 All right. Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week as we are doing right now, and then it is posted to our website for you to watch at your convenience, and I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archives. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries here, similar to your state library potentially. We provide services, training, consulting, et cetera, to all types of libraries in the state, so you will find things on our show that are for public libraries, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, et cetera, really anything and anything that is libraries. Really our only criteria for the show is that is something to do with libraries, something libraries are doing, something we think they could be doing. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that come in sometimes to do presentations about things, products and services and things we offer here through the Library Commission. We also bring in guest speakers from across the state and across the country to talk about things, cool things they're doing in their libraries. But before we get into today's show, I am just briefly going to pop over to our Library Commission homepage here and talk about some resources we have here. We are all right now still in the deep in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is going strong and getting worse as time is going on. We have resources on our Library Commission website for our libraries to help them navigate the current situation. There is a link here. This first post here at the top of our log is pinned so it will always appear there at the top of our page every time you come here as a link to resources we put together for our libraries. We have a link here to what we are trying to keep track of mostly our public libraries but some academics are in there too of who is open, who is closed, special accommodations, Wi-Fi extending to the parking lot, curbside pickup, whatever. Who has now reclosed, that is now happening with many of our libraries as I am sure it is happening all across the country. New outbreaks have flared up and libraries who had opened are now having to close again. So we are trying to keep track of that here. If you are in Nebraska Library, let our reference staff know. We will keep that up to date as well as we can. But I just want to show you here on our pandemic resources page, we have a link with a forum. Libraries can tell us what they are doing. We have some maps. But there is a sub-page here which has some great resources that you can use to help your patrons. This is not just for Nebraska libraries. Many of these resources are just out there for anybody. So just pay attention when you are looking at it. If it is something that says in Nebraska, this is how it works. Or other things that are more general. So homeschooling my kids. What do I do for financial help? How do I keep my kids entertained and fun? But our second link right here about my library, this is specifically resources for libraries, for you running your library. Closing, reopening, information from the CDC, World Health Organization, ALA, OCLC, IMLS, et cetera, et cetera. Anybody that has any resources, we are always adding to this. So keep an eye on here if there is new links, new deadlines for things, new webinars or information that is posted with information for school libraries. Here in Nebraska, specific information about having to have an open meeting. So this is Nebraska specific. And just lots of other resources here. So please do keep an eye on this. If you are in Nebraska library, check our page for any resources. Anything here that is general, it is good for anybody to look at. But check in with your, if you are not in Nebraska, check in with your state library or state library association and see if they have any resources that they may be sharing out there as well. So let's get into today's show now. I am going to find my right screen here. Tim, I am going to make you presenters so we can get your slides up. Okay. You should see that option now. Let's see here. Yep. Let's see. What's that look like? There you go. Yep. I see your slides and they are full screen. Awesome. All right. So this morning with us, we have Tim Lentz who is, well, he wears multiple hats. Today, speaking mainly as the chair of our Nebraska library association's diversity committee to talk to us about how we can read more diversely ourselves. So I am just going to hand over to you to tell us all about how to do that, Tim. No pressure. Sounds good. Krista, thank you so much. Gosh, I have mentioned this before, but it is just always a pleasure to be here and to work with you. It is comfortable and this is a really important topic. 2020 obviously has been a year in a lot of different ways. And some of that has impacted diversity. So I wanted to talk about that. I want to do a couple of things just kind of talking about my own bona fides. It sometimes feels a little bit awkward to be a white cishet male who is representing the diversity committee. But I had conversations with actually the past chair of the diversity committee who pointed out that it is on people who are sort of already quote unquote in the mainstream to shoulder some of the load. It is some Latinx people have talked to me specifically about the importance of being a good ally, the importance of doing the work alongside folks, not saying that diverse issues are only for diverse populations, but the diverse issues are for all of us. So I don't want to mention that just to let you know where I'm coming from. As things happened, no other committee members are able to attend. So I am flying solo on this one, but we've got a good committee. We've got some non-binary folks on our committee. We've got some folks with various ethnic diversity backgrounds on our committee. It is a diverse committee and I just happened to be the solo face of it this morning. That's something we were talking about before we started too about how and people may think stereotypically that Nebraska is all very monochromatic in very ways and in our Nebraska library association our people are not. It's not like that at all. Yes. I think that's really important because I think there is that perception there and that perception is not accurate and one of the things that I've seen is we're absolutely driving toward being part of those issues, addressing those issues, broadening our own outreach in a lot of different ways and I will talk about that through the course of the presentation. The other piece that I want to mention most of this is again just coming from you know things I have read. So there's a lot of stuff that's out there that I'm not going to mention because I'm I'm not going to talk about it because it's reading diversity or reading diversely. It's going to be things that I am familiar with that I have gone back and read or read for the first time this year. One of the other pieces that I think is kind of a contextual piece is this is something that is absolutely happening in Nebraska. Point is this year right here talking about Black Lives Matter, talking about solidarity Saturdays, talking about LGBTQ plus issues, talking about disability issues. All of these matter to Nebraska, all of these matter to librarians, all of these matter to librarians and libraries right here in Nebraska. The next point that I'll move on to after that is our book club stuff and spoiler alert the answer is no but they are a great place to start. On that there have been a wave of books that have been very popular this year. It's also very important to go back to know the history, to find the roots, to get some of the context. Then once you've got that it's also really important to be meeting diverse audiences where they are. We can work to make sure that our collections are ready for all of the people in our public. If you think of us, you know currently I work in a public library. If you think of us as serving public that same dichotomy that we talked about where we tend to think of Nebraska as a monochromatic state again is simply not true and we can do that work out of the gate to make sure that our collections are not quote unquote monochromatic. The last thing that I want to talk about again not in great detail but I think it's one of the most important things to look at right now is how we move beyond just reading diversity, reading diversely, how librarians and libraries can address the issues in turbulent times. So one of the things that I kind of wanted to start with just setting the relevance and pertinence of this topic for for libraries in general and certainly in Nebraska. Black lives matter, solidarity, Saturdays with meatpacking plant workers in COVID pandemic times, LGBTQ issues across the state and in libraries and disability issues. All of these matter. All of these are different axes of diversity if you will. This is a photograph from I believe a from bold Nebraska which is an activist group in the state of Nebraska. This is on Juneteenth. Juneteenth of course is a time where they commemorate that word actually came down in Texas that the slaves had been freed. Right in the middle of that in Nebraska there were Black Lives Matter protests. Those actually happened across the state. The library I'm working at in Hastings we saw little gatherings even here in Hastings. We saw gatherings in Grand Island. There were large gatherings you know even some dare I say it unrest in places like Lincoln and Omaha and it's right here. There was an African-American man who was shot and killed in Omaha and all of a sudden you know quote unquote little old Omaha quote unquote little old Nebraska became part of a national conversation along with other issues around Black Lives Matter. So this is something that does impact all of us. It's something that does impact the state of Nebraska and Omaha. So this is a picture I really this is my friend Gladys Godinez. Gladys is an organizer out in Lexington Nebraska. She was I believe born in Guatemala. Her roots are certainly there and one of the things that happened even before even before the recent wave of Black Lives Matter protests and marches and things like that emerged. There were already car rallies that were going on starting I believe in March and certainly in April in solidarity with meatpacking plant workers. That is a predominantly Latino workforce. It is a predominantly immigrant and minoritized workforce and they were seeing outbreaks of COVID happen in the packing plants across the entire state of Nebraska and the reason for that is you work side by side in those plants. It was very difficult until they started taking precautions to stop the spread. You saw Lexington. You saw Grand Island. You saw Sioux City. You saw Crete. You saw a number of these plants sort of be the source of hot spots of outbreaks very early on and we needed to mobilize and protest. We got up and protested with some car rallies in Grand Island personally and it was you know it was work and it was challenging. We would have people who would really come out and cheer for us and we would have people who clearly did not care for what we had to say. It was I think disruptive to some people's perceptions. But solidarity Saturdays were really important. Those rolled right into Black Lives Matter. There was a protest that I got to participate up in Grand Island. We had Black Lives Matter representatives there. We had solidarity Saturdays representatives there. We had the PFLAG chapter in Grand Island there. There were groups that just came together in this and that's something that's really really important. We need to be reaching out. We need to be looking at how diverse communities pull together to address these issues and we need to remember that it happens right here in Nebraska. This is one of my old favorite spaces. It is closed now. This is the Panic Bar in Lincoln, Nebraska. It's one of the LGBTQ, more of a lesbian bar than a gay bar but very very affirming and welcoming. I mention this because we are seeing with COVID lots of spaces of one kind and another are closing. We have seen right in my public library people are trying to figure out how they're going to fax things. People are going to try to figure out how they're going to get things printed. You mentioned libraries closing again. We are closing again. I don't know what we'll do with it but we're trying to find options to still make some of our fax services, our print services, our copy services. We're trying to see if we can make those available to the public because those things are going away. The other thing that's happening is space is going away. Some of these places that were space for diverse communities of one kind and another, they're not safe to be in. Businesses are just closing up. Things are happening and hopefully many of those businesses will come back. But until they do, libraries and librarians may need to remember that we have always been space as well as collections of books and we may need to be a space for groups that don't have a space right now. That is something that I think we need to think about. The other piece that I want to mention, I don't have a slide for it but I do want to talk about it, is disability issues. That's twofold. One thing that is happening is we are closed. We consistently had groups with disabilities who came into our library. We've had to be creative about reaching out to them. We can't be a space for them right now. Again, to remember that this impact is right here in Nebraska, there was a lawsuit over the summer from disability groups when they were rolling out testing for COVID that they were not looking at how do disabled folks get to those test sites. A couple that was blind and they don't drive. They were like, how do we get there? It's not good for us to take an Uber. We probably shouldn't take public transportation in case we're sick. We need to stay cognizant of all the people in our communities as librarians and as Nebraskans. All that is just to say it is right here. It does matter. There are disabled librarians in Nebraska. There are folks with various diverse backgrounds working in libraries in Nebraska. We are serving all of those people. All of this really does matter. We are absolutely not a monochromatic state. We are absolutely not monochromatic libraries. We need to be working to serve all of the populations that use our libraries, whether that's public libraries, academic libraries, or special libraries of whatever kind. So one of the things that happened over the summer is a lot of us joined book clubs and I joined some book clubs. I'm going to talk about some of the books that I read in my book club. But there was an editorial and it was very well written. It was provocative. When black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs and I'm going to cop to that. I am a white person who joined a book club and I'm glad I did. It was challenging and valuable but it can't stop there. We can't read up on the challenges that diverse audiences face and then just be like, oh, well, I know about that and then continue doing business as usual. It is really important to be reading up. It is really important to, frankly, be joining the book clubs but it is not at all enough. We're expanding what titles you suggest for a book club if you are already in one. Yes, yep. If you are already in a book club and I did see some book clubs around here do that. I saw some book clubs that already existed. There's a book club that I'm aware of that they read different genres. One month they're doing this genre, one month they're doing another genre, one month they're doing another genre. If I remember correctly, over the summer, they just set their usual rotation aside and started reading some books about Black Lives Matter issues, about related issues, about things like this because two things happened and those things interact but one thing is obviously the pandemic and that has huge impacts for diverse communities and diverse reading. The other thing that happened, of course, is a wave of killing African American people frequently by law enforcement. That's not an indictment of law enforcement per se nor of individual officers who are out there but it highlights a societal problem. Talk about that in society terms. We don't have to break it down into this side and that side but we do have to address these issues that are coming to us. There are some great reading lists that were put out. I'm not sure you might mention some too that were put out of anti-racist readings and whatnot. There's lots of resources out there for it but it's interesting that you mentioned that book club that does a different genre every month every time. We're talking about some serious things now because of the situation in our country but that's a reading diversely as well rather than just sticking to what you like and what you're comfortable with reading. Read something that someone else suggested that you would have never thought about even looking at before because it's what the group's doing. That's a reading diversely as well. It really is and it gets you in that mental habit of then breaking down your own silence. I love science fiction. I have a friend who is challenging me to read romance novels and so I'm talking to her and I'm like Jennifer where do I start and she's like let's talk about this and this and that keeps me in the habit of exploring, of moving beyond. You're more comfortable trying something else new because yes I did that. I've mainly my whole life been a fantasy sci-fi reader as well and I got into cozy mysteries you might talk because there are some that have and it's kind of you know you sneak in on things that make it easy for you that have librarians as the key people in it. That's me. I can probably work with that. Yeah now the flip side of it again is a sci-fi and fantasy fan. One of the things I've been doing another avenue to diversify my own reading is I've been trying to read a lot of diverse sci-fi and I will tell you as a sci-fi fan things going on right now. I don't suspect we're going to look back in probably like 10-15 years and we're going to talk about this time as another golden age of science fiction and that is going to be largely driven by diverse authors of science fiction. Within genres of what you've always stereotypically thought of what they would be they're becoming more just within that genre you know of what you think sci-fi is becoming more diverse within itself because of who's writing and what's going on and what they want to write about because of what's happening in the world. So speaking kind of circling back to book clubs this is the one that my book club read. This one challenged me. I'll be honest it was not my favorite I think it's very very good and there were folks in the book club who loved it and really appreciated it. That last line there about becoming a good ancestor that was part of this book that really did resonate with me deeply. We need to think about what we're doing not only for ourselves but what we're modeling for young folks who come into our libraries what we're modeling for the folks around us who see what we're doing what we are passing on frankly generation to generation one of the other things I really did like about this book is it's structured as a workbook we dug in and we we worked on it over a course of weeks where we would read we would work we would meet and it pulls some things apart for you. She is not she's not from the United States so some of her perspectives kind of flattened diversity in the United States a little bit one of the things that I've noticed my wife was born in Mexico you know sometimes we take a step beyond the quote unquote monochromatic view of the world around us to again a frankly black and white view of the world around us that can sometimes leave out folks you know from various Asian backgrounds folks from various Latinx backgrounds folks from all different parts of the world and we can tend to think of things only along an axis of black and white the critiques the thought provoking all of that was very very useful and I think I think I was able to grow beyond it but also I think you need to read enough of these books to begin to be well versed in what all is out there and to say hey I really like this for this thing I really like that for that thing you know I would just without hesitation recommend this book to certain folks I'd like to have it in my sort of stable if somebody comes in I would say what are you looking for where are you at with this and this would be one that I would really go to for me personally something that covered a lot of the same material that resonated more with me was so you want to talk about race by Ejoma Oluo she has direct African heritage but lives here in the United States and whoo this book took me apart made me think about my presuppositions it made me think about how to talk about race the other thing that I really liked was there are consistent concrete I don't want to simplify it as useful tips but it's concrete takeaways hey next time you're in a situation do this don't talk about you know my African American friend my disabled friend my Latinx friend and think that gets you off the hook think about how to how to come right how to be doing the work yourself so that you're not always calling up your minoritized friend and making them responsible for your education I think that I like that of having something concrete to do because I mean like you said you know having these kind of books in your book club and reading them is the first step and that's great and you can read all these stories and these books to talk about it but then okay I know I should do something else but what is that something else what I should you know actually do now about it I've read this I've learned it I get it now what and having something that actually says do here's what you need to remember when you're in this situation or here's what you how you should respond when something happens that I think that's the part that like that editorial in the Washington Post said a lot of people are missing they're not taking that extra and sometimes they just aren't because it's hard it is it's a hard thing to do to change how you've been acting if you if you're not sure how you've been acting but it's also just I need someone to tell me just tell me what how I can do it and I'll do it just put it in writing somewhere so I can have this as like a guide yes well and that is so much of it like please point me in the right direction but then also maybe give me a first step or two you know and and she talks about that she says when you show up in spaces that are not yours sit back and listen that's that I think is important for all of us again being a white siss hat male that's a good comment for anything in life honestly not even just uh you know race or whatever it's just anywhere you are if you're new to it learn about it before you jump in and try and make changes or tell these people here's how things should be I think you're doing it all wrong and here's what I think from my experience elsewhere I'm like well that's nice elsewhere but learn about us first take some time and then you have more you can you can say something with that knowledge that you've come from what how things are here because it's not going to be the same as where you wherever you came from before and that I think that's just a good life thing to just to stick with yeah well and to not roll in and like hey I I see the solution well you know what I will almost guarantee you that solution that you just came up with has already been considered and it's not it's not this flip of a switch you know you come into a new group and you're like well hey let's just you know do this and they're like yeah that's what we've been working on you know that's that's where we're coming from and that I'll kind of move forward to the next section I want to touch on this one just briefly before moving on the thing that I liked about this the the original was written by Ibrahim X. Kendi it was called stamped I forget the exact title but like stamped on the body Jason Reynolds is a writer for younger folks and so the content is still Ibrahim X. Kendi's content but Jason Reynolds put it in a context that is really geared at like you know teens young adults things like that and that's something to be mindful of too it's good for us to be educating ourselves but we also need to be providing resources so that folks of any age can be educating ourselves and so this was another one that I read that I really did like a lot and it's one that I would like to put in the hands of young folks when they're working on these kinds of things so like we were saying these are not new problems you can't roll in here and just fix them overnight one of the things that that I did this year that I want to kind of move through and highlight and encourage everyone to do is to dig deeper look back at the roots there have been folks writing about these things for frankly centuries you know if you go back and look at WB Du Bois if you look at Franz Fanon if you look at folks like this is not this is not something that we woke up with in 2020 that happened there were some things that flared up but it's not it's not new and again knowing your history helps you come into those spaces a little bit more I think carefully and I think with some humility this is one I went back and read this year Teaching to Grants Grants by Belle Hooks it's she's an African American writer it is explicitly feminist it is explicitly critical in how it teaches I read this first a long time ago back taking education classes in college I did not become a teacher I become a librarian instead which I do think is its own kind of being a teacher but this was one that has just given me a lasting framework that I went back and revisited it talks about some things and if I have any I know I have at least one college librarian in the audience it talks about constructing knowledge it talks about knowledge as something that we participate in which sounds an awful lot like the ACRL framework about knowledge being constructed about authority being constructed about things being a framework and so this was something that that I read it early on and then just in the past three four years when the latest ACRL frameworks came out I was like oh I feel like I recognize some of that so getting that history is really really useful this is one that a lot of folks really ought to read everybody has this framework of Malcolm X as sort of the radical militant counterpart to Martin Luther King and I and anybody in this audience to go back and read this he was on a journey through his entire life he spoke out he stewed up and as you follow you see that it was sort of an active survival to to be as outspoken as he was you also see that he himself after reforming from being a criminal in his early years was never personally involved in violence he was assassinated at the end but Malcolm X was somebody who really he threads in and out of things that Martin Luther King was was writing about and he's often set up an opposition with Martin Luther King and I think that's I think it's a deep oversimplification the other reason I like to mention him uh folks may not remember this but he was born in Omaha Nebraska um he's probably one of the more famous people who was born in Omaha so again that keeps that connection that helps us remember these are things that matter around here these are things that start here and move forward from for more part of the night um the other one let me see here did I yeah uh this one I just started reading Martin Luther King Jr I wanted to go back after reading Malcolm I was like I should read Martin again I want to get both all all sides of something of a yeah yeah and and finding both parts of those conversations both sides of it starts to really deepen the perspective on both you have a more of an idea of Malcolm knowing more about Martin you have more of an idea about Martin knowing more about Malcolm and seeing that they absolutely were in conversation with each other through their writings throughout the 60s and and the conversations are still lasting um so this is not a book per se but this is something that really hit home grab that link get out there and check this one out this is fantastic before Ernie Chambers had finished law school before he had become the sometimes fire rancid senator that he still know him as there's this documentary uh this young what's that he's so young yes yes it's it's amazing I mean I know he's been involved in this for ever but yeah I just have never seen as many as older pictures yeah this this documentary I'm gonna be honest it's a little bit heartbreaking the other man in this photo is William Youngdoll who is a Lutheran minister and he is not even trying to integrate his church he is trying to have a conversation between his church and African American churches in Omaha this is from 1966 and Ernie is literally like in this photo Ernie is cutting somebody's hair um this was literally when Ernie Chambers was just a barber and he was already somebody who was outspoken in the community he hadn't I don't know if he was in law school but he had certainly not finished law school he was not the state senator that we know him as he was he was a young man in the community and oh I mean we hear Ernie Chambers challenge people in the unicameral still and you see all of that in this film this this young white Lutheran pastor comes in and he is doing his best and he's clearly he's educated he's a minister and he is doing his best to keep up with Ernie and Ernie isn't like just beating him up but he asks these tough questions and the whole the whole dialogue throughout this film they meet with a youth group from one of the African American churches they meet with a youth group from the white church that that pastor is the pastor of they have those two youth groups sit down together it's a beautiful film part of what's heartbreaking about it is to see that some of the issues we are still working on have been things we have been working on again right here in Nebraska right here in Omaha uh for 50 some years you know all of the questions that Ernie raises are still so relevant so to to right now unfortunately yeah unfortunately again that tells us go back into our history learn that these are not new questions learn that we have been talking about them for many years and remember remember again that it is right here you know yes this year but also right here and also historically the other thing that that I want to highlight you know stay in mindful of my time is don't be the only one reading diversely this year everybody has gotten out they've gotten in those book clubs they've gotten that start make sure you're taking that next step one of the things that libraries can do to be taking that next step very effectively is to be making sure that your collection does represent diversity and does provide reading for lots of different groups in your own communities again science fiction this one i'm going to tell you i just i straight up love this is science fiction i love this it is not written as racial commentary but there's racial commentary in it there are lgbtq issues and characters in this story this is nk jameson makes diversity look just effortless in this story i i loved it because it was a sci-fi novel all those issues are there but she's not preaching to you about them she's not beating you up with them and it is a it is a beautiful i mean it's it's it almost slides out of the bounds of science fiction it's it's almost like bordering on urban fantasy or things like that and she's been a favorite of mine for a while the thing that thrills me about this is this is first of a trilogy so i get to sit and wait for the next one to come out and then the final one to come out and so i have i have like months of anticipation ahead of me waiting for for the second third installment in the series i i just love this book and i want it on the shelves i put it in the hands of sci-fi readers i put it in the now i have to add it to my christmas list to send to my family yeah yeah now that you said all of that i get it to sci-fi folks i get it to folks from african-american or other diverse backgrounds because it's not it's new york city i mean it's it's this melting pot of character um i put it in the hands of folks from um different backgrounds in terms of lgbtq issues it's i i love this book i'm gonna put it that way um we do have a couple of comments actually and i'll jump kind of around a little bit um and i'll just say anika ramirez who's the previous chair of the diversity committee for nla is on with us actually and anika yes her broken earth trilogy is a fantastic must read as well yes yes broken earth and um effortlessly deals with issues of diversity there are a number of alien races in it um there are it's science fiction in the sense that sexuality is treated more fluidly it's not again she's not beating you over the head teaching you a lesson with her stories she's just saying i'm right fiction science fiction represents a broader set of perspectives than you know much as i love him hind line asimov uh arthur c clark all of the all of the guys who looked like me who were writing science fiction you know back in the 50s and 60s and 70s i i love that that's a great foundation but the things that are happening right now are taking so many more perspectives into account and making amazing amazing literature with it and we also comment from allison i'm going to be here right i've unmuted you from my side of allison but you have to unmute yourself there you go okay hi tim hi krista and i'm waiting even though you can't see me how weird is that it's what we do now i know i know so um you know tim's comment about diversifying the collections uh as a cataloger you know i see it as we can do more than just diversifying our collections that we and some of you may be aware of the controversy over you know the use of the heading subject heading illegal aliens and um you know there's a lot of libraries um probably more at the academic level than at the public level that are on their own have gone ahead and changed those headings and so my larger point is you know it's not just enough to feature these kinds of books on our collection or to celebrate um you know native american history month which that's very very important i'm not saying that's wrong but we can also do things in our catalogs like remove those problematic headings like illegal aliens and and put something in that's much more accurate it's um yeah i think that's the end of my point yeah and lots of those those um cataloging schemes they're they're changing them as well from inside too that you know there's always announcements from the dewey decimal this is not what you use anymore we're changing it here's an update yeah this instead and that's something that then you need to globally go in and update you know your your metadata in your catalog yeah people to the right thing as well yeah kind of a um clandestine behind the scenes yes yes and there's some time go ahead and that's a really important point that is again something we can do you know we tend to think of oh librarians can put these books out and we can have this month and that month and do our collections and behind the scenes we don't have to wait for the library of congress to catch up we don't have to wait no we can start saying you know what illegal aliens like those people are not aliens they are human beings and they're not illegal you can't i mean the question that's resonated with me for a long time is how is a person illegal like you it can't be illegal to be a person so yeah um that's the step that you can take right in your own library question for that you can do it behind the scenes and start start pushing those changes yeah and you know like you were saying you don't have to wait to you know change illegal aliens like with dewey if you look at the religion section that's like the 200s it's dominated by christianity and yet christianity isn't you know the religion of everyone and so there is one university where for part of their collection they did go ahead and and shift their collection around um so that it was much more inclusive um christianity got pushed more into a smaller section of dewey and they were able to broaden um how like islam was represented so there's other things you can do you're not just because dewey says oh hey you should put it here no you can do whatever you want locally and local cataloging is a thing absolutely yeah and and what i tell people i used to teach cataloging classes um and what i still tell people when they ask me for advice is do what's right for your library do what's right for your community you do not have to be bound by what lc says or what you know dewey says because those schemes are based on you know white men white protestant men from the 19th century so no offense to anyone um absolutely i'm not from the 19th century so i've got that well yeah that's right although your kids might say otherwise you know in a few years yeah so those are just an article that i just shared into the chat and the questions too from american libraries magazine on conscientious cataloging yeah actually it's just from this september september 2020 um is a great american libraries article about changing subject heading so that might be something to look at and i shared the link into the chat for everybody who wants to grab that and you can probably just google it you know conscientious cataloging american libraries so yeah and i see that and i mean and i could go on forever but i don't want to take up time if you have other questions or comments or that'll be nice yeah there's just there's just a lot with technical services right now like what to do with um you know dead names um transgender people who have changed their name um how do we recognize that in the catalog without you know because using the dead name is obviously wrong so yeah there's just it there's it's so it's an interesting time to be a cataloger i think yeah well it's an interesting time to be a cataloger who is paying attention yeah and you can just move along with whatever comes down from library of congress you know working with the old dewey subject heading such as the so on and so forth or you can say look we have to classify things but this is how we're going to classify things here these are the moves we are going to make right here yeah yeah all right thanks allison oh you're welcome um i know i know uh tim has a few more slides here with some other titles so let's see what else you've got to share with us yeah let me move through this pretty quickly just stay in mind full of time uh octavia butler um she is just uh a titan of science fiction in general uh i i still i mean she passed away several years ago and it just feels like her stuff is so fresh i i mentioned this one because it's a graphic novel um it's based on one of her novels but it's in graphic novel form um it has all of the challenging content that her book has so it's not one to casually recommend to young folks but it is really important kindred is also a great challenging work by her um so think about that think about like hey maybe you're not gonna sit down and read a whole novel but let me get you started with this in another format um things like that um ask her girl this one is just lovely it's a i read it to my own kids um the the girl and her father are talking about all the stuff and she's kind of like play and dress up astronaut and you get this sense through the story that oh maybe she's supposed to be an astronaut someday and the kick is dad says okay we've got to go pick up your mom and they drive to the uh launch pad and her mom is just coming back from the space station her mother is the astronaut and it's already there and i just thought you know it's not just like it's not just a someday thing it's so like this is already here this is already happening and and the modeling in the story um my daughter's current kick that i'm totally encouraging is she's like i'm gonna go to the space station someday um and i believe it you know and and things like this keep her moving that way yeah uh may jemisin she's one of my favorites yep yep this was another one that i really liked a lot it's um not a lot of words but it's partly bilingual it's dreamers by yuyu morales and it's uh it's her story as an immigrant coming to the bay area and just kind of getting immersed in that and and i love that perspective the way she tells her own story of finding her way in the united states and it's a it's a wonderful wonderful picture book again um not beating you over the head with lessons just showing you other perspectives in a really wonderful format um this was one that i read that just kind of blew me away um her sexuality is a construct um there were not once upon a time real strong notions of um this person is straight and this person is gay and this person is so on and so forth that's something that's happened really at most in the last hundred and fifty two hundred years and it it kind of broadens your perspective um again speaking as a cishet male um it makes me realize that that my identity is itself a construct and then it puts some context into thinking about other identities that are out there around sexual diversity around gender diversity and things like that and i think it's really important to make sure your collection reflects issues like that as well um what i want to talk about again i think just moving quickly here actions for diversity um again this year right here that's kind of my theme for 2020 know your community get out be working if you can get yourself invited to a pee flag meeting in your community if you can show up at those solidarity Saturdays show up for the Black Lives Matter marches that are going on around here get to know the disabled folks in your community um talk to them they are going to know better than you what your library needs if you are not part of those communities yourself um again are book clubs enough no they are not enough but they are a really important start that way you are not always asking um folks with diverse backgrounds so tell me about this so tell me about this hey you know what's the African American experience on that well you know somebody's like man i'm just one person like i don't have the African American experience on that but if you come in and you're like you know what i read this book um this was really challenging do you have any thoughts on that you're gonna come a little bit more ready when you need to have those kinds of kinds of conversations the other thing is prepare yourself have a plan but be ready to adapt i would go look up anything you can about stuff that scott bonner has said uh five years back now he was in furgus in Missouri when brown was shot when we first saw the rise of the slogan around Black Lives Matter and he did some pretty nervy and ultimately extremely effective things with his library decide whether you're prepared to do that and if you're not prepared to do that decide what you are prepared to do and then be willing to adapt and change when things emerge in the communities around you and recruit in your communities i want to briefly tell a story so my library happens to have a really really good collection on a lot of different levels for issues around lgbtq sex and gender diversity books uh about 15 years ago there was a page around this library and i just kind of knew the young man in passing it was a high school student he went off to college he graduated he went to library school i had the privilege of going to library school with mr jake rundle uh he came back to this library was here for a few years and um as somebody who identifies as gay himself then took charge of really building a good collection here moved on to a wonderful job out in colorado when i was able to come on at hastings public library so i have big shoes that i'm still working to fill in some ways um but but he is part of a pipeline and he built a very very good collection in this library i have gone out into the community i have been able to reach out to p flag i've been able to demonstrate that collection i have reaped the benefits because that pipeline was built right here at our library um i've followed jake's footsteps yes yes it's it's been wonderful i knew jake once upon a time just out of high school and now i'm in a place where i'm following in his footsteps and we need to do that on a lot of diverse areas we recruiting folks with disabilities we need to be recruiting sex and gender diverse people we need to be recruiting folks from various different ethnic and uh cultural backgrounds into our libraries we do sometimes look uh a little bit monochromatic in our profession in this state still and that will not change overnight we need to start from the ground we need to start recruiting those folks get them in as volunteers get them in as um shelvers or pages or whatever you call them encourage them to walk to library school have them come back and change your library too uh the last thing of course join the diversity committee of the Nebraska library association uh christa and i were talking about this just a little bit before through currently it's a committee it needs to officially stay at sort of a committee size membership but there is a lot of conversation going on inside and outside of the committee about having something more than that that would allow for greater numbers of members and i would do there are probably tenfold more folks who are connected to that committee rather than the four or five of us who are officially on that committee and i want you to be part of that too i want you to be if you're willing to join us officially uh if you don't have that level of commitment get plugged in with us anyway be available to help keep your eye open be thinking with us about what we might do to broaden that conversation and to broaden that representation within the library association and is there contact info on the nla website for that or is it just reach out to you or how is um you can certainly reach out to me you can certainly go over to the Nebraska library association website and um let folks know you can reach out to um the executive director ginger's really good about getting folks in touch who are interested when you're renewing your membership that's a great time to go in and express and reiterate your interest you're going to be part of yeah um they'll also let you express interest in committees and that's a really good to do it but yeah my email is t l e n t z at hastingslibrary.us email me email any of the other committee members that you already happened to know get in touch with us and we'll talk about what we can do to get you plugged in good yeah all right we do have a couple of uh questions or well comments and what not here that have come in um if any but we did just hit 11 o'clock but that's okay we'll keep going as long as people have questions discussion whatever um if you do need to leave because you only a lot of the hour for the show that's fine we are recording you guys come back and watch what you didn't um get to before um you can go ahead and keep your slides up there yeah yeah keep those up um let's see uh someone did mention right as we were wrapping you know finishing talking about the cataloging that a good thing to look up on twitter is the hashtag crit cat c-r-i-t-c-a-t for um issues related to you know cataloging yeah both of those hashtags will make you start yeah get you connected with people talking about it yeah and then we have a question um kassandra is from the orange county library system in florida um i was wondering the best way to ensure that titles you recommend are written by diverse authors and awesome and don't just contain diverse characters and she is there's a hashtag own voices yes i often find articles to list but they are often just the most popular titles i work primarily with children and teens so looking for the diverse authors as well as the content or in addition to i'm trying to think about how i've gotten into that um it's been pretty intentional for my again science fiction reading to go find authors who are of diverse backgrounds um there's some really great um chinese and chinese american side that's going on um written by folks from those backgrounds um obviously so i mean i guess like my approach has been i started with octavia butler and looked for anything that followed in her footsteps that got me to nk jamison that gets me to naneti okoha for um that gets me to really a lot of folks out there to not even do um um start with start with one and then follow follow the thread in that's kind of in my approach also though there are a lot of things out there follow those hashtags crit lib and crit cat that's that's a great recommendation um that's going to get you out into um some of those lists those lists are all floating around i mean you could probably go to the ala website and start searching around and say what's there you could go to uh school library journal for younger folks library journal for general purpose and public library stuff the lists are absolutely out there um that's not been my own path in but i know that it's accessible um two librarians out there start looking for those and and i promise you it's out there and easily found yeah and i just did a quick thing myself um um oh wait here's a suggestion oh yes i've heard of this too um someone else mentioned the hashtag one thousand black girl books so one zero zero black girl books is a great hashtag as well um there's also i just did a just to be you know generic diverse authors as a search and um i want to list lists out there about books by diverse authors that you should be reading um and actually i'm going to find my right thing here bring up mine screen there we go show my screen one there we go and you know i just did a very generic but um something that came up here so the obviously lists that come up but that i'd heard of um where'd it go we need diverse books nonprofit group which can there you go there we go and you can you talked about being a children's team this would be something definitely to look into where they're trying to change the publishing industry to have more of this so this might be also a good place to go to to find more ideas and titles that same notion of a pipeline really applies i mean it's not our side but it's an adjacent industry i would really really like to see publishing start building their own pipelines so that you're not just talking about like diverse authors but you're talking about diverse editors you're talking about diverse agents across across the board yeah who have the idea for like let's get disability lit because they already see it you know because they're already plugged into those communities let's get um sex and gender diverse literature let's get racial and ethnically diverse literature let's get it again de facto not like oh we have this one book oh i have this one friend like build an ecosystem around it just make it it's a thing it's it is what it's yep kind of like you don't even think of it as something special it's just the usual thing you always make sure you have all of this yeah yeah and like we're saying representing your community too you've probably got people of all these um different ethnicities or religions or um disabilities in your community they're there somewhere um yep and they are who you serve as a librarian as a as a community library all right any other last minute questions comments thoughts desperate things that you want to share or um ask uh any titles that you want to throw out for people to read as well um oh someone did just make no suggestion divert that diverse bookfinder.org is a great source for picture books has great categories um look finder let's see here there it goes yep oh nice black and indigenous people absolutely yeah this was good too i think here cataloged and analyzed picture books this thing you can find lists and things and someone did mention you know they're just the most popular titles that's what Cassandra said which yeah everybody's and now that these lists are coming out and it's you know here's the things you need to read to be more diverse to be in you know anti-racist reason a lot of the same ones are getting repeated over and over again um but it's good that you have someone that says here's a deep dive into it and we've actually analyzed and read all these books not just grabbing all the same lists and and repeating them again and i like that's going back since 2002 this is not new these books have been out there there have been it's just now yeah so i'm taking notes on that i wrote that down and i'm gonna go play with that the next minute i have some free time is that i'm i'm thank you for the person who passed that along to us uh i really appreciate that all right and here's some good comments coming through now absolutely uh katie says and this is true too i mean you did have you know that one about the astro girl but the comment is don't just read or recommend books about black pain but also black joy that every book you read does not have to be about you know how everything how everything bad that has happened black indigenous native america they all have great um happy stories as well yes yeah well and that is so that is so so important because um nk jameson years ago had a uh essay that she wrote that's turned into a little anthology and everything uh how long till black futures month you know we talk about black history and it's this you know struggle one so on and so forth and then you look at like science fiction and star trek has this one groundbreaking african-american woman in it but there's one and you're like well so where do we go you know jameson um also then um you know writing the city we became that is uh that is a joyful book um it's not i mean being a novel there's there's struggle throughout it but the joy in the diverse backgrounds that come together in that story is is readily apparent and i i just really want to like uh shout out that comment because yes like let's not just read you know like um oh there's one i like and i don't want to i don't want to disrespect it exactly but like when i was a kid i read roel thunder hear my cry i don't think that's an own voices book um it's very good but it's like you know african-americans in i want to say like the great depression but like struggling and i'm like good good good again don't stop there um and don't only talk about the struggles don't only talk about like how hard it is to be an immigrant in this country uh how hard it is um you know they talk about this in movies but like don't make the uh sex and gender diverse issue or characters your tragic friend who dies midway through the story all the time like let them let them be the hero you know let them be uh the main characters in the love story let's really normalize and recognize and acknowledge and and highlight all of our diverse characters uh and we have a couple other suggestions for books um good titles um that have um oh graphic novels that have lgbtq themes uh flamer by mike carato carato and the magic fish by trung lindigene uh lindigene not sure yeah uh both um graphic novels so flamer and the magic fish under graphic novels are things that you could find as well and i think that's good to you you had shown that other graphic novel of the octavia butler that's always something too to get some people especially your um you know it's stereotypical but i love graphic novels and comics i'm a big comic book reader and that sometimes has gotten me into reading um the novel after i've read the graphic novel depending on the how hard it is and deep you know the story is um i also sometimes follow up after i've read the novel i want to see another representation of it and read the graphic novel as well i was talking with a couple of high school kids who had to read i forget what it was but it was some classic and so i want to say baowulf i think baowulf has been adapted into a graphic novel probably sure yeah and so i said make sure you read actual baowulf to get the language right but before that grab the graphic novel know the story then when you have to go back and plow through what your english teacher wants you to read um you know don't close notes it but it gives you the story before you have to plow through the language and that same principle applies when you're reading diversely like if you jump in and you grab kindred or if you grab the adaptations of parable of the sewer and parable of the talents before you read octavia butler i mean she's pretty readable she's not exactly the thing i'm talking about here but man that's a great way to start you know read it as a graphic novel first and and let that be i mean whatever gets you reading if that's how you read diversely do it yeah it's not about the container it's about what you're the content yes yes all right it doesn't look like anybody else has uh got anything else i want to add if you do have anything else go ahead and get it in um any last words tim besides read diversely and join the nla's diversity committee uh no that probably sums it up right there and and remember that it is right here it is in your community um it's already there yeah make sure you're paying attention and and doing the work absolutely all right so i think we'll wrap it up for today's show um thank you everyone for your attendance it was a great discussion great tips and chat from everyone and thank you so much tim for being here you did fine doing this all on your own not a problem of course thank you thank you thank you to your other committee members too for um all their work on this as well yes absolutely i want to i want to shout out to community members for for getting me here i mean i'm the face of it just this morning but um this doesn't happen awesome so um that that will wrap it up for today's show i'm gonna go back to our page here um and i said it has been recorded and will be posted to our archives um i should have it um all edited and ready to go before the end of the week but um before the end of this week um our archives are right here underneath our upcoming shows you can click on there and uh the most recent one will be at the top of the page um so this is the one from just last week our um regular monthly pretty sweet tech from our technology innovation limberian will link to recording on our youtube channel and a link to in this case she had a guide but at a link to uh the slides uh jim did did send me his slides will have those as well um everyone who attended this morning and registered for today's show receive an email directly from me letting you 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