrating all of these different systems so in this I've got lots of questions but in the spirit of the participatory platform that we started off as I want to make sure if folks have questions that they want to ask any of us especially these two eminent leaders to catch my eye one thing I will ask for now is in the last couple of minutes one of the things I saw on that agenda for that first 2010 meeting there was policy was a major component of those discussions copyright, orphan works and I wonder how you think we, not just we at DPLA but we as a field should be thinking differently today about some of the copyright conversations that you were having then has the ball moved, have we made progress? I don't see a lot of, we have not had a lot of discussions about what's our orphan work strategy for instance and I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing this one you leave for me to start, it was central to the beginning I think one of the founding ideas was that the last century was totally emitted from digital libraries because of orphan works because it was too risky to digitize orphan works and I think there's been a little bit of progress made in that direction libraries are digitizing something, go ahead well yes I mean one of the five work groups was about legal problems and copyright and we frankly faced the fact with a lot of lawyerly support that we would have to eliminate most of the 20th century literature so virtually everything after 1923 was out of bounds and that was not encouraging we worried about orphan works, we worried about the copyright office and how it was being run and we thought maybe you could get modifications to the copyright act of 1976 etc it became clear very soon that Congress would not help so the big shift that began actually began in Michigan with court cases so I think case law is evolving around the famous clause 107 and fair use is expanding case by case so that's the only hope I see frankly unless you have a better idea Maura no but you know this was one of the things I think that was in the we talked about a lot in the beginning was an organization that is separate from being that is not just one single library can be a little more of a risk taker than a single library and so maybe a lightweight organization like a DPLA can do some things that push the envelope and I think again Brewster Cale at the Internet Archive has been pushing those limits he's now working under section 108H to scan and publish orphan works between 24 and 41 that are not actively being sold or something so you know he's pushing all the time and I think finding ways he has not changed this is still a mission so finding ways to push and you know maybe enticing a little more risk in libraries maybe that's I can say comfortably since I'm not sitting in a library we have lots of experts in this room about copyright and so on maybe they could pitch in too Mary go Brewster okay thank you Mary I think Maura's point though it's very important that the DPLA can take risks that individual institutions cannot certainly at Harvard we're run by lawyers and they're good lawyers they're public spirited and so on but they are a terrific drag if you want to innovate in any way so I'm for taking risks and a public interest organization like the DPLA can be the kind of organization that would step over the line and take some chances with copyright we used to say who would want to sue 200 libraries I mean that's it I love the exhortation to take more risks I'm happy to end that there that's really great does anyone have a question while we have these two leaders yeah please I'm sorry I'm Tom Blake from Boston Public we have always thought of copyright from the legal perspective and not the business perspective I think there's also an opportunity to re-engage publishers and so for example and this is might sound self-serving but we have the Houghton Mifflin back catalog at the BPL and they actually just gave us permission to digitize that entire collection in a certain way but it turns out there's business reasons for that so we don't have to worry about the legal issues we actually reached out and we're being nice to each other and we're going to move forward with that that is the perfect time to make our transition to our next conversation you guys thank you both so much thanks for being such great supporters while we transition I'll invite David and Mary and Nico to come on down and I'll start with my introduction of Mary Minow who among other things besides being a fellow at the Berkman Center is one of my bosses at DPLA thankfully come on come on down and I want to acknowledge Amy Ryan the chair of our board who is here who now I can't see where she is and Brian Bannon is here from Chicago as well in the back row and I'm scanning to make sure I'm not missing any other of my bosses but thank you and that exhortation Bob of taking risks is something they're responsible for digesting and helping us work through with that I'm going to introduce my friend Nico Mele who runs the Shorenstein Center down the road who I will just preface by saying he's got a great library origin story should he share should he care to share it which one is that the one about your birth in West Africa oh yes oh yes yes but that's kind of a long story so maybe we will ask me at the ask me at the reception it's a pleasure to be here I think of John Bracken as my boss in many ways intellectual and otherwise it's a real delight I was thinking I'm right now reading Vartan Gregorian's autobiography and one of the things he talks in there that when he wants to know about the future when he thinks about where we're going he turns to teachers librarians and journalists and I thought huh I'm a teacher here's a journalist and there's a librarian so to my left is David Beard a media executive and contributor to pointer.org former foreign correspondent director of digital the Washington Post editor of Boston.com executive of PRI he's been a well-known prominent journalist for some time and most recently was a fellow with the Shorenstein Center studying journalism and libraries very excited to have him here with us and Mary Minow is a fellow with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet Society at Harvard she was a public librarian and then a library law consultant and as you heard she's on the board of the Digital Public Library of America as well as the Institute of Museum and Library Services the agency that is the primary source of federal grants for the nation's libraries so it's a pleasure to have them both here I'm going to start with a question for Mary you know one of the things we've been hearing a lot about in the current moment is the decline in trust in public institutions whether that be the media or political parties or I dare say Congress or I think I have to say given today the FBI and yet Americans really trust their libraries what's going on there and what role could libraries play in our democracy libraries feed out your neighbors, your family, your medical providers we're at the top still not over 70% but we're better than anyone else so what is the role of the trust what can we do with that trust I think it's our time we should seize this moment when everybody is distrusting the media to use that trust to add a veneer of credibility to the underlying publications when I talk with librarians in some of the rural areas where there's less trust of the media I ask them do you still have that trust and they say yes in fact in small areas the local librarians known by everybody has high high trust but when I give them the media it doesn't really help they still don't trust the New York Times they don't trust the Washington Post what role can libraries play on media literacy for communities well every single day I get a Google news alert on what libraries are doing and I checked it this morning and there's programs going on right now at Ferndale, Michigan, Billings, Montana, Dodge City, St. Cloud at the grassroots level there are programs going on all the time to teach people media literacy what is happening at the national level is also inspiring the American Library Association is working with Stony Brook to do pilots on teaching media literacy at the library and assuming this goes well which it is so far they are doing some video testing right now they would like to scale it up and would be looking for funding at that point but it's a much deeper problem than really a band-aid approach the article that haunts me is by Dana Boyd did media literacy backfire I read it every week because she says that we're fooling ourselves if we think just teaching media literacy is the answer when it's a deep structural problem and I'm really excited I've had a number of talks with David to look at the deeper issues nevertheless what gives me hope with the media literacy front with libraries is a Pew study that came out on September 11th that divides us into five information seeking groups and 13% of us would like to be more digitally literate and don't trust the media but are prime candidates for the libraries to reach out to that's in the center at the top 40% or so are already coming into the library learning digital skills learning on their own and then the bottom 50% don't know don't care wow wow what has surprised you most in your work with libraries over the last few years in terms of their engagement with communities and with media literacy what surprised me is when I've talked to them about this project that I'm working with with the Berkman Center the law library and Boston Public and about reaching out beyond the library to that 13% using Facebook to say not so sure about that article that your friend posted connect with a librarian to help you check it out I say to librarians I say if this really works and we scale it and we tell people here's your local library would you be okay with taking more questions and they're like yes yes we that's what we do we want to answer people's questions and how to figure out the authenticity of an article and how to figure out a broader view and I ask people in really small areas I always get a yes that surprises me I'm going to turn to David now I would highly recommend everyone David has a recent piece published I guess just a couple days ago in the Atlantic on libraries in small town news and the piece opens with the story of a tragic school shooting in Cleveland can you tell us that story and tell us what that means? sure it was a student coming to cafeteria before school and had fired there was a CNN alert but an alum of the school Marilyn Johnson who some of you may know from her book this book is overdue I think about librarians and librarians in the future libraries was from shard in Ohio and she saw the most accurate subsequent reports fact based substantial in this emergency situation from the Facebook page of her library where the vigil will be and it struck her because you know she her book was less than two years just two years old at this time how she had overlooked that the information center of a community would be the information disseminator for the community too it's a non-traditional role and in some ways other than the flyers on the event coming up or which author will be in town but the other piece of the puzzle was everybody else was gone the local paper was gone the representative for that town from the big paper now has to cover 15 communities instead of two so even in communities like Skokie close to Chicago vibrant you know there's a total there's my Berkeley news deserts you know so I wanted to see what librarians of anything we're doing to sort of fill that vacuum and what did you find I know talk a little bit about South Dakota oh yeah I feel like I was just following some of John Bracken's early grants with in San Antonio or maybe in South Dakota to see if few of these pioneers had survived the shakeout of hyper local and citizen journalists and in South Dakota a visionary state library board member saw a chance to unite 13 libraries and create a website and deliver some news but based on not on a police blotter but based on changes in census data town by town or changes in GDP information just just material that would be very vibrant important for officials and others to make good decisions in government that wasn't being done and then as weeklies closed the other stuff wasn't being done too so the Black Hills information network became sort of a de facto information source for a chunk of Northwest South Dakota and as we're facing a future where the number of journalists in the United States is at about 18 to 20 percent the level it was at 14 years ago we're seeing just a really rapid decline in the volume and availability of local news what what do libraries have to bring to that vacuum what do they have that maybe journalists and newsrooms don't have trust is the first thing I don't know if you know Paola Villanueva from Creative Commons and a Berkman fellow she said you're just trying to bring get journalists and librarians to date each other and I said well if they had a love child it would have an approval rating in the 60s but so trust is a big component and active listening and understanding of the audience and understanding of the authenticity of each community I've been loath to start top down templates for success for various people because I want to listen to see what solutions have been done on a menu of options by the pioneering libraries that are doing things stepping into this I think that as in journalism librarians understand what makes their community different and ask the question although some might call it a Passover question about why is this town different from any other town every moment every day every aspect from history to disproportionate statistical representation so in the section of information that is about that local area I think libraries have a much better handle than out of town chain places that are paying some stranger to come in at age 22 to figure out a town Mary I just wonder if you want to comment on this on this role that libraries are beginning to fill in different ways Well Dave and I have been talking a lot about the structural problems of the closing of the small papers makes people in small towns say we don't have a voice we're being preached to by the elites on the coast the resentment and the divide grows wider so I think that what libraries have to offer is many fold we've been focusing around some ideas of having a resident journalist you know stay in the library and be there to write stories and answer questions and teach literacy news literacy and what does the library can offer back is some space some expertise the local files the contacts libraries have amazing tap on resources that journalists could actually learn from the librarians this could be a really good partnership I would add that the journalists would think and there are some really great outreach people in libraries that get this too the idea of broader dissemination of what you have and the selectivity for the audience which let's say you've got like BPL 63 invaluable databases who's your audience and will database 37 with this particular use case light up and get these people to go from the list of databases to the muscle memory to use it more often so I think journalists are good at getting the word out for that and I think there is a new sort of digital specialist or outreach specialist or whoever is doing the weekly newsletter email newsletter for the library that will become much more muscular I think in coming years and so the new role of a community library may evolve into just a de facto town crier it won't just be library events it will be library plus town events too because there wasn't the other side anymore and libraries at least public libraries role has been changing to be less of a repository although it's certainly a huge value in that but more of a content creation space for their users so as makerspaces come into play as recording studios as poetry labs there really is a synergy there for creation of local content and I would also I mean the other impetus for me is this is sort of a rear guard action to protect some aspect of the first amendment in areas where it has either been gone or the news desert it's sort of a seating of an area of a barren area in some cases and if there is greater interest in local sort of accountability journalism beyond the you know can of the library if they're paid by people are paid by the mayor that you may stoke a kind of community that could support a broader different news news thing again so this is this is happening and this could happen I imagine in communities far from the battles in Washington over the press or other places this is this is the this is red America these are small town America this is places where they they hate journalists because they didn't have a local journalist much like unbridled hatred for Congress except for your local congressman that we took out the local congressman here for media I have a couple more questions but maybe I should just open up to the audience for a moment and see if there are any questions from the audience and if not I will keep going speak now yes excuse me for speaking up having just spoken in the previous panel but David I'm a little skeptical about the library as a newspaper it seems to me that people like you journalists have real skills and you write stories now it's true that libraries are centers for information and they can help people get there but it seems to me the problem is much more profound than leaning harder on libraries 62% of Americans get their news from the social media mainly Facebook and the the stuff that comes on to that media is not produced by trained professionals who know how to get a story so it seems to me we are stuck in a very severe crisis as far as news goes I'm your point is taken I don't think that there are few places where the town librarian has ended up running in essence the town weekly newspaper but it's four or eight pages two eleven by seventeen pages folded together and dropped off at a few local spots it is mostly it was what I would call proto journalism it's not it's not the deep stuff it's just this town's senior senior's club didn't realize this town also had a senior's exercise club and so all of a sudden when you have the announcements going out they're doubling the size of people that show up for the kids Santa lions club thing it's a very fundamental first edge of community so I don't see it as a as a New York Times I don't know what to do some parts of that 62% social media I do know that that that local information is not as replicable or as representative people will know in a second when the when Elvis died but they won't know who owned your house in 1960 you know so you need to have a local database to get that so it may be unearthing some unlocking the unique information that each community might have and I want to add to that I mean it's certainly not investigative journalism or high level output but the problem is so severe that having just these scenes in the ground I think is important we have nothing in so many spaces so to have something that then can perhaps start to grow and and journalists might come back or you know we it's better than a fallow field is how I see it what what other challenges do you see facing facing libraries in the I'm glad you asked that what do we do with all this junk I mean do we how do we curate this do we collected do we believe in in access to everything we don't believe in labeling things when it came to Holocaust denial literature you wouldn't believe how much time and thought and arguments went into coming up with a with a call number to keep it separate and that was not even really an a that was an objective distinction whether it's denying or whether it's actually Holocaust literature so how do we handle this how do we curate with and keep that trustworthiness and still have free to all access that the Simmons is having a conference in April no news KNOW any WS to deal with that problem and to bring together technologists journalists and librarians to figure out how to how to move forward. I was going to say also there there's a lot of interest in in various schools who can contact me after a few of these stories and have said we we we see we need some skills that journalists have in our I schools and I schools would say we need some of our journalism schools would say we need some of these skills that that you know information science and library science people have as well and there may be a hybrid with new next gen employees in libraries if they have to do a little I guess extreme outreach or sort of answering the existential question maybe it's somebody who has both the the research and tools and the sort of some dissemination skills I don't know if it's more than a team taught course or if it's to a joint degree on the spectrum. And when I think forward to the role of libraries I really look to the digital public library of America because it's creating that curate that one spot at least where there's curated reputable content that is so important if we spend all our time just slashing at the stuff that's bad that's what we're that's we'll end up with nothing I think building the good content is the best role the highest role for libraries. I had a friend who was in college in the Vietnam War and was disbelieving everything he was reading the paper so he went to the library. He opened up all the books and he found out the live that what he was reading was lies. We need we need that going forward. How is he going to find those books unless we have some some reputable DPLA type platform. One last question. Yes sir in the back. I would like your comments on an experiment that's a little over a year inside the central library. That's a value to create new listeners and viewers of the radio. Yes viewers of the radio in person to the library but it's also drawing others to the library. It's another piece of the you know reinvention of the library that brings together news. David could I ask you the quit. How is it working after that first year. It's working so well for me. I can't pass Boylston without taking a picture of the news feed cafe and posting it to my Instagram feed. I don't know why but I'm hoping it works. It's working out. So people love it. Both this morning and it's always a draw. And you know to have people participating in the radio show in person by asking questions being in dialogue. I think you know for years to a year three the question is now what do we do with this platform. Is there a way to bring about an interesting opportunity for training people on what is good journalism. How do you produce a show. What is the role of news within the library context. And people have come to the library to reduce papers for generations. So this is a new form of that. So I think we're still in the early stages of working out what that means. But the promise is very encouraging to have a response. I would say maybe if you haven't already to look at the San Antonio system and the studios that they have primarily for training with teen services division. And the sort of independent sort of video C-span for San Antonio that's all produced in a newsroom inside of that main library building. So I think our panelists have done an excellent job of trying to with wisdom light the way towards the future a bit. I mean we're facing this giant rushing flow of dis and misinformation on social media in part I believe because of the collapse of journalism. And libraries have a role both in navigating some of the challenges of misinformation and in providing a potential future for some communities at least on local news. And I thought since Mary had the foresight and wisdom to bring up poetry labs I thought it'd be worth closing with a couple of brief stanzas from Mark Strand. There is no happiness like mine. Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. I have been eating poetry. And the last stands is I am a new man. I growl at the librarian and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to try not to cross the streams. Thanks you guys. So I'm going to move out the third chair but I'll ask Philip Schmidt from the MIT Media Lab who just this week announced the Public Library Innovation Exchange which he'll tell us about. And Jocelyn Kennedy from right here at Harvard the executive director of the Harvard Law Library to bring us home. You guys should go where you are. I'll get out of the way. I'm just going to take this one. Hi. We didn't get a moderator. We also got very little instruction. And so we started shooting emails back and forth saying here's what I'm interested in. And then an email came back. And I think after listening to the previous panels there are two areas that still stand out for me that I would love to talk to you about and also talk about myself a little bit. One is this relationship between virtual and face to face. I came up in the first panel. It's kind of what is the role of a virtual or a digital library? What is the role of the place? And then the other one is and maybe we start there is the library as a platform. So partnerships with journalists or other kinds of organizations. And I know there's a library innovation lab here at Harvard. And you're working with public libraries and I think also academic libraries and some curious and we have this public library innovation exchange. So maybe we should get we could just share some experiences. No, no, I've already been talking for you know you go you go first. You have such a lovely voice. So we do we have an innovation lab here and I think that's we've worked with vendors. We've worked with lots of other people to get content. It's a really interesting. We're working with BPL right now to get some of our to have a shared digital collection, which I think is going to be amazing and some other academic libraries as well. One of the things that you had emailed me about that's a question that I'm interested in talking about I think was sort of what is the role of an academic library in relation to the public library. Of course I shot back like where do we live in the digital space so I want to answer your question about sort of where I see academic libraries and public libraries. I'm not in charge and then I want to talk to you about well we're but we're having this conversation I don't want to ask you something you don't want to answer. I'm interested to hear from you sort of what's happening at the media lab because I think that's a really interesting project the work that you're doing there. So the question about what can academic libraries do with public libraries is something I've been thinking a lot about. I'm a passionate believer in public libraries and lots of people tell me that I they think I'm a public librarian. I've never actually worked in a non academic public library, which is weird. I probably should be doing that. So I think there's a huge role for academic libraries in relation to public libraries in a couple of areas. And the one that I'm sort of really passionate about right now is sort of thinking about how we help young people in libraries sort of come to academia. How do we help there's a huge role for academic libraries to play in public libraries. I would love to send my librarians into public libraries to work with public librarians and to work with all library patrons because their future college attendees right regardless of their age to help them learn how to use resources to think about information literacy to think about what Mary is talking about media literacy to think about what the world looks like beyond their small space. I think that's one area where we can help and then the innovation labs sort of as we're we're looking at ways that we can extend information out to the public. So one of our big projects right now and pointing to Jack Cushman because it's one of the things he's going to be working on and has been working on is the case law access project, which I'm sure lots of you have heard about where we've digitized all of the case law of the United States of America. But the next piece of it is like now that we've done that what do we do with that information. It's not simply enough to have digitized the content we're extending access and what does that mean. And there's lots of different ways to consider that one is from an academic standpoint so that researchers can manipulate and look at ontologies and things like that. I'm seriously interested in how we use that information to help a 14 year old kid who lives on a reservation in the middle of America. Provided that Susan Crawford does her good work and gets him intern him or her internet access is trying to help their parent with a legal issue right or a child. I'm very focused on younger people, a child who is the only native English speaker in their family who's helping with an eviction problem or something. Those are some ways that I think we can enter that public library space. Yeah and in some ways I think this experience you've had with between academic libraries and public libraries. At the Media Lab we had this hypothesis that there would be a connection between Media Lab students and public libraries. And we essentially reached out to the Media Lab community and said we're building this relationship with public libraries. We already have a relationship with some of the leading ones in the US. And we'd like to hear who's interested in working with public libraries and the response has been kind of almost overwhelming. And so actually my colleague Catherine who's sitting in the back there and I who are running this project. We brought on board a librarian because we're not librarians. We wanted to make sure that we really understand that perspective. Someone from the MIT library who came on board with the project. We started talking to the libraries about what are the kinds of programs or services would they be interested in developing with someone from the Media Lab. And we started talking to the Media Lab folks saying what are you working on and is there a connection to public libraries. And what we heard from many of them is you know we and I think probably many of you have a sense of what the Media Lab does. We're about three or four hundred people. We build a lot of technology. We're very technology innovation focused. And for many of our students it turned out the most the thing that they were most interested in with public libraries is getting closer to the communities. Getting closer to real people. Working with an institution that's trusted in the community so that they could then we use the term deploy. But it's really more co-develop their technologies with these communities to make sure that they actually make sense that people want to use them that they get value out of them. And so we've been kind of matching up these researchers with public libraries. And we're excited to do some things that I think haven't necessarily been done a lot in libraries before including building a CubeSat satellite that's going to get launched into space and send back data. Or doing learning research where actually the librarians and the Media Lab researchers together do the research. So the library becomes a place of research rather than just getting programs from vendors or outside partners. So I think this kind of this interface between innovators and new types of partners and public libraries is really interesting. And yeah I think the Media Lab is just I think you we we're just the beginning of this right like there are lots of other organizations that I think we should try to get involved into this. Isn't it interesting how how excited librarians are to be learners. Have you found that interesting. I mean they are like the they're they are the learners right. So we love working with them because they are so curious. But also they are I think at the Media Lab sometimes because we put technology first or often first right we kind of like run ahead with this technology. And we have found that the librarians are certain bring kind of a thoughtfulness a groundedness into the conversation that also has for us has been really really amazing. Pulls in the balance between that sort of push towards innovation and and a little bit maybe more. The word that's coming to my head is sensibility and I don't mean that pejoratively towards innovators right. But there is some sensibility when you're building something for a space is it really going to work when we have that big vision of what it could be. Does it actually fit within whatever the box or the parameters of the actual people are. I'm excited we should talk more about what we could do together. So you said something about what I what I'm really interested is this notion of community like I'm thrilled to know that you're that your students are really wanting to get close to the community. So I think one of the reasons why John asked me to talk here is because I'm fascinated that the role the digital public library can play in community. And I think you're a little bit skeptical of the virtual community. I don't want to speak for you. But let me say my thing. Say your thing. Say my thing. Which is that I grew up in a town with a thousand people. There were 600 families. I can speak very clearly to what it's like to live in a rural community and the role that a rural community library plays in being a news provider. Absolutely. In 1980. And so I think about public libraries very much from the rural standpoint. A lot of times when we think about public libraries I think we think about urban spaces. Right. And that's where people can get to libraries. 56% of communities in the United States do not have libraries in them. There's 19,000 incorporated communities in the United States as of 2015 and 2012 there were 9,000 public libraries. So we're not meeting the need. And so what I think about is like what do we do for those other 10,000 communities. Right. What where do those people go to get the experience whether in person or maybe it's virtually to launch a rocket into space to sort of participate in this launching of a satellite to be in a maker space to have community and connection. And more personally I have a 22 year old child who has severe social anxiety and so going into a physical space is not really possible for them. And so the experience that lots of kids and other members of our community get who have access to public libraries are actually closed to broad swalls of our community. So how can, and so my child has found this space online, these amazing communities of people and connection and it has replicated the experience of being in a physical space online. And so I have a lot of curiosity about what is the role that the digital public library can play in places like the media lab, places like the library innovation lab here at Harvard to actually extend community. Not just information because I think yes what we do as libraries providing information is super important. It's like the bread and butter of our business right this is why we have this huge building was for all the books but you walk through you see we have less books more people right it's about community and it's about connection. And I'm really concerned about the 56% of our communities in the United States who don't have access to that kind of community. Yeah, yeah, I agree it's I think it's kind of interesting how I got to the point where I am because I started being almost like I would introduce myself as I am from the Internet. Because I was so optimistic about this new world where we would all connect with each other and speak across boundaries and solve problems together through collaboration. And before I came to the media lab I co founded a nonprofit called peer to peer university. And what we tried to do is is exactly this bring people together online where they could study things that they were interested in in these virtual communities using open educational resources and Skype and these technologies. And we kind of ended up with a similar frustration because we couldn't reach the people who weren't already highly educated had reliable access and knew how to navigate this this online world. So for us then the face to face starting to work with public libraries we made a huge shift a few years ago where now we work exclusively with physical spaces where people get together. They still take the online courses we still benefit from the resources that exist online. But that face to face interaction especially for the audience we were trying to reach was so valuable that we kind of made this shift. But I haven't fully given up on my idealistic hope and I mean the reason why I got so enchanted with the Internet back in those days was because you could make these connections with other people. You would find community online in a way that I think I hadn't quite anticipated. Like we are so used to finding community in the physical spaces and you could make these deep connections in an entirely digital space for me was was incredible. So I think maybe we're coming through this. Okay, I was online only now we're online and offline and like hopefully and maybe that's a role that the DPLA could or should play is how do we build these strong communities. And small groups where people support each other who are only going to be interacting with each other online. What else do you want us to talk about John? We're doing okay. Yes. I know your library is awesome. Thank you so much. Now we're super excited about this and the thing that we're still grappling with a little bit is. So the CubeSat project is amazing right like kids are going to get to build a so CubeSats are these tiny 10 centimeter by 10 centimeter by 10 centimeter little things that you can include in the payload for a rocket that goes into space. So it's like kind of a standardized size and you can also stick them together so you can build larger satellites and they're you know they're real satellites. They get tested they get their space worthy. And so we're extremely excited to be doing some of those CubeSat developments. But then what we are also asking is how do we make that experience accessible to maybe hundreds or thousands of public libraries because they're not all going to build a CubeSat right like you need access to people who can help with the construction of the design you need some funding you know it's building the device isn't that expensive. But actually getting it to the launch gets very expensive with all the testing and the actual payload you have to pay for. So for us kind of this is a great experiment to do a very high fidelity version that we would like to do with more libraries. But we're also thinking about well how can we do this in a thousand libraries because they're not all going to build a CubeSat. And I'd love if anyone has any suggestions or ideas I'd love to hear those. Well maybe it's a question for the room a little bit so because I totally agree. I think you said it this is the moment let's seize the moment this is the moment for libraries. That's exactly how I feel. And I also see the same enthusiasm in our media lab students are people are really there's something magical about the public library. There's something in the air right now that people are really excited about. But I'm a little bit worried that we're leaning more and more on the public library to provide all of the social services that actually should be provided by other institutions. And we're not shifting the resources that those other institutions had in the past. So I'm a little worried about us being too excited about public libraries only because they're kind of the last institution left. And I wonder if that's something others are concerned about or have thoughts on. Well then I think that gets to your point of sort of what can academic libraries what can other institutions. I mean I'm sort of keeping it within the library sphere. I do think there's other institutions that need to participate in this. But I think that's to your point of what can academic libraries contribute. So we it's hard to say this when you're at Harvard but we have money issues to write like lie all I know all libraries have funding issues. There are a limited amount of resources available but there are community members who can go help. So in one way I think academic libraries can be more as I said before be more present in the physical space of the public library is one aspect. And to try to build everything that we build to have it be open access and extendable to public libraries so that they can lean on some of our resources. We can do things at broader scale. So if we're buying space on the cloud maybe we buy a little extra space and we let public libraries use that space and that enables some of that sort of innovation to happen in the public library which would be a light lift for us I think. That's a really good idea. So I think I might have just committed myself to that. I'll go in with you. Yeah we can do it together right. That's sort of that feels like a low lift. I will convince John to do it with the digital public library. There you go. We're on the hook. We'll help. What do other people think? I see a lot of nodding. I'm a math teacher. I'm a faculty at School of Information in Kent State in Ohio and a fellow at Berkman this year. I just got a IMLS grant to bring AI to public libraries and data analytics for supporting local communities. I am a data scientist more than a librarian but I'm sitting in a library and it is fantastic when I hear this. One of the ideas that we had in that grant is thinking from an innovation ecology perspective that how bigger players they have a lot of capacity but they might not get involved in sort of tasks that it is usually designated to smaller players. So if you look at the innovation ecology perspective, if you pass those capabilities to smaller players, the innovation will increase in the community. And I believe that's an excellent idea. If you have cloud computing support and you can share it with public libraries that is fantastic. Last week we had a kickoff meeting. We brought four public library system people and talked with them. They are so thrilled to learn this new skill, so thrilled to get some of the supports and understand how they can use that. So I think this is fantastic if you can partnership and pass some of these capabilities to local public libraries. I am very persuaded that this is going to help improve innovation in local level and covering different ages from high school and even people who are going to start small businesses or entrepreneurs. Do you want to respond? Sure. Yeah, what you said. I think that's really interesting. I'm fascinated by it. I would love to have a conversation with you offline about sort of the notion of artificial intelligence in public libraries. And part of me feels like a creepy Amazon thing about that. And then part of me thinks, wow, that's really interesting and what could we do in an artificial intelligence space in public libraries. And I would love to figure out with you if you want to have a conversation and figure out other ways that libraries can work together and we can find these transferring that information downward. I think it's really interesting. I agree. And actually, do you have a website or something that you want to share with people? Next.io with a K, so it's a knowledge extension, but we call it Next with a K. And actually the domain, but three days ago, it's going to be up next week. Great. Next week with a K also. Somebody else had their hand up. John Bracken had his hand up. Oh, I know. The kid is completely on my back. You know, so, okay, so Second Life didn't really work out, but there were a lot of librarians hanging out there. And there's some librarians who are still hanging out there. Successfully. And it is still a legitimate space that people are using. I don't know if it's a Second Life experience. I don't think this is a five-year or a 10-year proposition, but I can imagine a space that is really active and engaged. I watch young people in the way that they are creating these amazing spaces for themselves online outside of the commercial social media paradigm where they are building these connections. Maybe the library is not, it might be that the library is not the entity that creates those kinds of communities, but I think it's worth exploring. Because right now libraries are creating these really amazing communities for people who don't have access, right? I don't know how much time you see. I think everybody hears a library fan, but how much time do you spend unless you're in a public library just watching people in the public library and how they use that space. And the amazing ways that human connection is happening. So I would challenge the digital public library to sort of think about where is the human intersection online? What could it possibly look like today, tomorrow, 15 years from now that is building that richness of human connection? Because as much as I think face-to-face connection is important, it's not possible for a lot of people. For a number of reasons. And again, let's talk to Susan Crawford and help her with the fiber issue, right? We have to make sure people have connection because my rural kid doesn't get helped unless my rural kid has access to the internet. But setting that problem aside, I don't know exactly how you build it, but I imagine it's being an amazing magical space. Yeah, and I completely agree. And I'd add one that's much less interesting and more boring, but I think also still important, which is this idea of open content or open resources. That was a big topic 10 years ago. Everyone got very excited about that. And I feel like there's kind of a waning enthusiasm. People just don't think that's particularly interesting anymore. And when you look at the resources that exist, and when I say there's a waning interest, not from me and not from my friends, but I think in general, because I see Wendy in the back there kind of. But I think there's a real threat to the public domain, to openly licensed content. And I feel there's less public attention and enthusiasm to take on those issues. And I would hope that the Digital Public Library of America or the Americas can not take their eye off of that and make sure that we retain kind of a focus on making sure that those resources are available. Yeah, I totally agree. Don't pivot all the way away from content, right? Because that rural kid also needs access to the magical world of books and information, right? Because that's going to unlock a lot of things for those kids too. Wendy. Wendy Seltzer, and as a copyright lawyer, one of the things I love about libraries is that if they didn't exist, you'd be really, really hard pressed to invent them today. Physical places that just give out books to anyone who walks in and lend them out with barely any proof who you are and that you could pay for all of the content that you're getting access to for free. I mean, it's fantastic. And so I see, I love libraries for that role and for their roles as guardians of free speech and anonymity. And I think expanding on that concept of what are these other non-rival resources that we can help gain, give people access to as a commons. And let's renew that imagination too of what are other resources, the places where people are being asked to identify themselves. Libraries can be a shield from identity by geolocation and IP address and internet connection. The places where people are being asked to sort of prove something about themselves. We can give them a spot from which to do that. Maybe we have time for one more contribution or question. That's a heavy burden. I'm Jenny Rose Halper and I work at Creative Commons. Obviously, I also still care, as probably everybody in this room still care about openly licensed content. I have a question about that in particular and what academic libraries can bring to public libraries. At Harvard, for example, at MIT, you have access to huge repositories, huge databases of materials that are sometimes assigned, that sometimes have to be found by people in public libraries. And I'm wondering how can academic libraries take these huge open access initiatives like the one at MIT, like Dash at Harvard and like the other Harvard open access initiatives and how can they use that energy that is still happening within libraries and bring that energy to public libraries in particular so that librarians don't have to respond, no, I'm sorry, we don't have access to that resource. No, I'm sorry, you can only see an EBSCO snippet. No, I'm sorry, you can only see the abstract of this PubMed article. How can the riches of these huge repositories that are largely commercial be brought to public libraries? Well, I'm low to answer that question as our university librarian is sitting in front of me, Sarah Thomas, and Suzanne Wohns is in the back of the room who is the Harvard Library Digital Strategy Librarian and Francesca Frey who's the Chief of Staff of the Harvard Libraries and I cannot speak on behalf of Harvard at all in that context. I mean, I think that your question about how you extend out information that is stuck behind paywalls, so much of our content is stuck behind paywalls, it's a huge issue. And in academic libraries, our hands are tied in lots of ways because we need to get that content to our patrons. Academic libraries are trying to work with publishers to try and help them see their way toward more open access content that does not delegitimize their need to make a profit. So it's kind of a weird balance for some of those companies to be in. You know, we continue to digitize what we can. I think we sort of intellectually lean pretty heavily on Brewster at the Internet Archive who really seems to be prepared to take it on the chin with the publishers to make content available that is in copyright. And so I think those are some ways. I'm not answering your question because it's a hard question to answer. We're restricted by licenses, it's all about money, right? And so, I mean, quite honestly, right now what I'm trying to do is get vendors to make their content that I have to buy and restrict be accessible to people who have different abilities. And I'll take up the open access thing after I can make sure that a blind person can actually get access to all of the information that we subscribe to. Since nobody from MIT is here, I can... So we're going to make everything... No, I think... Well, one is I liked in the earlier conversation the charge to the DPLA to be more of an activist and kind of take on the thorny issues. And I think institutions like MIT or at least the Media Lab would be happy to be allies in that. So maybe we wouldn't be the one that makes the first step but I think we'd want to be part of a club that kind of takes on those issues. I think internally we have a responsibility to just make sure everything we produce is openly licensed and accessible and reachable. And so at the Media Lab we do have a pretty good open access policy that applies both to research publications and software. So the default is open source and I think CC Buy for publications. We can probably do more in terms of doing that for all of MIT but I know Chris Bork who isn't here, the MIT librarian, is very active in that space and really trying to push the institute to do more. And I think we have a responsibility to be kind of a leader, right? Like as we did with OpenCourseWare, which really opened the floodgates for universities to say oh, they realized that the content wasn't the most valuable thing about going to a university and then they started making their content available. I think in the same way we should be more of a leader again and kind of do the same thing in the online course space for example where many of the MOOCs, which are called massive open online courses, are actually not open at all. The materials are not openly licensed. When the course has run, you can't access it anymore. But I know Griff had a question but I just got the signal that we're the only thing between them and that. Oh, you are, okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'll be brief and just say three things since I am between you and Harvard's alcohol. First, I want to, where did she go? Another one of my board members just walked in. Jenny Lee was also here. I introduced the other board members a minute ago. Second, I want to acknowledge the DPLA staff who are here, who have been here longer than I have. Ariel, who's taking notes right now and working. Michael and Michelle are all here and I hope if you don't know them, you'll get a chance to know them. And third, I want to thank the Berkman folks in particular, Harvard in general and Berkman in particular, especially Alba, without whom this event wouldn't have happened. So thank you so much. Two members of the Berkman staff who would have been here otherwise are down with the flu. So that means she did three people's jobs at least today. And I think it's great that Jenny and Wendy actually both called out because like DPLA, chilling effects.org, which Wendy started and nurtured inside of Berkman, Creative Commons was started and nurtured inside of the Berkman Center. So many other projects, Public Radio Exchange, podcasting in many respects was invented here. We're really proud of that heritage and really glad that the, I'm really glad that my first event with my DPLA hat on was here with you guys. So thank you to the Berkman and Harvard teams. And the last bit I want to say is I want to also thank our landlord, David Leonard, who's here from Boston Public Library. I think that relationship is one that we're, we're really excited about driving forward and strengthening. And I don't just call him my landlord. He's become a good friend and advisor as well. Look, I've got a long list of ideas and mandates that came from a lot of you. I noticed, if you notice Phillip was pitching me on ideas, which is something he's used to doing when I had my last job. I love all those ideas. I don't have a checkbook anymore, Phillip, but I love this idea of we should be part of a club taking on these larger issues and this, this notion of a participatory platform that, that Mora and Bob and Mary Lee and so many of you others have, have handed to us, I think we take on as a real strong mandate and hope that you all will be part of that journey with us, helped continue to push us and support us in the next five and 10 and 20 years in the long game. So thank you all for coming on a Friday before the Super Bowl weekend. And I hope you can hang out for a bit and chat.