 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the San Jose State University School of Information Career Webcast Session. My name is Jill Cleese, and I am your iSchool Career Center Liaison. I will be your moderator this evening, so thank you so much for joining me. We have the great pleasure to have iSchool alumna, Rosanne Masick, with us tonight, to share her expertise on what it's like to work in a public library today. So, I think we're ready to get started, and I'm going to hand this off to you, Rosanne. So, go ahead and take it away. Great. Thanks so much, Jill. And it's such a pleasure to be with all of you this evening, and I get to talk about one of my favorite things, what it's like working in a public library. So, I was asked to first tell you a little bit about my background and my career path and how I got to where I am right now. So, I am a three-time graduate of San Jose State University. For those of you who have not been on campus, that's a photo of the King Library. I got my BA in English in 1980, so a while back. My, I went right into grad school, got my master's in library science, and then I went to school much later and got a second master's in public administration. That was at the point of my career where I was making a transition from working in high tech to local government. So, I've had a lot of different jobs. My career path is probably a little bit different from most public library directors. I've spent most of my career in high tech. I actually did start as a page at our local public library when I was an undergrad. I did that for a couple of years, and at that point in my life, decided public libraries was not for me. So, I went into corporate libraries. I started off as a library assistant with a local semiconductor manufacturer called American Microsystems, which is now defunct. And did that for a couple of years, and then I was very fortunate to be hired by Apple. We were called Apple Computer in those days, because our main product line was computers. Of course, now it's a lot of other different things. And I was there for 15 years. I was responsible for providing library and research services across the company. But we reported into the advanced technology group. So, this was the group of scientists who were looking way out in the future where technology was going. So, it was really exciting to get to know them and see what they were working on. And actually seeing some of their ideas and prototypes are now things that we take for granted as far as technology. So, in 1997, Steve Jobs came back to Apple, and Apple was really in dire straits. The company was about to go under, and that's not an exaggeration. And so, Steve had to make some really tough choices, and he decided that Apple couldn't no longer afford to fund long-term research. So, my entire division of 200 people was laid off, but I was okay with that. I'd been there for 15 years, and I was kind of ready to do something else. So, from there, I went to work for a small router manufacturer called Bay Networks. We were a small competitor to Cisco. And while I was there, we were acquired by Nortel. So, we became Nortel Networks. Of course, we were 7,000 employees. They were 80,000 employees. And so, a number of us on the Bay Network side were laid off. So, I was there for a couple of years, then I got laid off again. Then I went to a small telecom market researcher called RHK, and I managed all the secondary research for them and client services and a few other departments. And then, the telecom industry took a nosedive, and the company was acquired. So, I was laid off again after two years. So, after experiencing three layoffs in five years, I decided that I was ready to go in a different direction. And even though I had worked in nontraditional environments, I started exploring opportunities in academia and public libraries. And it was really hard to get somebody to offer me a job, because all my experience had been in high tech and they were having a little trouble seeing me actually working in a different environment. But one day, I saw an email come through from the Santa Clara County Library District. They were looking for part-time substitute reference librarians. And I'd never been a reference librarian in a public library, but I thought maybe I'd throw my resume over there, see if anything happened. And they called me in for an interview, and I did terrible, but somehow they hired me anyway. I think maybe it was a mistake, but they did offer me a job, and it was fantastic. I got a chance to see if public libraries were for me and found that I really loved serving the community. So eventually, I did get a full-time job with them, managing children's services in Morgan Hill. Eventually, I managed the Morgan Hill Library for them, got to work as part of a team to build a new library from Morgan Hill, which was the greatest experience. And just bringing a new library building to a community is just wonderful. And then the County Library and asked me to go manage the Cupertino Library, which I did for a couple of years. So I was there for about eight years, ready to try something new. So I was very fortunate to be hired by the City of Mountain View as their library director, and that's where I work right now. And when I finished my second master's in 2011, I had a great experience. I was glad to have the degree finished, but I found that I was really missing academia. So I sent an email to Dr. Maine and said, what do you think about my teaching? And she said, sure, would you teach 210? So I've been doing that for about three years. In fact, I think I see a couple of my 210 students on the list there as attending. So hi, guys. It's nice to see you in a different environment. Thanks for joining us today. So that is a little bit about my background and my career path. And I would like to find out a little bit about all of you. So if you are in your first year in the iSchool, why don't you hit the little hand button and we'll see how many newbies that we have. I see you. Well, welcome to the program. As you get started, I think you're going to have a wonderful experience. And how many of the attendees are getting close to graduating maybe in the next semester? Why don't you hit the hand button? Okay. I think we have a few folks. And how many of you are currently working in a public library? So we have some good experience here. So some of you might be able to share some of your experiences as we go along here. So let me tell you just a little bit about Mountain View where I'm currently working. I think I mentioned I've been there for about six years as the library director. We are a medium-sized city. We're getting close to about 80,000 in population. We have about a 325,000, 26,000 collection of materials. Our building is about 60,000 square feet over two floors. So it's a good medium-sized public library. Circulation is about a million four and about 624,000 visits to the building, about almost 54,000 attendees at library programs. And I have a staff of 42 FTE, although I have a lot of part-time folks. So we have about 100 people all together. So that is what I'm doing now. So the title of this talk was The Good, The Bad, and The Exciting. So let's start with the good and what our strengths are. Oh, I see a question about my circulation number. The question is, does that circulation include digital titles? It does include the e-books that people check out through Overdrive and Access 360. Okay. So let's talk about the good. And there's a lot of good if you work in public libraries. Public libraries are valued. This quote is from the American Library Association's report on the State of America's Libraries. And I think they're actually using numbers from the Pew Research Report. But this report says more than two-thirds of Americans agree that libraries are important because they improve the quality of life in a community. They promote literacy and reading and provide many people with a chance to succeed. So that's one of the great things about working in a public library is people really value what we do. And I included just a few quotes. There are so many of these. People have such strong, heartfelt, positive feelings about public libraries. That first one, I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of a library. We actually had that quote on the front of the building when I worked in the Cupertino Library. The second one there, a library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities applies. I think a lot of people feel that way. And then that last one from Laura Bush is just so wonderful about children asking questions and finding the answers in libraries. And once a child learns how to use a library, the doors to learning are always open. So people have very strong, positive feelings about public libraries. And people really use public libraries. These numbers are from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. They're a couple of years old, so they'll be interested in seeing what the current numbers look like. Every public library is required to report quite a lot of statistical information to our state libraries every year. And then our state libraries send that information to IMLS. And in fact, we just submitted our numbers to the California State Library from Mountain View a couple of weeks ago. So you can see these numbers. Pretty impressive. People really use public libraries. And the photo that I'm including here is at the opening of one of the new branches of the Berkeley Public Library. But it's a very common picture when a new library opens. Just one quick story when I was in Morgan Hill and we built a new library for that community there about seven years ago, maybe longer than that now. And we were about to open the doors for the first day of operation, brand new library. It had been a long time coming. They talked about it forever. They were so excited. And I remember being in front of the, by the front door, they were standing there with the county librarian and members of our board and the mayor. And we had this ribbon in front of us. And we were about to cut the ribbon and open the doors to the library. And when we cut the ribbon, this massive people came toward us. And we almost got trampled. I actually was pretty scared. There were so many people wanting to get into their new public library. They were so excited. And Americans still read. Now there's some numbers in current articles. Maybe that's starting to slip a little bit, but Americans still read books. And one of the things that's been surprising to me, when a couple of years ago, Amazon announced that they were selling more e-books than print books, I just couldn't believe it. It was such a shock to me. And so two, three years later, I thought we would have made much more of a transition to e-books, but that hasn't happened at the rate that I expected. There are still quite a lot of people who prefer print books. And then there was an interesting article in USA Today. They just came out actually today talking about with so many people with smartphones that they're starting to use audiobooks more and more. So people still read, and that's very much associated with what a public library does. Public libraries are really evolving as hubs in our communities. We found a couple of years ago, actually, I think it was in the last presidential election that we were running election results in our community room in the library. And, you know, that's something that people could watch at home. But we had quite a few people come in who wanted to see that in the library, kind of experience that as part of the community. So I think we live in a world where we're so connected online. And, oh, and there's a question here. The Popularity Podcasts have probably helped the audiobook increase, and I think that's a great point. But people want to come together physically and be part of their community, attend a program in the library, use the Wi-Fi in my building in the afternoons, generally every seat is taken with people who are studying, using their Wi-Fi, doing some work. And about half of Americans visited a public library last year. And libraries in the United States are seen as part of our democracy. This is another great quote. With the library, you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one can tell you what to read and when and how. The thing that I like, one of the many things actually that I like about working in a public library is that we make an impact in our communities every single day. This picture of this adorable little girl was taken after she met her summer reading goals and our prize for that was a book. So she's standing there proudly showing everyone the book that she got because she met her summer reading goals. And seeing that happy little face is something that you see every day in a public library. We make that kind of impact in people's lives and that's so powerful. And libraries are open to all. And this quote from Lady Bird Johnson, perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library, the only entrance requirement is interest. And the statement at the bottom is actually from me when I talk to people about working in a public library, I say the beauty of public libraries is that we are open to everyone. It doesn't matter if you're rich or you're poor or you're an immigrant or you don't have to take a test to come in. You don't have to have a license. We are open to absolutely everyone. And I love that. The challenge of public libraries is that we are open to all. So let's get on to the next part of my presentation. So we talked about the good. I don't really like the word bad. So let's say the challenging parts of working in a public library. There are a few. So I talked about public libraries being community hubs. And so what is happening in our communities is also happening in our libraries. So I have some photos to share with you. This one happens to be from the San Francisco main library. This is one of their homeless patrons. And I think probably some of you have heard about the San Francisco Public Library that their main library a number of years ago was completely overrun by their homeless residents who were taking a bath in the bathrooms. And I think there were some drug problems and it was an uncomfortable environment. And so what San Francisco Public Library did is they hired a social worker who actually became part of their staff. And she's in the building and she has about 12 staff working with her part time to reach out to this part of their community, the homeless population and connect with them and try to get them in touch with services. So I thought that was a great approach instead of just saying the homeless problem is not our problem as the public library. They really took this on and are trying to serve this part of their community. So again, what happens out in our community happens in our library as well. And we deal with, let's see, it looks like we have a question here. Do you remember when the San Francisco library hired the social worker? You know, I want to say it was probably four or five years ago and I remember it was big news at the time. They were probably the first public library in the country to hire a social worker to be part of the library staff. I heard her speak a couple of times. She is phenomenal and she does such good work there. And we discussed the idea in Mountain View, but we don't have quite the level of problems. We do partner with our local community services agency to come in the library periodically. Whoa, what is one of the craziest issues you've had while working in a public library? Well, this is a great point in the presentation to talk about that because we're talking about behavior issues on this particular slide. So I can tell you in the past year what we deal with medical emergencies. And I just love our first responders. They are there when we need them. So we've dealt with a number of strange medical emergencies because the library is open to everyone. We have a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different personalities. So sometimes there's conflict between people who are in the building and they don't always get along. And we have to deal with that. People who don't want to pay their fines and yell at staff about that. So if you can imagine all the kind of behavior issues that are out there in the community can happen in a public library as well. Oh, how great. Someone is sharing a video about the social worker in the San Francisco Public Library. Take a look at that. It's just really a phenomenal program. Probably most public libraries don't have the large number of homeless populations like they do in San Francisco. But it's something that we all deal with. And I certainly have a few regular homeless folks in Mountain View. And generally I don't have any problems with them. They come in and they use the library appropriately. But they make other people uncomfortable. And that's always a challenge. I've had people come in my office and say, you shouldn't let the homeless people come in here. And I'm really sad when I hear that because they're part of our community. They have a right to use the public library the same as anyone else. But they do make other people uncomfortable. So just all kinds of behavior issues. Now one of the innovative programs that was started by my predecessor about six, seven years ago in Mountain View was we were starting to see kind of an uptick in some of these behavior problems. Oh, has it ever had to kick anyone out? Oh my goodness, are you kidding? All the time, which reminds me, I wanted to mention that every library needs to have a behavior policy laying out how you expect people to behave in the library. And if they don't behave, they get kicked out. And it depends on how serious the behavior issue is. Generally, we'll give them a warning and maybe we'll kick them out for the day or the week. But I do work with our city attorney's office. And probably a dozen, maybe not a dozen, maybe six to eight times a year, I've got someone who I need to kick out and so I work with the city attorney's office and they send out a letter to this individual. And they tell them you cannot come back to the library for a year because of, you know, and we lay out kind of what their behavior issues were. And then on this date, you're welcome to come back. But you need to meet the library director first to discuss your behavior. I see a question here. Is a behavior policy the same thing as a code of contact? Yes, absolutely. And we call them different things. Some libraries call them behavior policy. Some call it a code of conduct. If you've never seen one, you can go to probably any public library website and read their policy on how they expect people to behave in their libraries. And you'll see a lot of similarities. Some are a little more strict than others. And some issues are included by some libraries and not by others. I'll give you an example and this is a tricky one. Some of our folks come in and it could be the homeless or other folks in the community for whatever reason and we have a problem with how they smell. And other people complain about it and they want us to kick them out because of the way they smell. Some libraries actually have in their behavior policy that you can be asked to leave for strong body odors. My city attorney said that's probably not going to fly so I don't have it in my behavior policy. But I do have a general statement in there that says any disruptive behavior that's interfering with others' use of the library could be caused for your being asked to leave the library. Where do I think is the best place to post a behavior policy? That is a great question. Oh, strong perfumes, yes, absolutely. That can be an issue and has been an issue in one of my libraries. You know, I don't post it in the building and it probably should. It's on our website but we have little flyers made up with our behavior policy that we hand to people who are having an issue and we make sure they have a copy of the policy and we reference the part of the policy that they might be having an issue with. So we do hand it out in the library. Yeah, in the strong perfume question, I actually had a patron who said that he was having a problem with this other patron who came in with a strong perfume and he wanted to ban her from the building and I really couldn't do that so that can be a tricky one. Yeah, so I see an LOL there. So there are all kinds of behavior issues in our libraries and it's part of the job, you know, we're part of the community. So we're dealing with those issues but I would say 95% of the time everyone behaves themselves and that's actually amazing to me given the large variety of people that we see in our buildings every day. So let's see. I have one more community issue. So can anyone guess what community issue is represented by this photo? If you have a guess, go ahead and type it in the chat box there. Ah, service dogs, pets, service animals. Well, service animals is a great bringing tips in. Yeah, so it looks like service animals and pets. And certainly those are issues. Service animals is an interesting one. Actually, that's not the right answer but I'll get to the right answer in just a second. Service animals can be tricky. The law says you cannot ask the person for any documentation that the animal is a service animal. So I've been working with the city attorney's office on how to deal with this issue. People will bring, say someone comes in with a dog and these days often they don't have any kind of identification on them. It used to be they wear a little thing on their back and it's very clear that they were a service animal. But often that's not the case anymore. So someone comes in the library with a dog, what do you do? Yeah, people who fake it. Well, the law is we cannot ask them if it's a service or ask them for documentation. So what we do in my library with advice from our city attorney's office is we will go up to the person with the dog and we'll say, I'm really sorry but you're not allowed to bring your dog into the library. So sometimes if it's just them bringing their pet in, they say okay, we'll go. If the person's response is oh, this is a service dog, then we're done. We have to take their word for it and I know that's really frustrating for my staff because I think not everyone is legitimate but legally we cannot ask for documentation. We just have to take their word for it. Although my city attorney has told me the only animals and this is probably just California so it might be different in other states. The only animals that qualify as service animals are dogs and small horses. So I'm telling you I cannot wait to see a small horse come through the front door. I told my staff if that ever happens, come get me because I want to see it. So service animals are tricky but getting back to this picture, no one guessed the answer to what community issue is represented here and the answer is bed bugs. These happen to be bed bugs sniffing dogs but some of you may have heard. I know, ew, I was going to include a picture of a bed bug but I thought that was too disgusting so I'm including a picture of Molly on the left there and Buster on the right. So yep, I can see somebody has heard of that. It's come up in some of our Mevring libraries in the Bay Area. I know it's a, thank you for not doing that. I guess she's referring to the picture of the bed bug. Yeah, they are kind of disgusting. I know it's a big issue in libraries in New York. I have a colleague who works there. We've been very lucky in Mountain View. We have not had a problem with bed bugs. Until a couple of weeks ago, we had a patron come out of the restroom and go to the reference desk and say I found a bug in the restroom and I think it's a bed bug. She took a picture of it. I was on my way home and my staff is madly texting me. And then my staff, thank goodness, went in and captured it and put it in a plastic bag. And they texted me and they said maybe we have a bed bug here and you know people tend to panic and it turns into a big PR nightmare and they go what do we do with it? It was six o'clock at night. We weren't going to get anyone out to help us with it. I said well, put the critter in my office. I'll take a look at it when I get in in the morning. So I got in the morning, got out my magnifying glass and looked at it. I looked at pictures I had of bed bugs. It really looked like one to me. So we had our pest control person come in, take a look at it. He said, yep, you got a bed bug. So here's a comment. We check all of our book donations for bed bugs as well. So that's a great comment. So we had a bed bug but only one that we knew of but we didn't know. So we, the pest control guy went into that restroom, treated the ground but we didn't know if it was beyond that. I didn't realize bed bugs liked books. We'll talk about that in a minute. So the pest control guy said I can visually inspect the building but you know, I can't guarantee 100% that I'll find them if you have them. So really the only way to know for sure is to bring in these dogs. They're specially trained. You know, kind of like dogs that smell for drugs, they smell for bed bugs. And so they came in one night last week at 9.30 after we were closed. So I stayed late because I wanted to meet these dogs and I wanted to see how they worked. And so their trainers showed me, they brought in a little container of live bed bugs and they hid it and they showed me what the dogs do so they go around and they sniff everywhere. And when they smell the bed bugs, they sit down. So immediately that's their signal that they found something. And so I watched them work in my building. They're just amazing. And luckily they did find some more bed bugs in the restroom that they were originally found in but nowhere else in the building so we were able to contain that. But it's just one of the kind of challenging issues that we deal with when we're running a public building and we've got everyone coming in there and sometimes these things happen. So the comment about bed bugs liking books, they don't really like books. They are nocturnal and they feed on human blood. And so most of the libraries in my area that have had bed bugs, they found them in chairs that people were sitting in. They generally come in on a person's clothing or on a backpack or something like that. But I was asking one of the dog trainers about the bed bugs coming in on books because I know it does happen. And he said what sometimes happens is people are at home and they're reading a book in bed and they put the book next to them and then the bed bugs crawl from them onto the book and then the book comes back in the library. But there's really nothing for them to feed on the books. They're nocturnal and they like to feed on human blood. So it's a very interesting issue, one that I've learned a lot about in the last six months. So one of the kind of interesting things that we deal with in public libraries. So the other thing I wanted to mention in the sort of challenging category is the use of public libraries is changing. There has been a dramatic drop in reference and of course that's because people have access to so much information on the internet. So I teach reference. So this is something that I'm really watching and to see, you know, what does our role evolve into as reference librarians when fewer people are coming to us and asking for help in finding information. And we'll talk a little bit about that. Yes, Google of course. And of course Mountain View where I work is home to Google. So we are very much aware of Google. And actually Google has been a great partner to us about eight years ago when the city was going through some financially difficult times. My predecessor cut our bookmobile service and one of the stops had been going out to Google and they said, oh, we like this service, what can we do? So they gave us a grant for $200,000 to buy a new bookmobile and we take the bookmobile out to preschools and schools and senior centers and we also take it out to Google and they love it. Surprise to me when I came to Mountain View I thought, oh, they're probably just getting all their ebooks from Amazon and streaming movies that they actually love the bookmobile. So just a little aside there. Now we talked about reference is decreasing. And traditional circulation may be dropping as well and it's a little early to tell but I've noticed in my area in talking with my colleagues we did see circulation start to slip a little bit in the last couple of years. So we're keeping an eye on that to see, you know, what's happening there. So definitely a challenge that the way people are using public libraries is changing. So we talked about the good and we talked about the bad or the challenging. So let's get to the fun part and talk about the exciting and looking a little bit to the future. I think it's going to be important for us to embrace our role as educators. One of the statistics that we track that is going up pretty dramatically is the number of people who are attending a class or a program or an author program at our libraries. And people are really responding to that. Of course, that's because we're offering more of those programs in many libraries but people are really coming out for those. When I came to Mountain View six years ago, we had any adult programs. And I told my librarians, I want adult programs. And now we've got multiple things going on every day. I have council members come up to me at community events and say, you guys are doing fantastic programs in the libraries. And the community is really responding to that and I think we need to embrace that role. We're about lifelong learning and so that's shifting and how do we fulfill that mission? And one way is to offer programs in our libraries and we get the opportunity to teach classes and bring in community members who have expertise to help us teach classes. So I think we need to focus even more on providing excellent customer service in our buildings and remotely. One of the assignments, oh, I see a question here. Program attendees, do they actually check out books related to the program? That's a great question and that's something they really promote. So if we're doing a program on a particular area, we'll bring in a cart of books related to that area. Like for example, my assistant, who's very talented, also teaches a watercolor class in the library. So we bring in the books that we have on watercolors and we encourage people to check them out. So that's our way to try to keep, you know, our circulation healthy in addition to having people attend programs with us. But getting back to customer service I think is absolutely critical. And one of the assignments that I use in my 210 class is I send my students out to libraries, either public libraries or academic libraries, with a question and they go and they pose, as a member of the public asks you a question, they go up to the reference desk or information desk and they ask a question and I ask them to look for, you know, visually, is it easy to find the reference desk? Is the staff approachable? Do they follow a, you know, reference interview that we learn about in class and to write that as part of a paper? And I'm actually disappointed that probably half of my students report pretty poor service because the library was distracted, they didn't look up from their computer, they didn't seem interested, you know, they just pointed, they didn't go out to the stacks with me. And so I think we need to really focus on that so that every person who comes in our building leaves and thinks to themselves, wow, I got great service there because that's our value add as public libraries. You know, you can go on Google and do a search and get information, but you can go in a public library and you can talk to someone in person and receive that personalized service. So I think we need to put a little more effort into that part of what we do. And I have my students read articles about Apple's customer service. If you've ever been into an Apple retail store, boy, they know customer service. And in fact, my son happens to work at one of the Apple retail stores. They actually have a process that they follow very much like what a reference librarian follows when you're dealing with a customer or a patron to try to narrow down what their needs are. So I think we can learn a lot by looking at retail and how they provide customer service. So people are coming into our libraries, but I think we need to get out of the library as well. We are part of the community. We need to be out into the community and have a presence at community events. We take our bookmobile out to a variety of community events. We do tables. So we try to get out there as much as we can, go to neighborhood meetings. So I think it's really important to get out of the library and meet people where they are as well. We are really good at counting things. And I think that's important, but we need to move from outputs to outcomes. So outputs are things like how many books did you check out? How many people came to a program? You know, how many of this or that? And we have to report all that information into our state libraries. But so the Mountain View Library circulated 1.4 million items last year. So what? What does that mean? What is the outcome of that in our community? So the Public Library Association is doing some great work in this area. I invite you to take a look at their outcome measures on their website. We're just starting to participate in that to try to find out what is the value that people get from the services that they use from the public library. And public librarians historically have not been very good at collecting that information. So we still do outputs, though, and I still think it's important to track that. And because the ways people are used in public libraries is changing, that information that we report is starting to change. So I noticed when I submitted our statistics to the California State Library this year, not only did we report sort of traditional circulation, but they asked us to report database use and use of other electronic resources, and then that's going to go up to the IMLS. So there's sort of two messages here. One is we need to track the different ways that people are using our services beyond the traditional measures, and we need to focus on outcomes so that we can show the value of that to our communities. Ah, so we have a comment here, I'm taking a big data analytics class. That's fantastic. That's great. I think it's critical that we align our services with what our community needs. You know, we can say, oh, we're a public library, we're going to do X. But if the community needs other things from us, I think it's really important to respond to that. So Pew Research, and I'll give you some citations at the end. Pew Research has done some great, very interesting research projects about public libraries. And in their latest report, oh, IMLS, I'm sorry, we have so much jargon, Institute of Museum and Library Services at the federal level. So when we report information to our state libraries, that gets rolled up to the federal level. When Pew asked people what they would like their public libraries to do, 80% of them said, offer programs to teach digital tools. 80%, that is huge. We need to take advantage of that. And by that kind of response, people are seeing us as having some expertise there. So we really need to respond to that. I work, I'm the director, so I don't get to work the reference just, oh, that much anymore. But I do a Sunday rotation when I can. And the last time I worked Sunday afternoon on the reference desk, most of my activity was people coming up and holding their iPhone or their iPad or their Android, you know, Samsung or whatever and going, how do I get eBooks on here? So we really need to respond to that and, you know, embrace that role. People want more spaces for reading. They like to come in and read and use our Wi-Fi. They want us to have tools like 3D printers. We were one of the first libraries in our area to have a 3D printer. And we did programs showing people, you know, that technology and educating them about that. Now the fourth bullet is interesting. Only 24% of the people who responded to Pew's survey said that they thought public libraries should move the print books to make room for some of these technologies that they want. So they want it all. They want the traditional print books and they want the technology. And that's a real challenge for us in our buildings. I'm in the process of doing a remodel, hopefully, from my building. We're in the design phase now and hoping to get the money for construction next year to try to achieve a better balance between seeding and space for print books and, you know, space for technology tools as well. So these are some of the things that people think their public libraries should be offering. Ah, my local small town library just got an iPad for public use this year. That's fantastic. In fact, we just got a couple of iPads in Mountain View to be used by our reference librarians so we can get out in the stacks, you know, roving reference, meeting people where they are and then have access to the catalog and other library information on the iPad. So that's great. It's a great tool. So here are some opportunities. There are so many ways that we can fulfill that mission of public libraries of supporting our communities with lifelong learning. It's more than checking out print books, although that's still going to be part of what we do for many years, I think. There are so many other ways to support education. So the first one we've talked about a bit, you know, offering programs and classes and workshops to teach people new skills. And depending on your community, many libraries are offering special programs for recent immigrants. Some of the libraries in the Bay Area where I work are offering ESL conversation clubs and we started one a couple of years ago and we've had tremendous response to that. With 30 or 40 people show up every week to practice their English. They're just a delightful group. Readers advisory is something that's a traditional library service that I think we could expand. One of the things that I do in my email signature is I list the books that I'm reading and I just thought that was kind of a fun thing to share. But people come up to me at meetings and the mayor will come up to me and say, oh, I saw you're reading this book. I'm reading this book. You know, what else do you recommend? So I think we have some opportunities there. Often the local history collection is housed in the public library. So that's a great opportunity to get that information digitized. I see we have about 11 minutes left so I'll move along here. Oh, did I miss a question? What course do you recommend for me? I'm interested in working in the public library and graduating in the spring. Why don't we take that one offline? I'd love to chat with you via email about a little bit more about your interests and kind of what classes you've already taken. So I'm happy. In fact, I'll just give you all my email address. It's rosanne.nacicatmountainview.gov. And I'd be happy to email with any of you if you have more questions. A couple of other opportunities for us, partnering with schools. We do a virtual library card for every incoming high school freshman so that they can use our electronic resources. That idea came from our school district superintendent. And it was a huge success with his support. We own early literacy so, again, I think that's an ongoing opportunity for us. And I think people are coming in. Oh, thank you for posting my email there. I appreciate that. Advice for students with no library background, get a volunteer job at a library. Get some experience that way is one thing you can do. But email me too and we can talk more. Content creation. People are coming in and they want help making a resume. They want to use a 3D printer. Maybe they want to publish a book. So they're looking to us to help them create things. So what are the important skills if you want to be a public librarian? Flexibility and being comfortable with change are absolutely critical because we are in communities and in a world that is changing rapidly and we need to respond to that and be comfortable fulfilling our mission in different ways. I mentioned customer service, really key, knowing your community and being responsive to what your community needs. I think analytical skills are important as we move from towards outcome measurements and being a good communicator and being able to share the library's story in writing and also speaking at community events. So I will wrap up and then I think we'll have time for a few more questions with this quote. If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. So I'll let you think about that. And then I wanted to give you some suggestions for reading and I read these three publications as I was putting this presentation together and kind of thinking about how the public library is changing. So these three publications are very, very interesting. So that is the end of my prepared presentation. I think we have about six, seven minutes. I'm happy to answer, try to answer any other questions that you have. There's a few questions in the chat box, Roseanne. Let's see, what did I miss? I was trying to catch those as I was going along. I asked what do you think the number one skill was and then there's a question from Kate Spaulding also. Okay, let's see if I can, ah, here's a question that I missed. Has use of the 3D printer continued to be high or did it dwindle after the initial rush? It dwindled a bit. You know, certainly there was a lot of excitement about it a couple of years ago and we did some big programs. We actually brought in some local vendors, did some vendor fairs. So there's a lot of interest in it and then we did weekly kind of drop in sessions in our lobby. And then unfortunately, a 3D printer broke and we just figured out how to fix it. So it'll be interesting as we bring that back to kind of see how much demand there is for that. So stay tuned on that one. We talked about the iPads here and someone typed in my, I think Jill, thank you for typing in my email in terms of recommendations for courses. I'd like to take that one offline. And ah, here's a comment of someone else doing a ESL conversation club. It really isn't absolutely delightful experience. We did a scavenger hunt with them and sent them all around the library so they could get to know the library and one of their stops was the director's office. So I got a chance to meet them and I asked them to tell me about public libraries in their countries and none of them reported having anything like what we have here in the United States. They just think it's the greatest thing. Yeah, and advice for students who have no library background whatsoever. I think I mentioned if you can talk to your local public library about volunteering, I think that's a great way to kind of get your foot in the door. And in fact, in my library, we've ended up hiring some of our volunteers because they come in and they do great work for us. And if they don't have the degree or a lot of background, we'll kind of start them out as pages and then, you know, kind of get a chance to move along as they develop more skills. So if you can at least get some volunteer experience, I think it's really helpful. So the number one skill for working in a public library, oh, it's really hard to pick just one. But I think I'll say there's two things that I think are really important. One is that community element and the really knowing your community being part of the community and that that flexibility and getting comfortable with change is really important as well. Because if you, you know, when I think about the different jobs that I've had in public libraries, the job that I was hired to do. Change so much that the job that I had by the time I left was completely different. So you absolutely come in with basic skills, things that you've learned through your program here. But over time, those skills need to change and you need to learn new things and you need to be, you know, changing direction. So I think that's really important. What do I find that many applicants are missing when we hire? I, we, we like, when we go through the interview process in Mountain View, we like to do scenario questions. And generally our scenarios are around customer service. We want to get a sense for how this person is going to relate to the public in a positive way. We do scenarios about challenging situations because as we discussed earlier, we have them and can, does the person have the presence of mind to be able to deal with a difficult person and still be calm and respectful? So those are, you know, two of the key things that we are looking for when we hire folks. Let's see if I, oh, I see a comment from someone. They didn't allow volunteers. That's surprising. We love our volunteers. They really help us out. Most libraries do have some kind of volunteer program. I mean, of course, if you can get a part-time job even, you know, coming in as a paid shelving materials in the library can be a way to get your foot in the door. We recently hired a part-time reference librarian who had come in working for us as a page initially, and then she moved them on to and is working on her degree. Ah, so here's a comment from someone who recently began volunteering at their neighborhood library, which is fantastic. It's a great way to get some experience and to see, you know, what working in a public library is really like. Ah, I have an interview for an aid job. So I'm assuming this is kind of the entry level where you're going to be out there shelving books. And so advice for that. Well, we actually do a test in Mountain View. So we test to make sure the person knows how to put things in alphabetical and numerical order. So that's sort of the first hurdle that you probably have to pass in most libraries. And then from there, we're, oh, I see we're at 6.30. So I guess we need to stop. It has been such a pleasure talking about public libraries with you all. Now you have here my email address. I'd be very happy to have you contact me in Mountain View if you have more questions. And if there's anything else I can help you with, please do call on me. Thank you, Roseanne, very much. This is Jill. Thanks, everyone, for joining us tonight. Excellent information. We found like we could have kept this conversation going for a long time. So do follow up with Roseanne if you have additional questions. Thanks, everyone. Good night.