what's going on infinite fam welcome back to another video if you guys are new to the channel make sure you guys hit that subscribe button turn on your post notification bell leave a positive comment down below for a chance to get a wha but watch where you swing that thing I know where I'm swinging my thing I first have to give a shout out in the next video that's right so as you guys can tell by title today we are gonna be baking a cake without using a recipe this is the day the house burns down okay so let me just do a disclaimer Isaiah knows how to bake cakes pretty well okay because he makes cakes all the time but me don't hate me up because if my cake comes out duty I'm gonna be really upset or that I don't know how to bake cake so I guess we are going to find out if I got that magic touch or not magic touch bro you ain't got no magic we're gonna be making separate cakes because if mine comes out better he can't talk crap about it's not gonna come out better but you guys are gonna be the judges and you guys are gonna say which one do you think looks better and would taste better if you guys were here to taste it so without further ado here's us baking a cake without using a recipe all right guys so I just picked all this stuff up and whole foods are but he has give me my eggs and I watched him and I'm thinking this is probably all of the stuff that I need to make a cake so she's doing too much yapping I'm over here ready to get busy well first of all give me this take well why are you putting experts why are you worried about my cake you should be worried about your cake I'm gonna grease my thing first then put the stuff in here we go look look look look watch that unprofessional see I wouldn't get shells in mine yeah I'm sure you wouldn't do you know how to crack an egg no I didn't think so look at that beautiful yeah yeah yeah you talk all that crap come on bro another show I'm properly greasing my thing looks like you're down that all right baby stop worrying about my thing I'm not worried I'm just saying okay hold on wait a minute what where's the whisk where's the whisk what do you need to whisk the eggs don't worry about it all right whatever I'm not worried about it I'm not worried about it we whisking the eggs up we whisking them up they're probably judging me too like why are you doing that first you mind your business yeah because I say that he's ready crop I guarantee you that this is not going to come out the way I want and I'm just being honest I'm not being negative okay just be honest that's what is that smell is this oh my god your cake is going to smell like crap oh that's gross you threw me off hold on what do I need I need oil yeah you mean oil you should have been did that whatever I'm going to start with the flour one fourth cup of oil one fourth you're doing measurements I'm doing my thing you do your thing bang I think I'm just going to eyeball it go ahead and eyeball it and you let me know that I grossed think that's enough why I feel like this is a race why am I racing I just poured all of it in here would you pour the cake flour oh damn mind your business wait does eggs and oil mix do they mix no they separate they separate they separate like a bad marriage you're not doing no measurements that's scary I'm not but now I'm going to go on my eggs oh look at me I just cracked that egg nicely okay I'm going to use one cup of cake flour a cup one cup you got that one cup I heard you no shells no shells okay and then afterwards I'm going to go in I'm probably going to put a little bit of sugar I'm just going to pour pour my sugar in oh you spilled it too you put too much bro that's not your beaties I just blew mad dust into here things are starting to get messy all right what else are you I need butter out oh that sucks that's tragic you know what I think that we should melt the butter before we put in here you know that's the smartest thing you said all video like softening that's the smartest thing you said all video so how much butter we you know what you use your butter I would use my one we could cut this in half we don't need that much okay right I'm gonna cut this you're gonna ask them like they can like they don't tell you right now they can tell me the comments whatever I'm using this much butter and I'm gonna soften it because I heard I heard that that's a good thing to do soft in it we're gonna put it in the microwave real quick and they'll be back all right so I had the butter all softened don't mind this something happened and I'm going to put half in mine do you want the other half what of the butter yes okay here give me some of that how much is that half of the half of stick how do you know I wanted that measurement bueno you didn't say nothing so no it's fine okay then that's fine what I just got butter in my hand all right this is not looking good so yeah exactly all right so now I'm gonna add the milk and I'm just gonna pour it like I always do without measuring this is gonna be bad right and now I'm going to mix it with this because somebody has the wish what should I do how much milk I don't know how much milk oh my god how much milk mind the business that pays you know what I'm doing one cup of milk right I feel like this is gonna be really runny you should just like pour it oh my god that's a lot oh I'm folding my ingredients instead of folding yeah maybe folding like I'm folding it is this isn't laundry oh my god babe any more flour okay guys I made an ocean of milk over here yeah clearly why don't we just finish mixing it in maybe it'll absorb I don't think you see that though but look you guys can see how runny it is look you see that you see that ew shut you should get it on me shut your trap Janice no I'm just gonna start eyeballing things yeah somebody wants to be like mama I don't think so I think so I don't think that's it I think that's what it is actually I don't think that's it I do I really don't think that's it I feel like my cake is still gonna get stuck because this cook like took all the oil oh my god why does this not look better why doesn't that look better you know what mate I think it's the whisk yeah I think so I think it's the whisk you want the whisk no I don't want the whisk the whisk doesn't want you all right I'm not using the whisk all right I think I'm gonna add a little bit more sugar excuse me excuse me no excuse me I need a fork you're in my way I need a fork thank you a fork there we go this is better I'm gonna put a little bit more sugar let's preheat the oven to what I don't know I think it's usually like 350 you think yeah I think all right so put 350 and this is where the house burns out 350 start preheat I think I want to add a little bit more milk so give me your one cup one cup you're a liar wait till you see the pizzazz I'm gonna add to this when you see what I mean you know I wish I would have did that watch what would you do I hope I got that camera splash everywhere I think we're starting to look better this is starting to look like you know better you know like better it's starting to look better I don't know if adding all that milk was a good idea would you look at that someone messed up wow it's so runny that's tragic actually no it's good it's good guys as you guys can see we're starting to look better damn I just gotta keep mixing it because it's look really lumpy right now but mine looks really lumpy too that's why I didn't want milk but man we need those electronic right electric whisk oh we can put it in a blender I'm not putting it in the blender honey if you want to put it in a blender you could it was just a suggestion you go ahead and have fun with that all right did I put yeah we put butter in here yes okay okay just making sure all right mine is actually looking pretty good I'm pretty confident yours looks better than mine but yours looks runny if I'm being honest it looks runny it looks runny it looks runny that looks like yours looks like pancake mix yours looks like oatmeal so what's up I don't think it's too runny you don't smoke you don't want the smoke I don't know if you can see it them can see myself man it looks better on camera than mine so should I put more stuff this is your cake this is your cake I'm confident in my mix I'm not adding any more flour all right guys we're going to continue mixing it and we'll get back to you because my right mark is about to be mad strong mix that chocolate chocolate he's over here shaking his okay mine looks good so now oh there goes the oven look at that that looks good that looks good oh he's looking at it like I'm gonna get that's it that's all clean clean no look why look only miss the clean done now I need more butter why I gotta grease my pan oh you didn't make it on the I make it in the thing because I'm professional professional but you're spilling it stuff all of the accidents happen the hell you put the book loop just got popped in the book right there I see it so the butter we use the whole stick yeah they're little all right so while we do that we have some chocolate chips because I'm gonna put white chocolate chips inside my cake batter who does make it's gonna come out good what do you think some funny takers fun fatty yeah what's fun about this I think that's enough what do you think here we are man don't ask me I'm not gonna be the reason you fail mmm let's go never put a little bit more put the butter back dang how much chop yo you gonna have the Hershey squirts you gonna have Hershey squirts oh my god my butter's melting in my fingers they're naturally sweet you're naturally sweet somebody needs to get their lives together because I guarantee tomorrow's gonna look way better than yours look amazing oh taste test ready go ahead and talk yourself up taste like coconut you taste like coconut do that at the same time oh we gotta do it at the same time oh hurry up I'm trying here he's really struggling to grease it I have nothing stick mine is probably gonna stick low key that's your problem and for the fan we'll be right back after these messages okay so do you feel confident with this to put that in the oven yes you feel confident enough yeah okay go ahead put it in the oven I'm about to put mine in right after okay but how much time do we put it that's to be decided that looks good that looks good did you try it no I didn't do because mine isn't really that sweet and you like yours really sweet oh no bro oh my god we've had to be here for 30 years I'm gonna get in on this bro show them look at that look at that look at that oh my god you need a lot of sugar to make cakes what you think that's it this is this is the last one all right that's up to you I'm healthy I'm on a diet okay you're gonna have this nasty ass cake probably tastes like unsalted butter unsalted butter hold on you guys gotta give me a second up because now I gotta whisk this yep look at that right there unsalted butter and eggs right shut up all right guys so I'm ready to pour how do I open this they know why that is for the I gotta make mine look pretty oh my god you're gonna take all my freaking sprinkles no I'm not babe stop why try to be different that's your problem you're gonna be different I mean I'm looking good over here no because you were like eh no you're over here trying to put like chocolate chips in it and I ain't having that yeah it's gonna come out delicious no it's not who put sprinkles inside does that not look pretty to you it does all right then so here we go go ahead pour it up pour it up what who's balling up here we go look at them that's some good stuff right you're nasty as they're like eating raw cake batter that's some good stuff right there finally after 20 years you should worry about yours and I'll work on mine all right now I'm gonna set the timer all right so I don't know we're gonna go with 30 minutes I'm going with 25 no 30 all right and if it burns this is your fault guys if this video doesn't go because our house burnt down we could keep checking you just keep stabbing it with the fork or knife and if it doesn't stick to it then that's how you know it's ready period all right guys so this is what we're looking like this is Janice's this is mine I will say that hers has like that that peak is what she wants to call it it looks like a real cake a legit cake okay so here's this flat you want to fight because we could all right my bad I didn't want no smoke so guys like I said mine got two slices in it hers got I don't know how many slices in it what's up with that hole yo I don't know I was like poking it because it was like liquid coming out of it liquid yeah I knew you made it too runny right I'm scared to see how these taste though I'm not even gonna start talking smack yet we'll see how they taste but first gotta let them cool down that we're gonna add some frosting on top of that and she wants to get all special with the sprinkles and all that I should call you sprinkle from now on don't be calling me that for what you don't all put sprinkles in yours all right but still you're gonna put sprinkles on yours right on the top yeah yeah I'm gonna call you sprinkle from now on hi it's time for the moment we've all been waiting really they're cool okay so we gotta flip it right now just leave it like that leave it yeah you can okay we'll leave it I'm putting some frosting let me get the frosting wait can I flip mine you know how to do that yes come over next to that I'm gonna do mine gently I'm looking a lot of flakes over there man a lot of flakes oh man oh my god what the hell let me see it let me see it what do you have to save for yourself hey it's definitely not done okay I'm putting it back in the oven I think you should just give up no I have to cook it all the way oh my god I'm gonna go ahead and put frosting on mine guys I'll have her record that while she puts this back in the oven that's bad so what flavor is this confetti pop made with coconut oil what flavor is this vanilla I don't say that well I don't know but it's dairy-free here we go look this looks like cream cheese bro are you complaining yeah I kind of am yes look what kind of frosting is this Janice what'd you pick it's like butter what the heck did you pick I don't know this is that vegan gluten-free stuff you see this why stay away from vegan and gluten-free well I need it okay you should have got some regular for me so I guess we have to try your cake because mine is it no you're throwing yours out I don't know what do you guys think should she throw it out or should she keep it take a bite out of it see how it tastes at least no I don't want to take a bite out of it you don't want to taste it no because I want to taste a real full cake I'm not happy with my results I'm not happy with your results either all right so we're going to let Isaiah put the frosting on his make it look all cute and then we're gonna try both guys watch what I'm done all right guys she's all frosted up now time for some pizzazz um I'm not sure how I should go about this part let's see let's see oh here whoa I feel like to try it excuse you cake is not it oh it's not it all right yeah you're down bad I'll let you get a piece of my cake yay I'm gonna be nice I'm gonna let you get the first bite I'm gonna let you get the first bite don't say I never did not nice for you why is it that hard time out why is it that hard there's no reason it should be this hard oh the corner was just hard you try to make my cake look bad I'm like no it looks a little dry looks a little dry I'm not gonna lie go ahead take a little slice okay I'm scared for you I'm scared go ahead I'm like I'm like a cookie you're just eating you want the cake or not don't not share it's nothing you're so dramatic you're so dramatic my cake is not that bad are you serious I'd rather eat mine oh here take it I want nothing to do with that go for the middle the middle is always the softest that's why you're gonna buy it because it may look pretty but god is it ugly on the inside I'm not tasting that all right I would taste the bigger piece of mine then here take this that's an abomination over there it should not be that hard that's a rock no it's not mine is way softer than yours yeah because it didn't cook all the way shut up all right so I'm gonna put a little bit of frost have mercy oh my gosh she's putting cream cheese on it I see I see she's putting cream cheese on it ready god go ahead seriously don't ever come over here that close with that oh you're such a liar that's pretty good hold the hold the camera what the hell's going on over here take a corner piece I will take what I want better but it's still bad that's bad what the hell is this what what did we do I don't know we baked the cake without a recipe that's what we did yo we're retiring from YouTube this is it this this is the last video I'm done I can't do this no more all right guys so after that abomination that just happened in the kitchen I think it's safe to say that we no longer belong in the kitchen you don't belong in the kitchen I know you not talking miss I don't bake my cake all the way I know you not talking anyway guys that is it for today's video if you guys enjoyed today's video and want more videos like this if you guys want to see us bake cupcakes cookies pasta what else can we bake oh we can make like let's make a lasagna oh I don't even eat lasagna I hate lasagna I don't even eat lasagna make sure you guys smash that thumbs up button and with all that being said it is now time for today's post notification shout out today's post notification shout out goes out to Cornelius Sebastian shout out to you thank you so much for loving support if you guys want to post notification shout out all you guys gotta do is like comment share subscribe and turn on your post notification bell so you notified whenever we post a new video and with all that being said we will catch you in the next


Alright, would you like to introduce yourself first to us? I'm Oscar Fernandez, and I taught here for 15 years, and I was the program coordinator for the graphic or communication design program for 10 years, and presently I live in Columbus, but have very many, many fond memories as I was driving down here for this interview. So what questions you have for me? Where do you want me to begin? Maybe start out with like when did you come to UC and like what brought you here to the campus? Well I was thinking I know how did I discover or how did I learn about UC, it's kind of funny. I'd have to go back all the way to 1974. I was this, just started my graduate, first-year graduate program at Yale University for graphic design, and my first-year class there were 15 students for that first year, and each one came from a different institution, a very reputable one, some a very small school. I was the only art major in the group because Yale had this desire to have a very diversified educational background. So for graphic design there was someone from physics, someone English major, someone who was a geologist, it was amazing. So I was the only art one, and they all came from different schools, except for two students, both came from the University of Cincinnati, and I remember I was all that impressed me. Wow, two, not one, but two came from the University of Cincinnati, and these two, Mark Eberhardt and Paula Hoffman, I started learning about UC from them, through wonderful stories they'd tell me about their professors and the school and the city, and I recalled often how enamored I was at the kind of design solutions they would develop. They were good, both of them, and the reputation of that design program, and of course it extends out to the whole University, always stayed with me. So it started becoming like this, you know, somewhere they're in that top 10. I don't know a document that supports it, but I know they've got to be in that top 10 somewhere, so that always would continue in my early career like that. And in a way maybe I remember Mark would draw some sketches in his book, sketchbook, some caricatures of his teachers, and they were really well done because, you know, it was just amazing that when I finally did come here, I encountered them. I said, wow, you look just like your caricature back 20 years ago, 25 years. So yeah, the University of Cincinnati was always on my radar as a good school and a good, excellent design program, and it became the kind of, not so much a goal that I wanted to be there, but it was like the beacon. It was like the place that set standards and really rigorous education took place there. And then in, I would, when I moved back or moved to Columbus, I was living in Texas at the time, but when I moved to Columbus, eventually I started teaching at Ohio State and I would frequently come down and visit because they would have wonderful lectures and I started knowing these people that I'd always seen in the little caricature sketchbooks live, got to know them, one in particular Gordon Salko, who in a way founded the graphic design program in the late 60s, 67, 68. And I got to teach as an adjunct for a full year to replace someone who was on sabbatical, a woman named Ann Gory Goodman, and they're, lo and behold, they're part of the faculty of the UC graphic design program. And that whole year got me to be introduced, learn more, that it's not just the graphic design program, it's the whole University of Cincinnati. The black and red I would start seeing often. And what about the school? But anyway, it just gave me an inside look as to how the, not only the program operated, but the whole university, the culture. There was always that energy that seemed to exist to pursue excellence, but have fun at the same time. It was a very, very diversified collection of people, not only in the faculty, but in the students. And I enjoyed that. And but yeah, so the expectations of walking in or seeing a house for sale on the web nowadays, and you go, wow, that's really nice. And then when you do go and visit, all the expectations are met. And that's what it was for me. Just as I, when did I first start knowing about UC? That's cool. So next, what did you hope like your students took away from your classes in Utah here? What was that? What did you hope your students took away from your classes? Took away from my classes? Well, one thing about me in teaching, I have both a good many years professional practice as well as teaching. But I wanted to teach always because I'm one of those to give it back. Because I had some incredible teachers and mentors that really it's about developing yourself and finding your skill sets, your knowledge, your expertise and using it to make a difference in the world. And to give that commitment, hopefully it will be adopted by your students. One thing about me that you need to know that because it does relate to your question about students take away is how much your your life will impact your early life, your things unexpected will really shape not only who you are, but it will also direct you to what you become and how events that occurred in your life early, you won't realize that how they'll reemerge and really make an important impact on what you do with the everything that you work on every project to back up all the way. I'm from Cuba. I came to America. I was in hot political buttons today, an immigrant. But I remember the difficulty of not being accepted at first. I remember my mother dressing me up for the first day of grade school, first grade. And this is in Hoboken, New Jersey, kind of rough neighborhoods and all that. And my mom didn't realize Americans are very informal. But if I have this old picture somewhere, but I can describe it, I was wearing a suit, a tie coat, and even an attaché little bag for a kid. And here I'm going to this whole rough school, the Catholic school, St. Peter's and Falls. And it was a place where a lot of longshoremen worked in their families, they worked in the docks.  Anyway, it started to set in motion my desire to always communicate, always be understood, that people comprehend me. Communication became very important for me. And so from there on, I didn't realize that many years later, when I was trying to decide what exactly I was going to do with my design, was to create communications for other people to understand data, to understand abstract concepts, how to communicate in bilingual trilingual ways. And but for the students to realize my students in my field, that we're communicators, that we have this incredible privilege. I just wrote an essay on it, I called it the quiet conservator, that that's what we are as graphic designers, quiet conservators, conservators of the probably the greatest invention human kind ever came up with was writing, you know, all that that's on your paper. We take it for so much for granted. But when you think about it, it is an amazing invention, that those little marks that are on that page, convey sound, phonetic sounds, and it's incredible flexibility and resilient. But so that's what I tell my students when they walk away with, do you realize how what an honor you guys have that you get to handle this invention, this greatest invention of mankind, human kind. And, and that you can do something with your abilities, you when you know how it's working, how it operates, how it functions, and that you can make a difference in someone's life, not in masses, but in very incremental ways, just someone able to read instructions on how to put together a device or how to find their way on a map or whatever. But they have a lot of amazing power for good. So that's what I like to get my students to walk away with. That's amazing. So next, you said that when you came here, you like heard of, you see through those two students, and then through them, it just kind of like open your eyes. And then can you talk about like your hiring process, and like what they did to hire you here? Uh, so this would have been in 2003. Well, the hiring process would go as usual, you generate a number of candidates, this I know real well, because I was in a way an administrator, and I know all the workings. But you make sure what you need, what expertise you need for the curriculum. You have to post it on a number of publications and nowadays on the internet, it was still in its infancy then. And you first have, you know, people review the documentation, the resumes, a portfolio, your publishing work, and then they will narrow it down to people they're going to have a phone interview about seeing the person whether he's got didn't shave correctly or nothing. That's unknown. But just to hear this person and how they respond to a whole set of questions, like you're doing right now. And even though I knew the people that were here, I'd always admired them and was very excited and nervous. It was a tough interview. You know, they asked good questions, but they were very challenging ones, ones that intellectually, you really had to go to quite a depth to answer correctly.  I mean, I know who they were, some of them I did, but then you hear these voices coming on the other end of the phone, asking you this question and then asking that question. And what would you do if this happened in the classroom? What are your feelings about this article that was written by so and so? And so a little sweating there that took place.  And they said, well, we'll call you back. Let you know. Thank you for your time. And then you get that call from the search committee chair. Her name was McChrystal Wood at the time. And to inform you that you've now made the next round to come on campus to interview. And now you have to get to prepare a whole presentation, a presentation given to an audience of students, faculty, and it's open to the public. And boy, how do I prepare? What do they want to hear? You want to make sure you can speak to that audience. But yet you have students who just entered the program, and they don't have any idea what design is. And yet you have faculty and professional practitioners from the city, who are going to be there. So how do you with these extreme levels, how do you make a presentation? And you have many meetings. First with the dean and you have one with the school director. Then you have one with the faculty of that program, usually a lunch. And then you have one with the students. So it's a long marathon day of just questions and the same questions are asking, you have to come up and write answers. And, and then you finish it with the search committee, usually in this room. In fact, it probably took place in this room. Yeah. And it's called the exit interview.  You have about an hour. How do you meet up an hour? Time, how do you address things? You go back to the job description, where they exactly looking for? How do you give some facts about yourself? Some little nuggets, I call them that they can help remember you more in a positive way. I remember the theme I was using, I still think of myself as a foreigner, even though I don't have an accent anymore or whatever, but I still think I'm not in a very detrimental way that I'm an outsider, but I just know that difference, but I'm still have that. But I use it to my advantage, because as a designer, we design for other people. We design for people that might not think like us, don't have our education level, don't have our skill sets. But I always try to bear that in mind on any new problem I have to solve. How does it experience for the first time? Like a good designer will tell you if they're designing for the web or an interaction device or for a map or whatever, you always design for the novice, the first timer. You don't design for the full expert because the expert will obstacles forget it, they just plow through it. But we always design for the novice or the intermediary person. And so having that memory I had when I couldn't speak English or whatever, that sense of inability of not being involved, I always keep that in mind. And that's always helped, I think, make me a better designer. So you said that you, you're in administration? Well, I was, I think when you're a program coordinator, it is an administrative, you know, you have to involve in hiring, involved in scheduling. So even though technically they don't have it as administrator, but I wearing many several hats. So just go on that question, like how did you feel about and interact with the administration? Well, for the, I can't speak for every, you know, all the departments throughout the campus, all the units. But I know with us, it was a very one of always mutual respect. Always very accessible, the administration was always willing to be supportive. Because many time I had already known them years before, as professional colleagues, or as fellow educators. And then as they advanced and became more senior and finally, full administrative roles as director and dean. One thing I always remember was the on a consistent basis with support for any ideas that you have any proposals. They might not happen because of budgetary limitations, but there was always 100% support for any new idea you were proposing something, you know, your new course content you were proposing, a new teaching methodology you wanted to introduce, you wanted to create an event.  Okay, let's figure out how we're going to do it. And I think it's because they were themselves at that, you know, at some time, a junior faculty senior faculty member, who also wanted to make a difference, not only with the students, but with society and the university community as a whole. Yeah. So it was very congenial. It was very amiable. All of them were and very receptive doors always open type thing. Yeah, I never saw any barriers. So you were here 15 years? Yes, almost 15 years. Did you like what changes did you like witness at UC? Well, the biggest one was the going to semesters. Oh, really? I remember at the time when Oh, my God, people who see before I had taught already at other schools, Carnegie Mellon, I taught at Ohio State, they had orders to Montana State. I was used to semesters. And and then when I came here to UC, and everything was 10 week quarters, my God, I felt they were so fast. They I mean, either. Before you know the course is done, you know, you got to get people to submit work and get work done. But I remember the UC community, Bearcat Nation was concerned about, Oh, my God, it's going to be the end of the world. No more quarters were switching to semesters. What's going to happen? And I remember all these meetings took place brainstorm sessions, transition meetings. How are we going to take all these courses? Some had to be combined. Others had to stay. But then we had to add five more weeks. How are we going to do that? Teachers were scratching their heads. I'm not going to add more course content. But sun came up. We were now semesters. That course content you had, I remember towards the end, they even say, Oh, my God, I don't have enough time in these 15 weeks. I need more. But that was huge. That was a big event. And I was here for part of that history to switch from quarters to semesters. Do you know why quarters existed? No. In fact, it started at Ohio State. If quarters were in were, I don't know the actual workings of it. But as it was told to me, quarters were created the short academic terms of 10 weeks was after the Second World War, as the America as GI started coming back, they wanted to get these people back in the workforce to get their degrees. So it was seen as an accelerated way to get all these former GI's and all that men and women back into the workforce with degree programs and with proper training. So that was the 10 week quarters that was created. But yeah, I remember, Oh, there were people just scared to death, people who were students and then taught here at UC. I mean, quarters was like, that's so set in stone. It was like an architecture, but no. Other changes, the technology changes, of course, were dramatic. I mean, just in that short amount of time, 15 years, something a long time, but there were a lot of developments. And sizes grew, but not the caliber of the students. That's one thing, you know, I could compare Ohio State friends, I don't mean anything by, but I could tell the caliber of the students at UC were just a little bit higher. The admission standards were just a little bit higher. And I always noticed that. From the first days I was here, you know, the type of questions I would ask the inquiries from students. Incredible work ethics always. I would have I was always hoping for a class that I'd call my Nike class, because they were students that just did it. You know, no complaints, they just did it. And they reminded me a lot because I did mention Montana State. I taught in that's where I started teaching in 7980. And this is in Bozeman, Montana. And I had students that came from towns of no more than 200 populations. Some had never even seen a big city. And but they had incredible work ethic because a lot of them came from farms and they knew to get to a certain goal we had to put in a lot of work. So they reminded me, in fact, I remember you kidding some of the UC students, I said, you must be from a farm. They said, why are you saying that? But yeah, I saw a lot of changes in how different academic programs had to adjust curriculums as new knowledge was being added and expanded, not only new technical skills, but just the body of knowledge was growing. And so how do you accommodate that? I saw a lot of curriculums like even within the one here, courses that used to be so foundational, finally, have become too specialized. Curriculums were becoming more of a generalist approach, especially in the undergraduate levels. And that's something that's going on now been going on for quite some time. What other changes? The diversification never changed. In fact, we used to, our director at the time, Robert Probst, who would eventually become our Dean, he'd always call us the UN College, because we always were real rich with different perspectives. And that's something I've always enjoyed and I needed always to thrive in with my kind of work design work. It mirrored real well the outside in the professional community. Because I always liked working with teams of people from different specialties, different areas, work on a project with a child psychologist and engineer, a IT person, a writer. I mean, I just love those different perspectives. So have you seen like UC's priority, like shift? That's like a whole campus since you've been here. So much prior orities, but I've always seen it very welcoming, very eagerly wanting to accommodate the new technologies and trying to find often synergy between different disciplines, you know, really mirroring the interdisciplinary nature of the field, the professional field, the community, because the type of problems that exist today in society are so complex, one discipline alone can't solve it all. And I think UC was always very strong advocate for that that was always encouraged.  And that's something that I remember from when I first arrived 2003, the university was always a strong advocate for that. So going on to kind of similar. Where do you like see UC going in the future? Where do I see them going? I don't have an answer. It's just a big question. Yeah, because it's so many things could happen. I think the universe, I mean, one spirit or quality or attribute, whatever you want to call it was this incredible high sense of optimism. That's always existed. I never seeing that ever being on decline. I think we're the university will start because of this encouragement of interdisciplinary education that there's going to be creations of new disciplines that don't even have names yet that I think they're going to be born right here on this campus. Some mergers are going to take place, some evolution, some morphing of different knowledge bases are going to start taking place. I think they already have. I think the, it's an excitement, but I'm trying to think about how best to put it. I think the university has always seen attuned to social issues that have gone on. They do, you know, art and supporters for a community of humankind, with all its tapestry, rich tapestry that it has, and it wants to continue that. It doesn't want to ever exclude. It's always been inclusive since the day one. That's something that my former classmates Paula and Mark way back at Yale would share that with me, because it came from different diverse backgrounds. Whatever it is, I'll just say it, I won't be surprised.  But I don't think it's ever seen themselves as ever been locked into just within a city. It just goes by name. I mean, it's really the University of the world. It's what it is.  Even in Antarctica, you know, I probably need a coat. And I think that's what the university has always proposed is, I mean, you know, we have amazing dynamic problem solvers that we produce. And we try to create exchanges to better understand each other. And we want to do it with the most capable people we have would inspire me. And I think they'll always be there. I mean, I'm using him always as an example of my consulting work. You notice my name that consulting is called bridge. I do that in honor of I forgot his first name, but Strauss who designed engineer help engineer the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, UC alumni. Because I use it as an analogy for what I believe I create bridges, I'm a bridge builder, I bridge communication. And he created this beautiful bridge that a step from an aesthetic point of view. It's intriguing. It's attractive. And yet hundreds of thousands of people cross that bridge every day going to work, going to meet have lunch with their loved one, going to teach some students at an elementary school on the other side of the bridge. And they might take just a hundredth of a second glance to look up at the bridge and see that beautiful red color. And that's how I like to see my designs that. Sure, I'm going to make it look attractive. But it's what it does. And what it can do how it performs.  And how to explain what I want to do in design. So that we take care of the big question. So talking about like that bridge, talking about, like, what would you say would be your most proud accomplishment like at UC. There's so many. And that's something the university made it possible. But I think one of the largest ones that I touched on in 2010, we completed myself and four other teachers from four other schools. We were involved in this National Design Initiative, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. And they are strong supporters of medical improving medical literacy. And myself and that the three other teachers at other schools were part of the school consortium to work on this National Design Initiative to help people who are LEP stands for limited English proficiency. Because a growing problem and it still exists today that there are thousands approaching the millions of people who English is their second language.  And yet, health care facilities around the country have these huge issues. How do they communicate? How do we help way find someone to get to their radiology test and they don't speak English? They can't create eight different signs and eight different languages is just not feasible. So it's always been known through research and studies that have been done that symbols universal symbols as the term can break through those barriers. So this was part of a project National Design Initiative to develop a set standard of symbols that would be placed in hospitals to help people that are in these different language groups. And it was a project that had been ongoing. But this was the second phase of students from these. And maybe after the interview, I can show you a reference and I can send you a PDF later. You can see we develop 50 universal symbols for students to be used in public domain hospitals. The children's here uses them right now. These were all user tested in a very scientific method ways. We were using a research method by this Austrian fellow and how to have data enough and a enough of a percentage of results that this is working to qualify it. And then at the end of these two years, 50 standardized symbols were produced and created is now in the public domain. And of those 50 17 came from UC students. The basis of the came from there. And so it's very relevant to me because at the beginning I said I didn't know any English at all. And that here I came to this university and the university through my association with it. We got introduced to this program, this proposal. We applied for it. We became part of this consortium was on NPR radio this work that we did. So here I was not only giving back to students, but also giving back to people that are at this moment right now are trying to find their way for dialysis session and their daughter dropped them off but he can't speak English and get their way. And the students themselves when we were going through that process. I remember the many iterations we created the many testings we had graduate students from here, who came from different parts of the world, you know, and they provided a great perspective saying no, for you guys you understand the states but for us this means this real quick example like the symbol for alternate health care. It was a symbol of acupuncture and all that. And I remember the Asian students with the graduates were saying, well, for us, that's not alternate health care. You know, that's a very integral part of their medical treatments in Asia acupuncture. So we got a lot of other students to think twice while they never would have thought of that. You know, how do you connect? How do you create these bridges? And but yeah, that, along with many others, I was very proud of doing that. And, and I still get emails from the some of those student participants, how much they enjoyed that project, how it made them a better designer, even though they're not working on more symbols, but it made them think have some empathy for people that they're working for. But yeah, it's called hablamos juntos in Spanish means we speak together. That was the name of the program. If you I can send you a link later, I'll send it to you in the email. And you can look at up. There's all this documentation done. But hablamos juntos we speak together. It started by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, but they funded the one of the California Medical Schools is where they started because in California, of course, that's a big issue. And but yeah, that's one of the proudest projects. And even though I didn't design each the symbol, but I helped advise and guide many of the students and we together as a team. I mean, I went out to Mason, we conducted these surveys with there's a large Chinese community up there. And you can see them having to figure out these symbols. And do they mean this? It's a very intriguing method.  Okay, and you put one here in this part, they're there all five. And then they're asked a basic question of these five symbols, which percentage of the population US population you think would understand that symbol, this mental health? Oh, I only think 20% would get this or only 5% or zero. But then someone puts 82%. It had a rise medium of anything above 80%, meaning it's pretty effective. And so we've gathered the data and then we see why this one's very weak, why this one doesn't work. And then we do it again and test these people. So and that's something I love because in my area graphic design, it's usually not ever tested. Or, you know, how do you know that thing is going to work? Here's the data, here's the test we've done. And so yeah, that was a proud moment. The Oblomos Huntos project. Okay, yeah. I've looked into that. Yeah. Sure. So I guess, kind of talking about like, you went out and did surveys in Mason about that. One of the questions is, have you seen used or how have you seen UC connect to Cincinnati? You mean with the city itself? I think it I've seen it a lot in the ground roots of it, maybe not on a high profile, political and platform, but in the grassroots, by that of having students do field trips out to a technical facility, like in my area, printing facility, or working on these symbols, we would go visit the airport and make observations, see how people look, you know, do kind of ethnographic studies, you know, like an anthropologist and watch how people interact with signs and symbols. Some of the senior capstone projects we do someone would do a wayfinding app for the different neighborhoods in Cincinnati. And here they go when they start conducting field trips, the students themselves, they would tell citizens in the different neighborhoods, we're working on what we're trying to do. So they get, you know, you know, they learn about the university, but here's students trying to attempt better connections, better ways to document the heritage of each of these neighborhoods, these communities, these historic communities, how to give them an identity, how to get people to start talking about their neighborhoods and all that. We did that several times in their communication, the graphic design programs, whether doing a brand identity for Oakley or Mount Adams or whatever. I remember many team of students would take one neighborhood and then try to create and understand the history of that community, how they get started. Oh, there were all these famous characters at one time, they'd hook up with the amateur historian and all this and that. And I think that's something how the I've always enjoyed and felt a lot of gratification that the students in a way are helping create these quick works, you know, with all the neighborhoods within the city. What other things that have done? Yeah, because the city acts as the their backyard.  It's like their landscape. It's like their national park. They discover and they learn the qualities of a place. I know some of those teams when I before they would go out and they don't know anything about these neighborhoods, I'd always remark that famous Hawthorne book, the Scarlet Leather, because at the very beginning, if you ever read that high school, the beginning there was the the customs house is a little kind of intro. And if you remember, he Hawthorne mate, which was a good point, and I told the student teams this, remembering the native will sometimes take for granted the qualities of a place that attributes, it takes the outsider to start recognizing them and resurrecting them and making them aware again, of those wonderful characteristics and qualities of a place. And I think that's what the students did as they created and form these relationships with different people. So that's the way I think the university connects with the city. So maybe moving on to one of the last questions, I guess, was there at a time that university like you felt could have done some better or disappointed you? Oh, my goodness. I don't think it even needs a university, any organization you work with there always could be cases, you know, you wish there would have done a little bit more. I think when you're not in the administration, you don't know all the workings that go on behind the scenes and sometimes something can be possible. But I can never recollect a wall, you know, not a wall of lack of vocal support, or attempts to help make that a reality. There was always maybe some financial limitations, some event occur that just impacted that ever happening. But I don't remember I don't for me anyway, I don't ever recall a resistance of that kind. I think the universe I think it's really was always up to you. You can make it possible. There was never any shackles or anything holding you back. You could go as far as you wanted to see how far the endurance would take you. But I never recall it being a any resistance. Okay. So I think we've gone through basically all the questions. Is there anything else that you'd like to tell me that we haven't talked about? Just the that the highlights in my career, both teaching and professionally that wouldn't have been possible. Had I not been here and had not the university and and I'm saying that sincerely.  I used to think that I used to disagree with her. But maybe she's right. But some good opportunities came along. It was here. The Ablamo Suntos project, I would have never had access to that. I would have never, you know, encountered it. And yet there's that wonderful opportunity that I got to experience and and and make a difference. And it's something that's still ongoing for those students that were involved. And those people, as I said, that are right now in some medical facility. I'll never meet them. My students will never meet them. But you know, it made a difference incrementally, you know, but yeah, I mean, that would not have happened had I not come here to the university. All right. Well, I think that's all the questions that we have. Okay. Thank you for your time. I appreciate the answers. Okay. All right, so we're good. You're all good.


Life after the dark night of the soul. The dark night of the soul, while a period of intense struggle, often leads to a profound transformation. Emerging from it, one may feel a renewed sense of self, a deeper understanding of their purpose, and a stronger connection to their spiritual life. It is a journey towards greater authenticity and wholeness. Thank you for joining us on this exploration of the dark night of the soul.


Good morning and welcome to Encompass Live. I'm Emily Nimsikant here at the Nebraska Library Commission filling in for your regular host, Christa Burns. Encompass Live is the Nebraska Library Commission's weekly online event. It covers NLC activities and other library related topics. Our presentations are done by either NLC staff or guest presenters. The one-hour sessions are free and they take place every Wednesday morning from at 10 a.m. central time and they include a wide variety of content including presentations, interviews, book reviews, web tours, mini-training sessions, and Q&A sessions. Today we do have NLC staff with us, the Commission's own Laura Johnson, who is going to talk to us about weeding. Take it away Laura. Hi. Thanks Emily. Okay today I thought we'd talk about weeding. This is an on-core presentation of this particular thing. We did this at NLA. So we're going to talk about weeding. Why is it so difficult and what can we do about it? So let's go get started. Oops that wasn't... why won't it advance the slides for me? Okay and here's we first have 10 reasons to weed. Do we need to press enter? Just a second. We're having a little... okay well you can save time inventorying. If you have fewer books you need to eliminate the items that no longer fit your library's mission. You reduce duplicate copies. You increase use of other materials. You save space. You eliminate items no longer of interest to patrons. You encourage browsing. You protect readers from inaccurate information. This is a biggie. That's the great sin in libraries is to have misinformation. So you want to be sure that you do get books out that are inaccurate. You save patrons and staff's time. Remember our Ranganathan's five laws? That's one of them. Save the time of the patron. And you increase the library's appeal. So there's lots of good reasons why we want to weed. The rule of thumb? About 3% a year is what we aim at. That's what's required for Nebraska Public Library accreditation. And that is what generally seems across the board to be about what we look for. When we look at what Nebraska libraries do weed, I took the 2009 Nebraska Public Library Statistics. I put the libraries in categories by the size of the population they served. So for instance, libraries that serve between 100 and 499 people averaged 5% of their book collection withdrawn in 2009.  And what is 3% of the average collection? Well, again, for our population category of 100 to 499 people served, the average, and this is just a mean, was 7,472 books. So about 7,500 books. And 3% of that is 224 books. So that's actually kind of doable. And you see that as the population categories get, the population that served get larger, the number of books in the collection get larger, and then of course the percentage is larger. So what are the reasons that weaning doesn't get done? We all admit that we need to weed. We all admit that we want to weed. So why doesn't it happen? Well, I think there's a few reasons. First one, we're librarians. We love the books. And we think there's no such thing as a bad book. Well, you know, maybe there is. And it's time to get them out of the collection. The wrong book, the wrong something is not better than nothing. An out of date book that's going to give people misinformation is worse than not having information at all on the subject. And remember, any more, it's never a matter of not having information. There's information on the internet about almost anything. So we need to be very selective about the books we have. Librarians do have a responsibility for getting rid of books because people think that if they're on the library shelf, the library is saying, hey, here's a good book. So you don't want to have any books that you wouldn't recommend to someone. Okay, another reason, well, someone might need them. What if we got rid of them and someone needed them? Well, let's look at the 80-20 rule. About 20% of your books are responsible for 80% of your circulation, which means there are probably some books that aren't really pulling their weight. Chances are if a book hasn't been used, it's not going to be used because, well, when Lori and Roy weeded 10%, and that's a pretty strict weeding, Lori and Roy is a former president of the American Library Association. In 1985, she weeded three public libraries, and only 1% of those weeded books were requested over the following eight months. Chances are if you get rid of something, you won't need it. The best predictor of future circulation is past circulation. So if a book hasn't been checked out, chances are it's not going to be checked out. Okay, so another reason we don't weed is, well, we haven't gotten all the good out of it yet. This book is not worn out. Well, you have to look at collection development kind of as a cycle. And you also, when we weed, we look at the particular book, the individual book, but we also have to take a bigger, a broader look and look at the whole collection. And so our cycle is we select books and then we process them, we add them to the collection, we circulate them, and then we weed and discard them. And you have to think of that as a cycle. It's ever churning, and we're always going to be adding and subtracting from our collections. If you have books that you think they're still really good that people haven't checked out, well, try putting them on a display. Good books you might have missed. Don't have too many books on the display. About 12 is a good number to start with. And see if they get checked out. If they don't, then you really know it's time for them to go. Okay, another reason you don't want to weed is, well, I don't want to admit I made a bad selection. Let's go to that old philosopher, Mae West. She tells us that all discarded books should be given a second chance, but with somebody else. So put them in the book sale, donate them to somebody else, and think that they're doing good somewhere else, but in your library, it just wasn't a good fit anymore. Well, maybe the book is valuable. We don't want to weed it and get rid of it and then find out we were sitting on a gold mine. Well, look them up. ABE Books is a place where many antiquarian book sellers offer books online. And so you can look up a book here and see what its value is. ABE Books was started by some people and this is what antiquarian rare books are one of the industries that have just really gone online completely. This was recently purchased by Amazon, so it's now owned by Amazon, but it's still its own database of rare or out-of-print books and you can look things up here. This is also, incidentally, if you really need to purchase an out-of-print book, this is one of the places you would look to see if you could find the book to buy. Then what will people say if they find books in the dumpster? What will we do? Well, you know, how many police stations have a 1985 Crown Vic parked out front?  We can't keep them forever, and we shouldn't keep them forever. So don't worry about it and just tell them, well, we got a new police car, didn't we? So we should get new books, too. And people have to understand that it is a cycle. We won't have anything left if we weed everything. If we get rid of everything that's old, we won't have anything left. Well, in fact, again, we'll go back to our statistics. These were from the public library statistics that libraries submitted to us and we submit to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The number of books purchased for every book withdrawn. Let's look at the category of libraries serving a population between 1,000 and 1,999. For every book they acquired during that year, or for every book, I'm sorry, I said that wrong, for every book they withdrew, for every book they took out of their collection, they added five books. They are not in danger of not having anything left. They are in danger of running out of room. Everyone here has a positive ratio. So everyone is adding more books than they're subtracting. So I don't think we're going to run out of books. The other thing, of course, is there are so many books. In 1920, and these numbers are from the Balker annual. In 1920, there were 6,187 books that were produced in America. In 2007, there were 185,969. Well, you know, when you get to those kind of numbers, you know you're never going to have all those books. You can't possibly have that many books. So if you can't possibly have them all, then it's okay to not have some. So you just have to have the ones that you need. But look at those numbers. Publishing has exploded. So how about the excuse to not read that the library looks fine. There's plenty of room. Well, it's a funny thing. And it's a good thing about people that when we get to know a place or we get to know a person, we don't always see them clearly anymore. We see them through a haze of memories and things we've shared and knowledge about the thing so that we don't see the thing clearly. And that's wonderful because, well, you know, we don't need to scrutinize everything. But the people who are coming in your library may not be really familiar with it. So you need to ask another librarian who's not familiar with your library how it really looks. Or sometimes it helps to take a picture. Somehow that taking a picture helps you step back from it a little bit. And you can see very clearly how things really look. The other thing is that it turns out, in studies that have been done, convenience is a huge factor in whether people check out books. So, for instance, studies show that shelves just inside the door circulate 24% more books than shelves just 15 feet inside the door. So obviously what people come to first is what they're checking out. Therefore, you want them to be able to get to the good stuff. Books, they did a study of books that were circulated from one section of shelves. And it turns out that the top row and the bottom row aren't terribly popular. So maybe you want to leave those rows empty. Maybe you want to leave enough room on the shelves that you can turn books face out. This will help people. Also, you want to think about being able to move things around from time to time so that things were on a bottom shelf and kind of in the back get to see the light of day and maybe people will find them better and check them out. But when you realize that people are going to see the first things, the first things they see or what they're going to choose, then you realize that it's important to make sure that people, it's easy for people to get at things and it's easy for people to see things. And that means that you don't want the shelves to be too crowded. In 1973, when Stanley Slote read a 20% of fiction, that's quite a lot. That's one fifth. Six months later, his circulation increased. So we know in fact that having fewer choices sometimes really works for people. There have been studies about people's behavior when they have choices. And it turns out that having too many choices sometimes kind of paralyzes people. And they actually do better when they have fewer choices. So don't worry about having a lot of books. Worry about having good books, the right books, the people want the books that people want. And of course, I'm talking about books here, I keep using the word books. Can we just agree that the word books in this case covers all library materials? Because of course, a huge piece of some library circulation is now DVDs and other media. So it's important to think about those two. Okay, and here's now an excuse. There isn't time. Well, this is real. There's only so many hours in a day. And weeding is time consuming. So what can you do? Well, first make everyone on the staff part of the weeding team. If everybody understands this is what we do with weeding, and everybody contributes, it lightens the load a bit. Then here's some tips. Weed as you go. At the circulation desk when someone returns a book is the best place to examine that book and say, whoa, this baby's really shabby. And set it aside to decide whether it really goes or not. Set small daily or weekly goals. Remember back when we said that 3% of the collect average collection for a library serving between 100 and 199 people was 224 books. So in a year, you needed to aim at discarding at least 224 books. Well, now 224 books, 52 weeks in a year. Let's give ourselves two weeks of vacation. So that's 50 weeks, 224 books. All of a sudden, we need to weed four and a half books a week. Well, you know, that's not quite one a day. We could do that. So set weekly. Don't let it get to be huge. Think of it in very small chunks. If you're a competitive person, have a contest. Give everybody in your library a section and see who can weed at the fastest. Pick another library with a similar size collection and see if you can weed better than they can weed. Form a support group. Support groups, social groups that help are really effective.  And you know, check in with one another every week. Or have this group you can go to when you have a question about what you need to weed. This can be very effective. Make it visual so that you can see what progress you're making. Make a chart of the stacks and color in where you've weeded. It'll get to the point where just having that green marker, you can make one more section green is terrific. You know, these are all kind of tricks that you can do, but put their work.  Put this stuff together. Use one of the tote bags that you get at NLA and put things together.  For one thing, this makes you look terribly professional.   And that'll help. Okay. And number ten, I don't know where to start. Well, yeah. But to the rescue, the super librarian will help you figure out where to start when you're weeding. What is crew? Crew is a weeding manual for modern libraries. It was developed by some staffers at the Texas, well, actually for some people in public libraries in Texas, who are now, well, now she's a library school professor. But you can download it. It's the new edition. It's available to everyone and it's free. And what does crew do? Well, it gives you charts. And we're going to blow up this chart so you can see a little bit more clearly this piece of it. So it says for books that have a doing number of six, ten, and what is that? Medicine, right? If it has a copyright date of more than five years old, you really need to think about weeding it. If it hasn't been checked out for three years, you really need to think about weeding it. And then if it has any of the musty characteristics of what are those? Well, if they're musty. Remember, mustiness is mold. And mold is a living thing. Mold grows and mold will move from book to book. So you really do want to get musty stuff out of your collection. It's really important and not let your collection be damp. If it's ugly, now, books are not human beings. And it's okay to say it's ugly and you need to get rid of it just on that shallow basis that it's ugly. Because you know what, people won't choose it if it's ugly. So remember, they're not people and their feelings are not going to be heard. If it's superseded, if there is a more recent book with better information in it, if it's trivial, these books can be fun for a while but then it's time to move on. If it's irrelevant to your collection, a wonderful history, local history of a small town in Ohio, probably you don't need in a collection in Nebraska. Or if it's available elsewhere, if you can get it through interlibrary loan, maybe you don't need it in your collection. So again, to weed or not to weed. Here's a checklist of factors that may affect your weeding that you need to think about. First, the intellectual content. Look at the book. Who wrote it? Is this an expert? Who published it? Is this a reputable publisher? What's the date? What's the reading level? Is it of current interest? Then look at the aesthetic content. Are the illustrations pleasing? Is it a well-designed book? Is it appealing? Then look at its physical collection and this is one of the easiest things to determine. If it's really in bad shape, maybe you don't want to keep it. Then look at its circumstances. Its circulation statistics. Has it circulated? As we said, the best indicator of whether a book will be checked out is has it been checked out in the past? Are there other copies of it? Maybe you don't need eight copies of it anymore. As a bestseller, maybe you do need eight copies right for six months or a year, but after that you'd probably get rid of some of them. How expensive would it be to replace it? If it's a really good book, but it's really shabby, maybe you want to just buy a new one. Do you have similar resources? It's very easy when there's a subject of genuine interest, say the Gulf War. As people came home from the Gulf War, a number of them wrote a memoir. Every memoir got good reviews and you bought these memoirs because people in your town were interested. Now you find you have a little distance from the Gulf War and you own 18 memoirs. And well, maybe you don't need all of them anymore. And yes, these are difficult decisions, which of them to keep and which of them to discard, but if you have that many resources in that area, maybe you need to part with some of them. And the suitability of the book does it contribute to the mission of your library? Again, a wonderful book written in Mandarin Chinese cannot be something you need in your library unless the high school is teaching Mandarin Chinese or you have a sister city in China or there are some people in your town who are going to be traveling to China and they want to show what a book from China looks like. But you need to look at is it suitable? Is it really contributing to the mission of your library? And of course in a school, does it support the curriculum? So that's what, whether you would weed or not to weed, some of the things you need to think about. Okay, one of the first things that helps you weed is your library selection policy. And yes, it's really hard to put together one of these things. But the better the selection policy, the more help it will be to you. A selection policy should include de-selection criteria. It should say, well yes, in our area of Dewey where we have the medical books, we will not keep anything more than so many years old. It tells kind of. It should have a weeding schedule. Some sections of the library need to be weeded more often than others. Philosophy, you probably don't need to weed that often. Travel books, you probably do. And talk about disposal methods because how are you going to remove these books from your premises? Here's some sample policy language I found in a workshop at InfoPeople, which is in California, but I just really liked this because I thought it really summed it up. Each item through its quality, reliability, current usefulness and appearance must earn its place on the shelf and contribute to the reliability, reputation, and attractiveness of the library. Doesn't that just sum it up for you? Yeah, I really like that sentence. We want to consider weeding duplicate copies, items in poor condition, drab items that get lost on the shelves. Remember, put them in a display and if they still aren't checked out, then you know that it's time. Older single titles by an author, obscure or femoral titles, knock-offs of popular authors, lesser works of authors who have died. In other words, they're not going to be producing any more books. Minor author or poet collections series books when titles are missing simplified or abridged classics. These are places where you can say maybe we ought to. Doesn't necessarily mean absolutely you must, but it's a good indicator. So the steps to weeding, well first you want to gather your usage statistics because this is one of the things you're going to use, one of the major things you're going to use to help you determine whether to weed. Maintain your weeding kit. Remember you're going to look so spiffy in that lab coat. Then kind of eyeball the area you're going to be weeding. Oh, look it over. Is it real crowded? Does it look shabby? Even take a picture. That's the wonderful thing about digital cameras. You can just take pictures. Then weed. Then double check in indexes and bibliographies about anything you had a question about and then dispose of the weed and stuff. Either discard it or recycle it, sell it, put it in the book sale, donate it, send it to a library in Africa. There are lots of things and you'll probably use all of these things. You would discard a book that was in very bad condition. You would discard a book that had misinformation in it. You would recycle something that you could remove the cover from and have the paper recycled. You would sell a book that you think someone still might have an interest in but is no longer right for your library. You would donate books the same way or because you knew that a particular library needed books in particular subjects. Then after you do that, you want to order replacements or develop a wish list to reorder because there are places where you're going to discard books because they were very, very shabby or just falling apart or because they had misinformation but you need then some more books in that subject area. Then you're going to merchandise those circulating high-quality items. That's where the displays come in. Remember, you don't want too many books on a display. Displays do not have to be elaborate. In fact, there's some indication that it's better if they're not too elaborate. You don't want too many books. A dozen between 12 and 20. If people take a few books from the display, they're going to have more to put on the display. Displays can be very simple. Good books you might have missed. Great reads for a cold January. Take some home today. That's all you need to do. We have a question. I don't know of anything specifically. If people are interested in that, I'd be happy to do some work to look for some. Then I can either put it in our blog or put up a web page about it. It might take me a few weeks but I will do that. Here's a Swiffer Duster coupon. Remember, I said that you almost have to dust in self-defense while you're weeding. If you haven't tried Swiffer's, they're really great. I would love to be able to give each of you a Swiffer but the best I can do is tell you that this is where you can get a coupon. Now we have some advice for specific sections when weeding. Picture books. Think boutique. Try to keep the best. Try to keep it looking good. Be aware of ephemeral interests. Dinosaurs are not ephemeral. Replace your board books because they do get a lot of abuse and they get pretty shabby pretty fast if they've been chewed on. Replace worn copies of perennial favorites. Good Night Moon. Some of those books that people read is when they were children that they want to read to their children. Mike Mulligan. Even One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. These are things you probably need to replace worn copies. Look into seeing if you can get library bindings on some of these things that are very popular because they will hold up a little better. Also, you might want to think about, what would you call it, defensive repair. You might want to think about, for instance, taping spines before you put the book on the shelf even to help it hold up for little hands that just aren't always well, it's not that they're careless. It's that they don't quite have that control. So another advice for specific sections, why a fiction? Be ruthless. They do have fads. Currencies key. They like paperbacks because they're easier to carry around. And if a book is more than five years old, remove if it's not circulating well. Keep old stuff because the kids will think that the whole library is old and musty then. For children's and young adult nonfiction, remember anything is not better than nothing. You want specifically good things. Be aware of online resources. You don't want to have books that have poor information and the misinformation. And use the crew guidelines just as you would in the adult sections. Other children's and young adult issues. Excuse me. You'll often see abridged classics. No, they're very often poor quality and you don't need to keep those. Series books, they can be very popular while the kids are reading the series and then all of a sudden they're done and you'll never see that series circulate again. Older titles. Beware of a dated look. You want these things to look fresh. Worn classics should be replaced. People will still, you will still have folks reading Black Beauty, but you want it to look like a fresh book. Any geography titles older than five years old, toss them, science, medicine, invention. These are things that change rapidly, so you need to be sure that you're updating those. And text books. Many libraries don't keep text books at all. Sometimes a text book can be very useful because it will have basic information on a subject so you might want a text book or you might want text books that are being used by the schools in your area or the homeschool kids. Might find text books useful. But look at them carefully. Then another special section is reference and I think we've all downsized reference in the last five years or so. But remember that older editions may be weeded when they're superseded. When you get a new almanac, you can weed them. I would recommend some of these things if you have the room and if you feel that people might want to do historical research on some things, maybe you don't want to keep every almanac but you could keep all the almanacs that end in when the year ends in zero or zero and five. Think about that kind of thing and also think about, for instance, an older edition of an encyclopedia that's not too old, you might want to put in circulation for a while. Evaluate the materials periodically because maybe you don't need a reference book in that area anymore. You want to look at different replacement schedules. The new editions might not be as frequent. On the other hand, Gail seems to still be putting things out every year and maybe you don't need to replace a book every year. Maybe every other year is enough. Really think about your replacement schedules. Keep your websites and databases in mind. Sometimes, for instance, travel books. I don't think we need travel books nearly as much as we used to because there's so much on the internet. Consider integrating reference materials into the circulating collection and consider using the circulating collection for reference when you need to. We may want reference collections still, but you might want to keep them very small and have most of your collection circulating. For periodicals, you want current use periodicals because older issues do tend to be online. Does this mean that, for instance, if you have those old bound volumes of Life Magazine from World War II, you should get rid of them? Oh, I hate to see them go. On the other hand, are people using them? You really have to think about it. They do take up a lot of room. Really think about the mission of your collection. If you are not there to provide research materials for people, then maybe you don't need to keep those things. Do you let back issues of your periodical circulate? How do your periodical circulate? The full text availability, are they available online or not? Of course, one of the problems is that many things are available online but only the last 10 or 15 years. If you think older things are going to be needed, then you might need to move on to them. These are tough decisions to make. Space is a real issue because periodicals can sure eat up the space. But in many public libraries, especially public libraries with basically popular collections, periodicals have become a current reading kind of thing and you don't keep them for research anymore. Another specific section, media. If it's worn out, out of date, rarely used supplies elsewhere or trivial, get rid of it. Also keep a good eye on the condition of your media. CDs and DVDs can get scratched up. It's frustrating for your users. You want to be sure that you try to keep the things in good condition. What things do you keep? Well, volumes of sets and series with special merit. What does that mean? Well, something that people are using. Something that has a local history. That's an important thing to keep. These, as I said, these things take professional judgment. These are not easy or automatic answers. Older reference works augmented by later editions. So for instance, Bartlett's familiar quotations is not completely replaced by a new edition. So you may want to keep some old editions of those depending again on how people use them. Local history. You definitely want to keep your local history. If that's part of your mission, in many, many public libraries it is. If local history is not part of your mission, then you may want to donate things to the historical society. Works by local authors you might want to keep. And let's face it, if you have a book that's by a local author or there's some reason to keep something, some specific reason, write it in the book. You know, get a pencil out, decide that you're always going to write your notes on, I don't know, I would say the verso, the back side of the title page. And write a note. When you write notes, always date them, always initial them, so they know who did this and when they did it, but put it in the book. You're keeping it because of this. So somebody else in 15 years doesn't have to look it all up again. It's just, you know, another practice. Then the classics. As librarians, is it our duty to expose people to great literature or is it our duty to have things on the shelf that people actually want to read and will they read those classics unless a movie comes out and then maybe they will. It's a debate. And I don't think you have to be all one way or another. I think you can kind of say, well, these classics are being read in the school or this might be good for the book club, but this one no one's going to read. It's true. Probably your personal prejudices will get in the way. I myself would have a hard time justifying keeping very much Henry James. But this doesn't mean I don't think or don't know that Henry is supposed to be, you know, good stuff. So you kind of have to know yourself and know a little bit about the literature and you can't always go by what the experts say. You kind of have to develop your own expertise for your library, your group of users. That wasn't terribly helpful, wasn't I'm sorry. But it is. It's a place where you kind of have to come to your own and you're probably not going to be completely consistent and maybe that's okay. How often between systematic reviews? Now I think this is really useful because for instance the Dewey zeroes probably every three years. And look at the 200s at philosophy again. Every five years is plenty. The 800s, the literature every five years is plenty. But on the other hand those 600s which is your technology every two years. You really want to look at it. Fiction every couple of years. A large print of course is fiction. Paperbacks simply because of condition. You know they just don't last as long. But people like to read them. Sometimes they're good. For a few extra copies of a very popular title. There are a lot of good, especially genre fiction, westerns, mysteries, romances that are only going to come out in paperback. So you can't neglect paperbacks. But at the same time because they tend to fall apart, you have to look them over very carefully after a year or so. Scores if you have a lot of music every five years. Be sure that they remain complete and they remain a decent condition. Media every couple of years. Really check the condition. Software every couple of years. So it does depend on what not only the physical format but the content is as to how often you really need to go through it. And what are some of the keys to reading success? Well, make reading part of policy. If reading's important, then say up front that it's important. Build reading into the regular work schedule. It's easy to put off a project. It's easy to not start a project. But if it's just one of the regular things you do, I think it's more important. It'll tend to get done. Inventory as you read. You may be surprised at how much you're discarding from your collection that you didn't know you were discarding. So you need to, you know, be a little aware of that. Follow up on your questions or problems. There's always going to be some things that you're not sure whether you should read or not. The thing to do is to look up book reviews. Really take a look at whether this book is suitable for your library. And then have a posse, as I said, have a support group that you can turn to and say, hey guys, what do you think about this? And then I think one of the keys is always consider the collection as a whole. Yes, when we're reading, we think about the particular item. But what you have to do is think about how that item contributes to the whole. No one item is going to make or break you. So you need to always think about the whole collection. And you need to think about your community as well. So what are some things that can help? This book by Stanley J. Sloat, Reading Library Collections, can be very useful. This Less Is More, this is the book that came out of the Sunlink Project out in Florida, where they were weeding school libraries. But this is a really good practical collection. It's about school libraries, but I think it would be very useful even for a lot of public libraries. This is a collection development plan for the Skokie Public Library. It is notable for its astonishing size. It's almost, when you look at it, you think, oh my goodness, these people really, really are on top of this. Well, they are. The Skokie Public Library, it's a suburb of Chicago, is a remarkable collection. It's a good size public library as those things go. But they have really worked on their collection development plan, and they will say in this area we collect this kind of book, we keep it for this long. Anyway, their insights into some of these things you might find useful. And then the American Library Association does have a fact sheet about weeding, which is really a bibliography of other materials on weeding, but it's online. We'll find that at ALA. And then Reward Yourself. You did a great job! So pat yourself on the back, have some chocolate, and enjoy your beautiful, neat, weeded library. And thank you. Do you have any questions? We do have one comment that's come in in response to the where can you donate your books. Casey from Melville University said, we use better world books, and they are awesome. They send boxes, and they give you back some money when they sell the books. So better world books is the recommendation. Such a deal! Are they on the web? I assume so. Okay. Speaking of things on the web, I just wanted to mention that any of the links to be included will be on our delicious account, and they will be linked to the recording for this presentation. So you don't have to worry about hopping down any of the URLs that Laura threw at you. We can probably include the WorldCat records for those books you mentioned. We're trying to write down these wonderful resources. One last housekeeping thing I don't think I mentioned was that if you have somebody else watching with you whose name was not included on the login, go ahead and type that in the question box. We can make sure everybody gets credit for being here. Yes, Casey says betterworldbooks.com is the website for that. Betterworldbooks.com. I don't write that down. If there are any more questions, please go ahead and either type them in or raise your hand and we can unmute you. Thank you Laura for a wonderful presentation. Very informative. Well, if anybody has any questions, I'm here. And I'd be happy to help you. As I said, there are things that will help that can help you. At some point, judgment does come into play. And knowledge of your community is an important thing. Casey says betterworldbooks, recycles what they don't sell and gives a portion of the proceeds to charity. That's nice. No, thank you, Casey. That's great. You must have answered everybody's questions. I guess I must have. Thank you, Laura, for presenting. Thank you all for attending. Well, thank you, everyone. We hope to see you again for another Encompass Live. Bye. Have a good day.